Trump Will Win The GOP Nomination Because Republicans Like Him-- But Normal People Hate Him, So...

"Dead Man Walking" by Nancy Ohanian

On Monday, former Bill Clinton political director and campaign strategist, Doug Sosnick wrote a memo, A Look Ahead to the 2024 Presidential Election which argues that “all the rules in American politics are being rewritten.” He writes off “national polls, the mood of the country and the incumbent President’s job approval numbers” and posits that “The strongest predictors of the 2024 outcome have now zeroed in on polling of likely voters in eight battleground states that represent less than 20% of the U.S. population— Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.” He added that “Increasingly, voter education levels have become the new fault line in politics, with highly educated voters now supporting Democrats and less educated voters skewing heavily Republican. Most of the last eight competitive states are right in the middle— with education levels neither extremely high nor extremely low.”

It’s worth noting that on county by county levels each of those states have areas where residents are highly educated and areas where educational attainment is abysmally low. Take North Carolina where, overall, 12% of 25-44-year-olds statewide have earned a master’s degree or higher as their highest degree; 24% have a bachelor’s degree; 10% have an associate degree; 22% have some college, no degree; 22% have a high school diploma; and 10% have less than a high school diploma. That may describe a state, but it is certainly note granular enough predict voting patterns. These are the half dozen counties where Biden did best:

Durham Co. (80.42%)

• Masters or higher- 24%

• Bachelors- 28%

• High school diploma or less- 26%

Orange Co. (74.82%)

• Masters or higher- 32%

• Bachelors- 28%

• High school diploma or less- 20%

Hertford Co. (66.74%)

• Masters or higher- 4%

• Bachelors- 12%

• High school diploma or less- 48%

Mecklenburg Co. (66.68%)

• Masters or higher- 16%

• Bachelors- 34%

• High school diploma or less- 24%

Edgecombe Co. (63.15%)

• Masters or higher- 3%

• Bachelors- 8%

• High school diploma- 51%

Wake Co. (62.25%)

• Masters or higher- 20%

• Bachelors- 36%

• High school diploma- 20%

You’ll notice that Edgecombe and Hertford counties have educational attainment levels that look more like Trump counties than like Biden counties. They are rural counties with Black majorities where education was discouraged and not as easily available due to traditional racism. These are the half dozen counties where Señor Trumpanzee did best:

Yadkin Co. (Trump- 79.97%)

• Masters or higher- 4%

• Bachelors- 11%

• High school diploma or less- 43%

Graham Co. (Trump- 79.53%)

• Masters or higher- 6%

• Bachelors- 10%

• High school diploma or less- 43%

Alexander Co. (Trump- 78.51%)

• Masters or higher- 4%

• Bachelors- 9%

• High school diploma or less- 55%

Mitchell Co. (Trump- 78.42%)

• Masters or higher- 2%

• Bachelors- 19%

• High school diploma or less- 43%

Stokes Co. (Trump- 78.37%)

• Masters or higher- 3%

• Bachelors- 13%

• High school diploma or less- 48%

Wilkes Co. (Trump- 77.80%)

• Masters or higher- 5%

• Bachelors- 12%

• High school diploma or less- 44%

Sosnik also points out that voter turnout was generally higher in these states compared to the 2018 midterms than in the country as a whole. And that was especially true of Gen Z and Millennial voters, who heavily favor Democrats. He concludes that if we wins up with a Biden-Trump rematch, which looks likely, the changing political dynamics will drive the outcome, along with a unique set of swing voters:

• Double Doubters— People who have a negative view of both Biden and Trump are perhaps the most important group of swing voters in the upcoming election. This is not an insignificant voting bloc. In an ABC Ipsos poll taken after Trump’s most recent indictment, a majority of the country had a negative view of both Biden and Trump, with only 31% having a favorable view of both candidates.

• Abortion Rights voters— The 2022 Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade had a seismic impact on American politics and totally reshaped the outcome of the 2022 midterm elections. In an NBC poll released this week, 61% of voters disapproved of the Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade. In a mid-June Gallup poll, 69% of respondents (74% of Independents) said that abortion should be legal in the first three months of pregnancy, the highest level in the history of their polls. Last year six statewide initiatives passed in favor of maintaining abortion rights, including in the heavily Republican states of Kansas, Kentucky and Montana. In the 2022 exit polls, 62% of voters thought that abortion should be legal, which was a seven-point increase compared to 2020. In the AP VoteCast survey of midterm voters, 38% said that the Supreme Court decision had a major impact on whether to vote, with 47% of these respondents saying that the Court’s decision had a major impact on who to support.

• Republicans— The results from the 2022 midterms, as well as recent polling, suggest that a group of Republican voters will be up for grabs in 2024, particularly if Trump is on the ballot. Democrats racked up double-digit percentages from Republicans in the 2022 governors’ races in Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania. They also made significant inroads with these voters in Senate races in Arizona (13%), Pennsylvania (8%), Nevada (7%), and Georgia (6%). In a June 17th CNN poll, 21% of Republicans said that they would not vote for Trump under any circumstances, with 27% believing that he should end his candidacy due to his recent federal indictment. In the NBC poll, 29% of GOP primary voters said that the Party needs a new leader with better personal behavior and a different approach.

