Supposedly the voters don’t want a repeat of Trump-Biden (or is it Biden-Trump) in November. I wonder. While most voters don’t want Trump, it might be that a majority of Republicans do – or at least they think he is inevitable. As for Biden, while his overall approval ratings aren’t good, it could be that a majority of Democrats want him, especially if the Republican alternative is Trump.
But, if it is Biden and Trump again in November, well, I wrote about “The Coming Constitutional Crisis of 2024” last December. As I said then, and I think it is pretty clear, if Trump loses a November rematch, he and many of his supporters won’t accept it. It won’t be pretty.
On the other hand, if Biden loses, while he might accept it, I wonder about his supporters. I raised this question in December and talked about it even more in January: If Trump is as big a threat to democracy as Biden says, how can Biden’s supporters accept him?
The hope, rather, is Nikki Haley. If she can come close enough in South Carolina to raise questions about the inevitability of Donald Trump, who knows. She doesn’t have to get 50%+1. South Carolina is, after all, just the third contest. She merely needs to get close enough so that Republicans in the next primaries start to really look at the choice and see if they might like a solid Republican who can win and actually get things done, as opposed to somebody with a bigger chance to lose and who mostly just creates chaos (which seems to be the way it often was when President Trump was in office). If Trump isn’t inevitable, why not Nikki?
And if Trump isn’t going to be the Republican nominee, why do the Democrats have to stick with Biden, especially since Biden polls even worse against Nikki Haley than he does against Trump? If Trump isn’t going to be the Republican nominee, a group of Democratic leaders might quietly go to the White House and explain the facts of political life to Joe. And the Democrats, too, might come up with somebody else.
Which would give us a contest between Nikki Haley and some new Democratic face. (Almost any Democrat has a new face compared to Biden.) And we wouldn’t have a constitutional crisis, regardless of who won.
But this hope depends on South Carolina. Which is sort of ironic. In 1860, it was South Carolina’s secession from the Union that ignited the constitutional crisis that turned into the Civil War. Could it be that, later this month, South Carolina is the state that takes the first step to avoiding the great constitutional crisis of 2024?
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UPDATE (2/7/24 10:55 am): I corrected a couple of minor aragraphical errors in the second and seventh paragraphs.
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