Fresh Faces Needed In 2024 For The Good Of The Country

"There's a significant amount of our base that is happy with an off-ramp from the Trump train."  Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson speaking @ a meeting with WSJ reporters on May 31.

"As Ronald Reagan understood, successful politics really is about addition & multiplication.  We have been doing far too much subtracting & dividing."  Maryland Governor Larry Hogan speaking @ the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California as part of a speakers series on the GOP's future following its loss of the White House, Senate, & House during Trump's tenure in office.

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A WSJ poll in March found 85% of Republicans viewed Trump favorably.  Hutchinson & Hogan, in the above quotes, were addressing the 15% who don't, plus those who would not like to see Trump run again, & those who are sorry he has endorsed so many primary candidates in the midterms.

Trump has endorsed over 300 primary candidates including those in primaries yet to be run.  Some of these endorsements have helped candidates but also some races have shown there are limits to a Trump endorsement.

Conservative commentators on TV do the disservice of overstating Trump's influence.  For instance earlier this spring it was reported that Trump went 22 for 22 one particular primary night.  What wasn't reported was that in 19 of the 22 contests Trump's endorsees were running unopposed.

Some of Trump's endorsements include Rand Paul, & the following congressmen who all won their primaries with 100% of the vote:  John Joyce, Russ Fulcher, Dan Bishop, Mike Kelly, Guy Reschenthaler, & Scott Perry.  These types of endorsements pad Trump's overall record.  Another trick is to endorse late when the winner is pretty well known like Doug Mastriano running for PA governor.

Karl Rove has developed what he calls his 30-70 Rule - namely that in contested primaries a significant percent of the time Trump's endorsed candidate, whether winning or losing, receives between a quarter & a third of the vote, meaning that such candidates have about 70% of the electorate not supporting them.

J.D. Vance won the Ohio Senate primary with 32% of the vote.  Mehmet Oz won the Pennsylvania gubernatorial primary with 31%.  Bo Hines won NC 13th CD with 32%.  Madison Cawthorn lost the NC 11th CD with 32%.  Janice McGeachin lost the ID gubernatorial race with 32%.  Charles Herbster lost the NE gubernatorial race with 29%.

And in the Georgia races that Trump took personally his endorsees lost big:

David Perdue lost with 22% of the vote to Brian Kemp in the gubernatorial race.  Jody Hice lost with 33% to Brad Raffensperger in the Secretary of State race.  John Gordon lost with 26% to Chris Carr in the State Attorney General race.  Patrick Witt lost with 17% to John King in the state Insurance Commissioner's race.  

Perdue, Hice, & Gordon focused their campaigns on discussing the 2020 presidential election while the three victors, & Witt, focused on more current issues of concern.

Voters will learn another important point about Trump's motivation in his primary endorsements - namely, does he back Republicans he did not support in the primaries who won, against a Democrat opponent in the general election in November.  There is no bigger example than the Georgia gubernatorial race in which incumbent Brian Kemp now has a rematch with Stacey Abrams.  Kemp beat Stacey in 2018 by 54,723 votes, out of just under 4 million votes cast, 50.2% to 48.8%.  Lightning will have struck twice in Georgia if Trump does not get behind Kemp like he failed to do with the two Georgia Senate runoff candidates in January 2021 that cost the GOP control of the Senate thereby bringing on all the misery that Biden has inflicted on the country.  Trump's failure to back Kemp would be a loss for Georgia & the republic. 

Along with Brian Kemp & Brad Raffensperger, Trump's ire has focused on Liz Cheney from Wyoming.  We'll have to wait & see how her primary turns out on August 16.

Trump's endorsement of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is a confusing one when you consider Trump's dislike for Cheney, who is Vice -Chairwoman of the House January 6 Select Committee investigating the riots of January 6 @ the Capitol.  After denying it, McCarthy is heard on audiotape blaming Trump for the attack on the Capitol & saying that he was going to ask Trump to resign, which he never did that we know of.  Who was McCarthy talking to on the audiotape?  Liz Cheney (among others).

In McCarthy, Trump sees a future Speaker of the House that he wants to be allied with.

McCarthy has a Liberty Score of F @ 44% & Trump feels he is "an outstanding Representative" & "a strong & fearless Leader."  Of course McCarthy is anything but & some of the most loyal members of Trump's base, like John Cardillo, are growing more & more dissatisfied with some endorsements like Oz & McCarthy.

Contrast Trump's endorsement of McCarthy with his criticism of Congressman Chip Roy of Texas - Liberty Score A @ 100%.  Chip originally supported contesting the 2020 presidential election (as did I) but as the weeks rolled by his repeated calls to Mark Meadows for evidence of election fraud were unanswered & finally Chip voted against overturning the presidential election.  Trump then turned on Chip & said he "has not done a great job, & will probably be successfully primaried." Chip won his primary against three opponents with 83.2% of the vote.  There is no elected representative finer than Chip Roy.

The above examples show that Trump can positively influence some races but the bigger story is that he is divisive & could cause major harm in many races this fall like both the Georgia gubernatorial & Senate races (Herschel Walker versus incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock).  Whether it is people in Trump's base not supporting a candidate who irritated Trump somewhere along the never-proven-election fraud trail or a Liz Cheney supporter who refuses to back a candidate that Trump endorsed, the division could result in two more terrible years of Biden being unchecked by Congress.

