Just a quick one this week, because we're still early in the primary cycle, but I've had some thoughts on what some of the results mean, and what they might yet portend. It seems odd to have anything to say about a primary cycle that features one incumbent president and one competitor who seems destined for a procession to the nomination, but there are things to say about both the Democrats and the Republicans.
With regard to Trump, my thoughts are that he shouldn't even be on the ballot. Colorado tossed him off the primary ballot, invoking the 14th Amendment, and Maine did the same thing. There are arguments, advanced by people who really ought to know better (e.g. moderate Democrats, among others), that we don't know if the relevant clauses apply to the president, or that it should be up to voters, or even that he needs to be convicted of insurrection.
Bullshit, all of it. Read this piece at Vox, because I don't need to go into it all. The piece has some things I disagree with, but it's all pretty well-argued. The only point where I agree that it might be good for Trump to get to the general election and lose is, it would then show him up as a two-time loser and probably finish his quest to regain the White House.
Only problem with that is that if he loses, his supporters riot and he tries to steal the election again. My argument is that they'll riot and try to steal the election whatever happens, so we might as well get it all out of our system now.
What I think will happen is, the Supreme Court rules narrowly that Colorado, and only Colorado, is justified in barring Trump from the ballot, so that he only wins 49 primaries, and in the general, doesn't appear on a ballot that he wouldn't win anyway.
As for Biden, he's also won two primaries, New Hampshire (which was unofficial) and South Carolina. New Hampshire took place first, and Biden wasn't even on the ballot because the Granite State is annoyed that he moved South Carolina to the front of the schedule, but he won as a write-in candidate with more than half of the votes. This is a bit heartening.
He also won South Carolina pretty handily, and in an officially recognized primary. However, my cause for concern here (and in New Hampshire) is that turnout was much lower than four years ago. Not only did Biden win with around 100,000 fewer votes this year than in 2020, but back then Bernie Sanders and other Democratic hopefuls picked up loads of votes too, whereas this time Biden's challengers picked up less than 4% of the total votes, which means that fewer voters turned up overall.
The reason I'm concerned is that 2016 was another year marked by voter apathy in the primaries. Comparing them to 2008, the previous time a Democratic incumbent president hadn't been on the ballot, 2016's turnout was super low, showing a lack of enthusiasm for the frontrunner, Hillary Clinton (and, it must be said, for Sanders, who may have galvanized the left wing of the Democratic Party but not enough of them). This year is different from 2016 because there is a Democratic incumbent, and the low turnout may reflect the fact that people just figure Biden will win the nomination at a canter. But I'm still concerned.
As far as the arguments about Biden's age, I do think it would be nice to have a younger nominee (or two, rather - one for each party), but I just can't see who could run in his place, and who could run with a chance of beating Trump. Sanders could conceivably beat Trump, though I'm unconvinced by arguments that he'd win over loads of people who'd otherwise support Trump - I think that a larger than usual subsection of moderates and swing voters would vote Republican if Sanders won the nomination.
Now, Sanders has ruled himself out, so the question remains of who on the Democratic side has the national profile to challenge Trump. None of the Dem hopefuls from 2020 has had much impact in the last four years, or in the case of Pete Buttigieg, hasn't exactly endeared himself to the base. Or to put it another way, nobody voted for any of those candidates in 2020, so what's changed in the last four years to make Democratic primary voters want to vote for them now?
Part of the issue is also that many Democratic voters aren't comfortable with the Biden Administration's seemingly unquestioning support of Israel at the moment. This is reflective of how different age groups view Israel (rightly or wrongly), and it doesn't seem to be doing Biden any favors right now. It probably won't do him any favors in November, either.
Whatever, this is all speculative for the time being. Each side has held only two primaries, and while the winners of the nominations seem pretty clear, all kinds of interesting things can happen between now and November. I'm just worried some of them (Trump's court cases) won't be resolved before then.
Given that Trump has talked about suspending the Constitution and about pardoning himself, this is an election with extremely high stakes. I'll be interested to see how everything shakes out before the two parties' conventions.
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