The GOP’s third gamble on Donald Trump

Former president Donald Trump speaks at a Super Tuesday watch party at Mar-a-Lago.

Donald Trump’s dominance of the primaries on Super Tuesday means the die is cast for a rerun of his 2020 match with President Biden. Hard to believe: The two major parties are marching to nominate perhaps the only candidates who could lose to the other. It’s America’s great presidential unpopularity contest.

This isn’t to gainsay Mr. Trump’s triumph in the GOP primaries. He lost only one contest at this writing — in the District of Columbia to Nikki Haley. He underperformed his polling in most states, but his strength among Republicans makes us wonder in retrospect if anyone could have beaten him this year as he ran almost as an incumbent seeking a second term. Like or loathe Mr. Trump, this is an unprecedented modern achievement. Richard Nixon was nominated three times but not in a row.

Yet this result wasn’t always certain. Fifteen months ago, in the wake of the GOP’s disappointing midterm showing for Mr. Trump’s candidates, the former President looked like a weakening political force. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was on the rise.

Mr. Trump then charged into the race and spent months trashing Mr. DeSantis before the Governor formally entered the contest. The former President ducked the GOP debates, betting that his standing as a quasi-incumbent would carry the day. He was also helped by fond voter recollection of the Trump economy, especially after the Biden inflation.

Mr Trump is still supremely popular with his fanbase despite a number of indictments.

It’s possible the race was over once Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicted him for hush-money payments on jerry-rigged felony charges that should be no more than a misdemeanor. Mr. Trump jumped in the primary polls and kept rising despite the successive indictments.

The Democratic lawfare strategy worked in reverse on Republicans, though we suspect this was the White House hope all along. Mr. Biden, his party and the press all want Mr. Trump as the GOP nominee because they think he’s the easiest to beat.

The public mood is set up for what should be a GOP triumph in November. Mr. Biden’s approval ratings are in Jimmy Carter territory, and three quarters of the country thinks he is too old to run for a second term. Most voters don’t like the results of his policies on the economy, foreign policy, immigration, and nearly everything else.

Mr. Biden’s electoral bargain in 2020 with Bernie Sanders hasn’t paid off as his leftward policy lurch has produced a popular backlash. The 2020 coalition that elected him is fraying, as Hispanics, black men, young voters and independents turn away. Yet the polls show Mr. Biden is only down from two to five points in head-to-head polling despite all of his political infirmities.

And that’s the gamble the GOP is taking by elevating Mr. Trump one more time. Republicans are nominating a candidate the public knows well — and who most Americans say they don’t like. Mr. Trump never reached 50% approval in the Gallup survey across his Presidency. His unfavorable ratings today are exceeded only by Mr. Biden’s — 57% to 59% in the recent Fox News survey.

The reason is that Mr. Trump brings his own negative baggage that Democrats will reprise over the next eight months. Mr. Trump has benefited from being less in the news than Mr. Biden, but the Republican will be front-and-center every day as the campaign fires up.

Mr. Biden will poke at him like a dancing bear, hoping he’ll act up and remind voters why they ousted him four years ago. His Covid and other first-term outbursts will return in TV ads, as will his disgraceful post-election behavior leading to and including Jan. 6. GOP voters may have come to discount the events of that day, but we’ll find out if that’s true about swing voters in the swing states that have turned against the GOP in the Trump era.

Mr. Trump has been the greatest Democratic turnout machine since FDR, and that includes Barack Obama. Every time voters have gone to the polls since Mr. Trump’s first victory in 2016, Republicans have lost or underperformed: 2018, 2020, 2021 in Georgia Senate races, 2022, and 2023 in special elections.

Then there are the court cases. The Bragg indictment goes to trial this month, and a conviction in New York is possible. The other three criminal trials may be pushed beyond Election Day, though it’s not impossible that either the documents case or the Jan. 6 conspiracy case could go to trial in the late summer or fall. A third or so of GOP voters in Super Tuesday exit polls said they’d find a conviction disqualifying.

We think the Democratic alarms about a Trump coup against democracy are overwrought. There’s no doubt the Trump Presidency was a stress test for U.S. institutions, but the checks and balances held. It’s more likely that Republicans who think a Trump restoration will usher in some new political realignment will be disappointed. A second Trump term would check the left, for a time, but it would also likely be four long years of political trench warfare.

These columns haven’t endorsed a presidential candidate since 1928, and we aren’t about to do it with these two nominees. Our job is to inform readers about the candidates, their policies and the campaigns they run so you can make up your own mind. No doubt that will upset partisans on either side, depending on the day or the issue, since so many view a victory by the other side as the end of America as we know it.

We think the U.S. is sturdier than that. But the parties are leaving Americans with an unhappy presidential choice, and we have to report on the world as it is, not as we’d wish it to be.