And They’re Off - Part I
The first of early assessment of the 2024 GOP Presidential candidates. Ignore the polls. We start with look at history and a cursory look at an impressive field, and what to look for.
I remember meeting my first presidential candidate in 1968 at Oklahoma City’s Will Rogers Airport. I was 12, maybe 13. I won’t tell you who it was, but my parents were registered Democrats at the time, and not particularly political. The candidate did not win, but I began to pay careful attention to every presidential election over the 54 years that have ensued.
They’re all different, largely defined by the events of the year. 1968 was one of the most tumultuous election years we’ve ever experienced. The Vietnam War was at a peak, with a quarter million young Americans serving in a badly managed war, with casualties topping 200 per week, on average. An incumbent President withdrew from the contest after he almost lost the New Hampshire Democratic primary.
One candidate was assassinated, Robert F. Kennedy Sr., the night after he won that year’s California Democratic primary. Had he survived, there is little doubt he would have won the Democratic nomination and perhaps the presidency.
Another assassination, this one involving Martin Luther King, preceded that by two months, leading to riots in several cities. Some neighborhoods and communities have never fully recovered, including Camden, New Jersey. The bloody Democratic National Convention in Chicago that year is wrongly popularized by this song, which was really written by Stephen Stills about the Sunset Strip riots two years previously. The legendary Walter Cronkite of CBS news fame observed that the Convention began “in a police state.” He wasn’t wrong.
The Democratic National Convention in 2024 is returning to Chicago. An interesting choice. But I don’t think it will quite look like this, from 1968. The new mayor ain’t no Richard Daley.
The election that November turned out to be an interesting three-way choice - a former Vice President, GOP presidential nominee, and defeated candidate for California governor; a sitting Vice President; and the Governor of Alabama best remembered for being the last gasp of the old Democratic, Jim Crow South. He blocked the University of Alabama schoolhouse door to two young black students in opposition to desegregation. His most famous quote: “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” Let’s put that quote from Gov. Wallace’s 1963 inauguration in context:
Today I have stood, where once Jefferson Davis stood, and took an oath to my people. It is very appropriate then that from this Cradle of the Confederacy, this very Heart of the Great Anglo-Saxon Southland, that today we sound the drum for freedom as have our generations of forebears before us done, time and time again through history. Let us rise to the call of freedom- loving blood that is in us and send our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains upon the South. In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny . . . and I say . . . segregation today . . . segregation tomorrow . . . segregation forever.
This is your reminder that Wallace ran four times for President - three as a Democrat. He survived an assassination attempt during his penultimate run in 1972, but was left paralyzed. His last race for President was 1976. He was elected five times as Governor of Alabama, and renounced his views on segregation in the late 1970s.
The 1968 election was close. Richard Nixon bested Hubert Humphrey by less than 1 million votes, with 43 percent of the popular vote and 56 percent of the electoral college count.
Side note: some so-called pundits credit Richard Nixon’s “southern strategy” for his electoral college triumph, suggesting that he made racial appeals to southern whites, but that’s a myth perpetuated by progressive historians. Nixon won Florida, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Tennessee. Five others were won by “American Party” nominee Wallace (who captured over 9.4 million votes), with Texas remaining reliably Democratic.
Clearly, the south has changed dramatically since those days. Bigotry wears new clothes today, and is sporting them in other states as proudly as Wallace proclaimed his 60 years ago. But they’re still mostly Democrats.
1972 turned out to be a very different election. So did 1976. 1980. You get the point.
There’s been no election like this ever since. But when people complain about the tumultuous times, it is instructive to remember this history.
There is a great temptation among pundits to find parallels in current elections to previous ones. The fact is they’re all different, although history can occasionally rhyme, often with regard to early perceived front runners, such as former Texas Gov. John Connelly in 1980, former New York Gov. Rudy Giuliani in 2008, and of course former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL) in 2016.
Take the 2024 election (please, some might say). It has an impressive GOP field that reminds me, somewhat, of the less diverse one in 1980, which featured a successful former governor, a southern US Senate leader, and a former US Ambassador, among others. And speaking of 1980, the current incumbent Democrat reminds me of the one that year, too, but way worse in many respects. So do some of the economic issues.
Let’s take a birds-eye view of the current GOP field (fringe candidates not included).
A former President, Donald Trump, the first time we’ve had one seek his party’s renomination since the 19th Century (Grover Cleveland, who won. Theodore Roosevelt ran on a “Bull Moose” ticket in 1912 against President William H. Taft and Gov. Woodrow Wilson).
