Donald Trump’s low-energy announcement of his candidacy for the 2024 presidential election has in itself diminished the Republicans’ chances of winning the Oval Office next time.
In some ways, Trump’s address was better than most of his recent efforts. It dealt more with issues that may be of some interest to voters – the economy, education, illegal immigration – rather than focusing entirely on himself and the ridiculous Big Lie that he really won the 2020 presidential election.
His daughter, Ivanka Trump, was a notable absentee, wanting nothing to do with another Trump run for the presidency.
Before last week’s midterm election, Trump had announced this announcement in advance. He planned to bathe in the joy of a massive Republican red wave and take all the credit for it. Instead the Republicans had a terrible election, going backwards in the Senate and in state governorships and legislatures, although they have won a narrow majority in the House of Representatives.
Trump had injected his own personality into the centre of the midterms. Instead of being a referendum on the hugely vulnerable presidency of Joe Biden, it was a choice between the Democrats and Trump.
The voters don’t want Trump and almost all of the highest profile Trumpist candidates – who won their Republican primaries because of his backing and who endorsed his claims that the 2020 election was stolen – lost in the actual election.
A Trump consideration is that being a candidate for the presidency possibly discourages some of the criminal prosecutions he’s potentially facing and makes it easier for him to characterise them as political persecution.
Trump could still be formidable within the Republican primary process. He probably still commands the loyalty of 30 to 35 per cent of Republican primary voters. It would suit him if there’s a big field of Republicans running against him. They will inevitably compete with each other to be the anti-Trump. And he would have a good chance of knocking them off one by one.
But he is certainly a much diminished figure, including within the Republican Party. In Florida Governor Ron DeSantis he faces a formidable Republican opponent who has taken all the workable and potentially good bits of the populist sentiment that Trump ran on in 2016, but does it infinitely more intelligently.
As some put it, DeSantis is “Trump with brains” and he has none of the odious, toxic personal qualities of Trump.
Still, Trump has certainly proved in the past that he’s unpredictable. He’s also always understood you don’t win if you don’t run. Stay tuned for two more years of great political discord in the US.
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