Donald Trump is a president unlike any other. He inspires a degree of loyalty and loathing that is unprecedented in modern American politics. To some, he is the voice of the dispossessed, who has been ruthlessly savaged by a deep state coalition which (together with a cabal of media, elite NGOS, and partisan judges) ruthlessly circumvented US law and custom, conspired against him in office, and even delayed the roll-out of the COVID vaccine in order to restore what they see as the rightful ruling class.
To others, he is a huckster and a criminal who has exploited the poor and the marginalized to bolster his ego and accumulate yet more money. In the process, he has deepened divides and compromised the institutions of the republic in a vain attempt to hold on to power by any means, legitimate or otherwise.
He is a polarizing figure who has already lost one presidential election. Nevertheless, Trump remains on the political scene. Improbably, he has emerged as a front-running candidate for the 2024 Presidential election. Why is this so?
The American Electorate
In order to thoroughly analyze this phenomenon, one first has to survey the nature of the American electorate. The US is currently politically divided into two camps with radically different views of the role of government in society, with a large (and growing) group of political independents in the middle. In order to win, a Presidential candidate has to turn out his base in overwhelming numbers and convince a number of independents that their candidate represents the best way forward.
Trump has always been a candidate who has minimal appeal to the elites of either party: his appeal is to uneducated voters and rural and factory workers who have traditionally been considered to be Democratic constituents. He won them over in 2016 by pointing out that American industry (and jobs for low-skilled, uneducated workers) had declined during eight years of Democratic rule and would continue to decline under Hillary Clinton, who was well-known but also widely disliked.
By 2020, Trump was at least as unpopular with many Americans as Hilary Clinton had been in 2016. The killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis had mobilized the key African American constituency in the Democratic Party to a much higher level of activism than in 2016. COVID restrictions both dampened Trump’s preferred campaign option of holding large rallies as well as spared an elderly Joe Biden from the rigors of normal campaigning. COVID liberalization of voting — expanding absentee and mail voting — led to unprecedented turnout in regions skeptical of Trump.
Trump’s Relevance
First, one has to look at the economic and political missteps of the Biden administration. Under Biden, inflation has reached levels unseen in over a generation. The key price metric most middle and lower-class voters use is the price of gasoline — the one commodity whose price is posted on signs around the country and which has to be regularly purchased. Gasoline prices have increased markedly since Biden took office and remains much higher than in the Trump administration. Other financial indicators are bad, but gasoline remains the most resonant among voters.
Second, the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan has hurt Biden’s image and reputation as a trusted foreign policy hand. While the Biden administration has sought to portray this all as the result of Trump’s dealing with the Taliban, it appears undecided voters tend to remember only who was in power when the abrupt withdrawal decision was made. Republicans are keeping this issue alive with House hearings and will do so up till the election.
Third, the legal challenges faced by Trump are viewed by his base not as neutral justice but rather as the “deep state” seeking to disqualify the one candidate who challenges the “deep state” supremacy. Even the horrific January 6th Capitol Hill riots are viewed through this lens — Trump partisans can recite the dates of incarceration for Capitol Hill defendants and regularly compare them with lighter sentences given out to rioters in the 2020 protests in Minneapolis, Portland, and elsewhere.
Fourth, there is no other Republican candidate with the public presence of Trump. He is so well known that when he was indicted in New York City, it was deemed superfluous to take mug shots. We are increasingly living in an age where media and image are substituting for substance, and even Trump’s worst enemies will concede that — when he chooses not to be boorish — he can be electrifying and charismatic. His indiscipline and unpredictability make him an ideal candidate for a televised age. One never knows what he will say, so you easily find yourself watching him. There are other Republican figures who may challenge Trump, but none has the national profile he has.
Ironically, even as Trump appears to be the strongest candidate among Republicans, he remains the candidate the Democrats most want to face. He is a man whom Joe Biden has beaten once, and now — with a Democratic base mobilized by the recent Supreme Court abortion decision as well as Trump’s repeated churlishness — he appears to be a man Biden can defeat again. While there are few in the Democratic base who do not actively loathe Trump, many in the key body of independents may agree with him on policy matters but have decided he has the wrong temperament to be President again. Additionally, there remain many in the Republican Party who have privately disliked Trump and are looking for an opportunity to reject Trump (who was a Democrat until relatively recently) and what they see as his cult of personality.
We are many months away from elections, and much can happen. There is the inevitability of a summer surge in illegal US border crossings, the Ukraine war may go badly, Iran may flare up again, and the US economy is showing signs of the dreaded “stagflation” which badly damaged Jimmy Carter. These should be good times for a Republican candidate. Yet, Trump remains a deeply flawed candidate who faces multiple criminal charges in various jurisdictions and a man who commands little true loyalty in the professional ranks of his own party.
We are in for a wild ride.
* Remarks do not reflect the views of any US Government Agency