A successful and popular sitting governor from a major state, Ron DeSantis.
A highly popular and charismatic black US Senator from an early-primary state, Tim Scott.
A very successful tech entrepreneur and author who is just 37 years old and probably the wealthiest candidate in the field (for now), a person of color who happens also to be Hindu, Vivek Ramaswamy.
A former governor and US Ambassador, and a women of color, Nikki Haley.
Other announced or soon-to-be announced include a former Vice President, Mike Pence, more governors (North Dakota’s Doug Burgum and New Hampshire’s Chris Sununu), and successful former governors (New Jersey’s Chris Christie and Arkansas’s Asa Hutchinson).
I’m sure I’m forgetting others. Oh, yes, former talk show host, gubernatorial candidate, and dietary supplement pitchman Larry Elder.
This is a very impressive and highly diverse field of candidates. And ignore the polling. It is meaningless, just as it was at this point eight years ago when former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL) led polls. Or when the late Sen. Edmund Muskie (D-ME) led Democratic polling in 1972.
And especially ignore the national polling. It is truly meaningless. Pay attention to Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and probably Nevada, the first four contests. But not too close. Winners of the Iowa caucuses rarely go on to win the nomination (see: George H. W. Bush in 1980, Robert J. Dole in 1988, Mike Huckabee in 2008, Rick Santorum in 2012, Ted Cruz in 2016. . .). But it does winnow out the field. How vaporous is polling? Consider this blurb from Washington Examiner journalist Byron York:
There's been a huge amount of commentary on former President Donald Trump's big lead over Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) in national polls. In the current RealClearPolitics average of polls, Trump has a 30.8-point lead — 53.2% to DeSantis's 22.4%. That lead, while enormous, has been shrinking in the last week. On May 20, it was 36.9 points. Now, it's 6 points smaller. That is something to watch in the days ahead.
During the 2016 election, the following GOP candidates led the field at some point: Jeb! Bush, Scott Walker, Dr. Ben Carson, and eventually Donald Trump. Maybe others. And we will likely see most if not all of these candidates on a debate stage in Milwaukee this August. It promises to be interesting.
This is also your reminder that some primaries are poor indicators of eventual electoral success. Take New Hampshire, for example, which has a better track record of picking eventual nominees. Except when they don’t. Like Democrats in 2020. Eventual nominee Joe Biden finished fifth (but still won six delegates, somehow). That’s what I suggest you pay careful attention to New Hampshire’s Democratic primary in 2024. I’m no fan of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., but if I were him, I’d move there and make it a point to meet every Democratic voter between now and it’s primary in January 2024. He’s already polling at over 20 percent nationally and has family roots in neighboring Massachusetts.
About half of Democrats are already telling anyone who will listen that they don’t think Biden should run again.
Watch this space. I don’t think Biden will be the Democratic nominee in 2024. As for whom the Democrats, led by their national convention “super delegates” (the party establishment) will pick, I can only quote that famous philosopher, Yoda: “Impossible to see the future is.” Democrats who are clearly itching to run include Vice President Kamala Harris, California’s failed Governor, Gavin Newsom, and former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who made a big deal about visiting Ukraine recently.
South Carolina is a bigger indicator of eventual electoral success, although that may not be true of the GOP in 2024 with two natives competing for home state primary votes (my money there is on incumbent US Sen. Tim Scott, who is wildly popular in the state). The Palmetto State is why Joe Biden won the Democratic primary in 2020 despite losing the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. The value of a primary can be diminished with a native or near-native politician on the ballot, such as when Iowa US Sen. Tom Harkin won the 1992 Iowa caucuses, or when Vermont US Sen. Bernie Sanders won New Hampshire’s primary in 2020.
Say what you will about the voters of these early states, but they are pretty sophisticated. There’s regional balance among these small states, from Iowa to Nevada, each with characteristics that differ from the others and good tests of both candidate quality, messaging, and organizational mettle. Biden operatives are getting the DNC to change their party primary order to put South Carolina first, but New Hampshire state law requires it to be first. And they will. The question is, will the DNC disenfranchise the state in response?
That will be one way to make it a GOP state once again. Just one of the many wrinkles that have yet to unfold in what promises to be an entertaining primary season, in both parties. Strap in and enjoy the ride.
As for this writer, I’m making plans to visit the Iowa State Fair this August. No better place to be.