WhatsappIn the upcoming Presidential campaign, the best strategy of the Trump campaign is to allow Joe Biden to be the subject, not Donald Trump. Despite the fact that the economic and foreign policy records of the Trump administration should be reason enough to sway the electorate, the fact is that there are large chunks of the Republican-leaning electorate that are caught in the middle of a tough decision. They dislike or detest Donald Trump, but they think that Joe Biden is unfit to be President on both a policy and intellectual level.
This will probably be the year that the 3rd party candidates surprise the most. It is not because their policies garner so much support. It is because voting for a 3rd party is an act of protest and this time around there are many reasons to protest.
With every passing day, it is looking like the 2024 election will have similarities to the election of 1992. George H. Bush rode into the White House on the coattails of of eight years of Ronald Reagan’s conservative revolution. Despite Bush’s differences with Reagan, they actually had much in common on a policy level in terms of handling the fall of the Communist Empire. When George H. Bush spoke about his “steady hand” and his use of “prudence,” he was expressing a policy preference of not using governmental overreach, even while sheperding the fall of the Communist Empire in 1989.
Indeed there was a New World Order that was being established without the Soviet Union as the central rival of the United States. Bush even led the United States to an incomplete but overwhelming victory against Iraq in 1991. His popularity was soaring. But during all of the excitement abroad, he raised taxes a clear break from his campaign promise. The economic realities back home were the achilles heel of his adminstration. The foreign policy successes were overshadowed by the economic realities that were penetrating the homes of the middle-class Americans. Higher taxes and a sagging economy hit Main St. hard across the United States.
Bill Clinton did not sweep the American electorate off it’s feet. But he seemed to genuinely care and was an effective communicator who stayed on message – he would focus on fixing the economy. But the exciting candidate was the fast-talking Ross Perot who had a solution for every problem in his back pocket. Comedians joked about how he would use his wealth to deal with any major economic problem. He resonated with the masses. Perot’s success was not insignificant. He was probably the main reason that Bush was not reelected. His messages of warning concerning the dept and his opposition to the NAFTA agreement doubled down on Bush’s seeming lack of controlling the downward spiral in the economy.
The net result was that Bill Clinton waltzed into the White House with far less than a majority of the vote. Perot had grabbed around 20% of the electorate, probably around 3/4 of whom would have voted for Bush. That was the key difference. In 2024, Robert Kennedy Jr. and the other non-major candidates will probably only grab 5-10% of the electorate. But they will largely grab disenchanted Biden voters, especially in States that were formerly out of reach of the Republicans. Donald Trump will almost certainly not win a majority of the votes. Too many suburban women detest him. But he is the clear favorite to win back the White House as long as Joe Biden keeps bumbling away and Robert Kennedy sticks to his resonating messages.