Biden won the presidency in 2020 with 306 electoral votes to 232 for Trump - virtually the opposite of Trump's electoral college win over Hillary Clinton in 2016 - 304 to 227.

Biden received 81,284,778 votes nationally compared to Trump's 74,224,501.  If you subtract the popular vote totals in California & New York Biden was still ahead in the total from the other 48 states by 36,327 votes.  In 2016, the same analysis showed Trump winning the other 48 states by over 3 million votes so there was definitely a stronger anti-Trump movement this time in the other 48 states.

The majority of people who voted for Biden could not stand Trump, in fact they loathed him, & just as importantly they were more interested in security than liberty, never understanding or caring that it is liberty that provides security.  They just ignorantly knew they wanted the security that they thought socialism provided.

These people knew that voting for Democrats meant they were taking a chance on politicians, who to one degree or another, had supported defunding the police, had agreed with establishing sanctuary cities & states that protect illegal immigrants from federal law enforcement, & had turned a blind eye to the night after night burning, looting, & destruction of innocent residencies & businesses in Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, & Kenosha by Antifa & Black Lives Matter thugs.  There was no condemnation by the hostile anti-American media or any Democrat candidate, including Biden, for these violent acts so voting for a Democrat ticket was @ a minimum tacit approval of the aforementioned violent acts.

I looked @ election results to find out the relative strength of both Biden & Trump as the person @ the top of the ticket in 2020.  A strong presidential candidate will bring out supporters who then vote for his party's candidates for other offices riding the coattails of the person @ the top of the ticket to victory.

Biden had very strong coattails.  

In California CD-12 Biden got 86.1% (337,517 votes out of 392,046 votes cast for president) & Pelosi got 77.6% (281,776 votes out of 362,950 votes cast for congressional candidates).  Biden got 55,741 more votes than Pelosi in her own district - a strong performance.  Biden similarly outperformed AOC (73.3% to 71.6%) & Ilhan Omar (80.3% to 64.3%).

Trump's coattails were weaker & even non-existent in most congressional districts in the three states that provided Biden's electoral college victory.

In the opposite of what you'd expect from a strong presidential candidate Trump received fewer votes than every winning congressional Republican candidate in Wisconsin & all of them in Georgia except for Marjorie Taylor Greene.  The results were more mixed in Arizona but still weak.

For instance, in Wisconsin CD-1 Trump received 53.9% (220,668 votes out of 409,363 cast for president) & Bryan Steil received 59.3% (238,271 votes out of 401,754 votes cast for congressional candidates).  Congressman Steil received 17,603 more votes than Trump in CD-1 & yet there were 7,609 more votes cast for president in the district, meaning there was an underperformance for Trump.

Trump received 63,547 fewer votes in Wisconsin than the five winning Republican congressmen combined.  Trump lost Wisconsin by 20,682.  Had he kept up with the winning Republican congressmen's vote tallies Trump would have won Wisconsin by 42,865 votes.  There are similar underperformances in Georgia & Arizona.

Click here to see my detailed tabulation for all three of these states in a Table entitled Presidential & House Vote Count By Congressional District - 2020.

For die hard Trump supporters who think he can win in 2024 if he runs, I'd like to see a state by state analysis to see how he reaches 270 electoral votes, especially considering the above analysis of votes by congressional districts.  Peggy Noonan wrote "He lost in 2020 by seven million votes with a growing economy & no inflation - & that was before the events of 1/6."

Starting in July 2020 Trump set the stage for his post-election claims of fraud & court appeals when @ one of his signature rallies he presented an out of character scenario in which he raised the possibility of him losing the election - he gave the excuse of losing because of voter fraud.  I remember, watching live, thinking to myself, if he knows all of these details of potential fraud why doesn't he do something about it now - months before the election?  This way he could win.

But one poll after another had continuously & repeatedly shown Biden winning the presidency by large margins.  I believe Trump's internal polling showed him losing also, especially in the important swing states that he had won in 2016 by very narrow margins.  It makes sense that Kellyanne Conway not only told him that he lost after the election, as she wrote in her recent book, but most likely also told him that he was going to lose before she left the White House in August 2020 - why else would the only woman who had successfully guided a presidential campaign to victory resign shortly before her chance @ a second victory.  One way or the other Trump turned on Kellyanne also.

Candidates' internal polling is the best.  Pat Caddell famously told Jimmy Carter the night before the election in 1980 that he was not going to win & Carter wept.  More recently Hillary Clinton called off a fireworks display over the Hudson river the day before the 2016 election when Trump admitted "I surprised them."  Accordingly, if Trump's internal polling led by someone of Kellyanne's caliber tells him he cannot win in 2024 we will not run.

The 2016 presidential election was extremely close with Trump exceeding the needed 270 electoral votes by winning Pennsylvania, Michigan, & Wisconsin by a combined total of 77,736 votes thereby setting up the potential for a Biden win in 2020.

But the 2020 presidential election was even closer with Biden exceeding the needed 270 electoral votes by winning Arizona, Georgia, & Wisconsin by a combined total of 42,918 votes.

The results of the last two presidential races were about as even as you can get so 2024 candidates all get a good start.  We need fresh faces for the good of the country.