• Independents— The winning party in the last four election cycles carried political independents. The 2022 exit polls showed that over 30 percent of voters were independents, the highest percentage since 1980.

He also noted that a third party candidate— think Manchin for No Labels or Cornel West as a Green— could kill Biden’s chance because of the “double doubters.” In fact, he wrote that “Trump can’t win without a third-party candidate dividing the anti-Trump vote” and noted that in recent polling “Trump carried respondents who were motivated to vote for a candidate (63%) by 19 points, while Biden won voters motivated to vote against a candidate (37%) by 41 points.”

Imagine how frustrating it is for the Republicans running against Trump— and their supporters— who can’t make that dynamic work for them, not by going Trump’s right (DeSantis), not be presenting themselves as Trump-lite (Haley, Pence) and not by going on the warpath against Trump (Christie, Hurd). Yesterday, Adam Wren tried figuring out why they’re all running if a MAGA-fied GOP, other than hoping Trump will die or go to prison. He noted that “A failed presidential run is often the ladder to a better gig: a spot on the ticket, an elevated platform to run for a different office, landing an administration job— a Slovenian ambassadorship, perhaps— or to notch a plum media contract. Truth is, the shoot-for-the-moon-and-you’ll-land-among-the-stars strategy is all upside. And in the presidential attention-grabbing industrial complex, 2024 is looking like one for the record books.”

Jeff Timmer, a Lincoln Project senior adviser and the former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party, told him that “Every single candidate other than Donald Trump on the Republican side has no chance of being president or getting the Republican nomination. The motivations are bolstering their statures, satisfying their ego, pure delusion and fantasy.”

There are incentives for running for president as a longshot. Just look at Pete Buttigieg. The former mayor of the fourth largest city in Indiana vaulted over better known rivals to win the Iowa caucuses, going from someone whose last name tripped up even seasoned news anchors to parlaying his run into a six-figure podcast deal, a book deal, and guest hosting a late night show. Not to mention a Cabinet spot in the Biden administration.

“Pete showed that it’s possible for a complete longshot who the elites and the establishment totally wrote off at the beginning to become a top-tier contender,” Lis Smith, Buttigieg’s [inventor and] senior communications adviser, said. “And so it makes sense that future presidential candidates would sort of look at the model and try to emulate it. What I would say is that lightning doesn’t usually strike twice. It’s going to be very difficult for anyone to sort of emulate what he was able to do.”

Vivek Ramaswamy— the millennial biotech entrepreneur who has drawn some comparisons to Buttigieg, with whom he crossed paths at Harvard— has clearly studied Buttigieg’s path from unknown to national political figure. Ramaswamy has even vowed to talk to all sides of the media political spectrum, a page right out of Buttigieg’s playbook.

In an interview with Politico, he expressed a desire to get booked on MSNBC’s Joy Reid’s Reid Out show. From Buttigieg, he said, he learned “delivering a message matters more than biography and experience does.”

Like others interviewed for this piece, though, Ramaswamy denied that a campaign was a vehicle for something other than the presidency, saying there are a “lot of ways to change this country, but [running is] a tremendous sacrifice.”

Perry Johnson, the Michigan businessman who is desperately trying to get on the debate stage by selling $1 “I stand with Tucker” t-shirts on Facebook, is among the many longshot candidates running this year. In an interview with Politico as he was barnstorming Iowa, he bragged about his single-digit standing in the polls (“On Friday, I was at 1.4%!”), hawked the website for his reality TV show from the trail (“first time in history where anybody could really see what it is truly like running for president!”) and dismissed suggestions that he had ulterior motives for running.

“To you,” he said, “this sounds ridiculous. I expect to win.”

Asked what it means that so many also-rans like him saw something missing in the field, Johnson said: “It tells us that there is the possibility that Trump may not be the answer.”

There are more traditional presidential candidates who have been accused of running sheerly to angle for the vice presidency or an administration post.

Tim Scott, who entered the race with few enemies within the party, has been widely seen as someone well suited for a deep veepstakes bid. His own name recognition isn’t particularly high— something his campaign is seeking to remedy with a $6 million ad buy in Iowa and New Hampshire leading up to the first debate.

And nearly three decades ago, in an interview with the Charleston Post and Courier, the then-30-year-old said one of his goals in life was to be vice president— because he’d get to “speak more and have a forum to deliver messages.”

But Scott is aiming higher now. An aide told Politico that any suggestion the Senator is running for the sidekick role is “insulting.” His advisers have noted that it would theoretically be easier for him to secure a slot as Trump’s running mate if he weren’t running against him.

Nikki Haley’s team has made a similar argument as evidence she isn’t running for the vice presidency, noting that criticizing Trump— as Haley has so far done only gently— isn’t the way to his heart.