Don’t write off a Trump presidency Mark II

Winning back the White House in 2024 would help overcome the pain of his loss in 2020. Picture: AFP

Let’s face it, if Donald Trump wants to return as US president in 2024 the odds are in his favour.

While in Australia we face an election in the first half of this year (welcome to 2022!), the political battleground that really matters is abroad.

If all you read was social media you’d think Scott Morrison was Trump rebranded for Australian conditions. But in truth no Western politician matches up to Trump, nor do they have his capacity for unsettling good public policymaking. But a Trump return would bring out the worst in other world leaders, including Morrison if he’s re-elected.

Trump resoundingly lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden and the Democrats. He lost the popular vote by many millions, and the electoral college end result was also dominant. It just so happened that in individual states that went the way of the Democrats (the rust belt and Arizona) the results weren’t entirely clear on the night.

While many (including me) hoped the defeat was the end of Trump as a politician, it may not be so. He will be four years older next time, but so long as he remains healthy it’s hard to see a Republican candidate capable of stopping him in the primaries. Besides, Americans often elect ageing candidates as president. Just look at Biden.

Trump is a very big fish. His candidature would dwarf all comers within the Republican Party, and there aren’t any obvious alternatives at this stage. The mid-terms might change that.

The preselection processes in the US act like a mini presidential campaign for candidates. It’s defined by voter participation. Unlike in Australia where insiders control this process, in the US popular votes state by state right around the country largely decide who represents each major party in the presidential showdown.

And because the electoral system operates for the most part as a first-past-the-post series of electoral contests, rather than using preferential voting like we have in Australia, Trump’s base can dominate the outcome. They are loud, get out to vote and frighten off anyone who dares question Trump and his antics. And Trump likes to stir them up.

They also are willing to overlook everything from his mishandling of the pandemic to stoking the discord that resulted in the riot at the Capitol. They know for certain that the media is to blame when it comes to Trump’s defeat last time. That’s if they even accept the result as more than fraud and fake news.

If we acknowledge that Trump is therefore the favourite to win the Republican nomination if he chooses to contest the primaries, what’s to stop him winning the presidential showdown against the Democrats thereafter? Not much when you break it down.

Biden, if he even runs again, will be in his 80s and he’ll have to defend what may well be a poor track record as president by then. Kamala Harris is already the least popular vice-president in US history and she looks unlikely to take over from Biden as was originally hoped by many. After that, who’s left? It’s slim pickings.

In 2020 Biden and the Democrats benefited from the pandemic. In 2024 it could well be their Achilles heel, depending on where things go from here. The US is nudging one million deaths and vaccinations have stalled. Divisions over how to handle the endemic phase of the virus run deep. Economic aftershocks also could be significant in two years.

While Biden won the presidential showdown convincingly last time, it wouldn’t take much for Trump to win back the mid-west. And you’d already give him Arizona in a canter now that more time has passed since John McCain’s death. What moderate Republicans would give for a McCain type figure to challenge Trump’s dominance of the party now.

In the aftermath of the 2020 result the potential nightmare for moderate Republicans was that Trump simply would endorse a mini-me version of himself for the next showdown. A family member, perhaps, or someone else willing to do Trump’s bidding. But that was when we all assumed Trump couldn’t rise again.

The midterm results are set to be catastrophic for Democrats. In all likelihood they will lose the Senate and probably the house too, turning the second half of Biden’s term into a lame one. Republicans then will have a stronger platform to attack Biden as well as stifle his agenda. After that it’s hard to see what Democrats can do other than sit and wait for what comes next: a Trump announcement.

US presidents aren’t allowed to serve more than two terms, but those terms don’t have to be consecutive. Which means Trump can run and if he wins he’ll only serve one more term. Just imagine an unplugged Trump, unconcerned about serving as president with one eye on re-election. He’ll be even more of a maverick than he was last time. Especially having done what no modern president has: suffered a humiliating defeat only to rise again and return to power.

My summer fictional reading has been Shannon Selin’s Napoleon in America, which examines what might have happened if Napoleon Bonaparte escaped from exile on St Helena after his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo, thereafter making his way to the US. It got me thinking about the imperial way Trump would rule if he came back. Perhaps as pivotal as when the Roman republic became an empire.

The US electoral system is rigged in Trump’s favour. While Australia has an independent electoral commission to run elections, set boundaries and redraw them when necessary to maintain democratic fairness, no such body exists in the US. The rules vary from state to state, but for the most party state legislatures can gerrymander boundaries to favour their preferred party, among a host of other ways they can manipulate the system. And it’s Republicans running the show in many such key states.

We already know the electoral college is tipped in the Republicans’ favour. While Democrats remain more likely to win the popular vote courtesy of strong showings in big states such as California, the college vote carve-up gives Republicans excess votes in smaller states that are less well known to foreigners.

Perhaps all that stands in the way of a Trump comeback is his own ego. He’d love to feed it with a win to overcome the pain of his loss in 2020. But the risk of a second defeat might mean the former president chose not to run. Such a blow to a megalomaniac such as Trump could be too much for him to take. That said, risk taking has been a defining feature of Trump’s life, and winning the 2024 election isn’t even risky business. Not for Trump, anyway.

Peter van Onselen is a professor of politics and public policy at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University.