There will be a glorious development in American politics in 2023. Yes, Donald Trump will still clumsily run rampant, with legal and political muddles surrounding him. But in a very real sense, things will be different. Trump is absent and the courts have made it clear that since he is a private citizen, he will receive all justice due to him as such, even if formal charges loom.
Last week in Washington, the House of Representatives committee investigating the January 6 uprising referred Trump to the Justice Department on criminal charges; the next day, another committee voted to make six years of his tax returns public. Of course, he lost his chance at reelection two years ago and just led a motley crew of hand-picked Senate candidates to defeat in the November midterm elections.
Donald Trump remains the Republican Party’s problem, but not everyone’s.Credit:The Washington Post
And yet, for all this, he is a declared candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. This prospect seems like a nascent catastrophe for the few remaining adults in the party, but Trump is well aware of his insanely obsessive backing, and has sociopathic ability to deliberately undermine the party in the 2024 general election if it doesn’t get its way. This has left the Republican Party stuck between a Trump and a hard spot. And since these people showed long ago that they don’t have the backbone to take on Trump, it’s hard to feel sorry for them.
So what will happen in 2023? Don’t forget that the important battles take place behind the scenes. First, look at how the Republican primary race is converging. A large field helps Trump. His superpower wages with an unrelenting base against a disparate slate of vote-splitting opponents.
Can those parts of the Republican Party not interested in a political suicide mission do anything to limit that? It’s going to be tough. Sitting senators like Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Lindsey Graham smell weakness, and you don’t want to get caught between an aspiring senator and a debate stage anyway. Outside of them, it’s a given these days that various con artists and wingnuts on the right will use a half-baked presidential campaign as a ticket to a lucrative, if questionable, celebrity. They flock to these races in such droves that there’s even a name for the resulting phenomenon: the Republican Primary Clown Car.
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Also note some wildcards that were not present in 2016. First, there’s Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who wants to present himself as a more electable alternative to Trump — but one with the same bitter appeal to the party’s worst instincts. Two, Liz Cheney, Trump’s most prominent prosecutor on the right, seems to have the personal courage to take her fight against him to the heart of her party. And third, watch out for a possible run by Tim Scott. He is an African-American senator who could force the party to confront its clearly racist elements – and provoke Donald “the blacks love me” Trump into inappropriate comments.
Of course, the Democrats also have some problems. Ignore the campaign to make Biden look old or weak. Aside from a few clumsy mistakes (like the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan), he saved America from another four years of Trump. He runs a strong, quiet and effective administration. This has led him to remarkable legislative success over the past two years. He also achieved an unexpected victory in the meantime.
However, he is making progress and there is no guarantee that he will be able to run for re-election. (He would be 88 at the end of a hypothetical second term.) That’s a problem. Vice President Kamala Harris would be his natural successor. But: Harris ran for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination and did a terrible job. And her tenure as VP has been rather mysterious; she has been the most invisible VP in memory. But the conventional wisdom is that the party will have a hard time displacing a black woman in the natural line of succession.