The Briefing, Vol. XII, Issue 15
This week:
- There’s a reason something like “No Labels” can’t work
- Despite a Nebraska failure, Trump looks very strong in the Electoral College
- Trump takes a “state-level” position on abortion
President 2024
No labels? No candidate: You can’t blame the people behind the No Labels Party for not trying. They raised more than $60 million (perhaps far more) in hopes of finding a third lane in a year when Americans are generally dissatisfied with the matchup between the two major parties’ presumptive nominees.
On paper, that kind of makes sense. So why did they end up where they are now, with no one willing to take all of that free money and campaign infrastructure and use it to run for president? It’s because the reality is something very different from the appearance.
First, each party would have severely punished any prominent member who actually ran. Democrats viewed No Labels as an existential threat to Joe Biden’s re-election. Any Democrat going near it would instantly be persona non grata. So there goes half the candidate pool. And one could say almost the same about Donald Trump’s Republican Party, at least insofar as any candidate conservative enough to win any appreciable share of the vote on the Right would be viewed as a spoiler and nothing more.
Of course, Democrats always had much better reasons to fear a third-party bid. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is already proving that with his independent bid in every poll where he is included. His attacks on Biden do little to attract Trump supporters or even Trump-averse Republicans, yet they are demoralizing to rank-and-file Democrats (not the ideological activists, but the ordinary party faithful) because too many people believe that he at least has a point about the current president.
But as for “No Labels,” it isn’t hard to see why nobody jumped at the opportunity to represent such a party. Indeed, its lack of popular grassroots support (the media ominously point out that it is funded by “dark money”) should have been the first clue.
Yes, people don’t like the Biden-Trump rematch. And yes, they correctly observe and lament the political polarization of modern American society. But No Labels was a misguided exercise in ignoring or even failing to recognize the public’s extremely polarized philosophical and moral outlook from which it derives.
Our politics — particularly on the issues where it is most divisive — is not something imposed from above by some mysterious force or monied interest. Rather, it is a reflection of what the public generally wants and what it is willing to tolerate. As it must be in any free society, Democrats and Republicans alike have certain core beliefs that inevitably result in rancorous public clashes.
Just two examples of this dynamic, one on each side, where one side abhors something the other side is willing to tolerate: there is no appetite among Democrats for any candidate who is even willing to tolerate “insurrectionist” Trump, let alone for the man himself, who they claim is a traitor to his country. Republican voters, on the other side, are generally not interested in candidates who are comfortable with so-called “gender-affirming” care used upon children, which they view as deformative and child-abuse.
The Democratic voters, meanwhile, are willing to tolerate the uncomfortable realities of such things being done to children; the Republican voters are willing to tolerate the glaring problems with Trump’s character and rhetoric.
These are just two issues — there are many others where the same dynamic holds.
This is today’s America. It means that there is no market for a party that tries to split the baby — that says, “Hey you people, stop taking all of this stuff so seriously or personally. Let’s just be serious and govern.”
Yes, people want their potholes filled. They want criminals arrested (most of them do, anyway) and traffic lights that work. But they are far more likely likely to tolerate potholes and even criminals (especially if they are active in someone else’s neighborhood) for the sake of a society that reflects their fundamental beliefs, unless they can find a way to use the potholes and criminals against the candidates who don’t share their conception of justice or fairness.
This is why people don’t want a third party that purports to ignore the most intense and divisive issues. Those issues are divisive precisely because they matter to people. And the very people who are most likely to vote or donate money to a political campaign are also the ones who tend to view such a passive posture as cowardice rather than reasonableness.
Trump-Abortion: On Monday morning, Trump struck a new posture on abortion, arguing that it is now a state issue because Roe v. Wade has been struck down. He therefore opposes federal legislation on the topic.
This is his attempt to neutralize what the Democrats have hoped will be their saving grace in the 2024 election. It is probably politically shrewd, although it is not what most conservatives want to hear.
In reality, there is a pretty strong consensus nationally, in every poll taken on the question, that abortion should be illegal after the first trimester — that is, about nine or ten weeks into pregnancy. This is the rationale that pro-life advocates cite in pushing for a federal law, not just for laws at the state level.
There are two counterarguments to this — take them for what they are worth. The first is that the very idea of national legislation on abortion only raises the specter of a future federal law (like the one the Biden administration has been pushing for) striking down all state restrictions on abortion whatsoever. The second is that the 15-week ban under discussion will not pass the Senate any time soon, so why die on that hill now?
Nebraska: An attempt in the Cornhusker State’s unicameral legislature to award Nebraska’s electoral votes in a winner-take-all fashion — which would have almost certainly helped Trump — was shot down in a procedural vote last week, despite having support from the governor. Had it passed, this would have virtually guaranteed that Trump would tie Biden with 269 electoral votes, even if he fails to win any of the most hotly contested states — Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
Nebraska, like Maine, awards two of its electoral votes to the candidate who wins statewide, then one additional vote for each congressional district he carries. In 2020, Biden carried Nebraska’s Omaha-area second district.
However, it is worth noting that, even without this change, that district has been re-drawn to be more favorable to Republicans, and Biden is far less popular now than he was in 2020. It is therefore entirely possible that Trump wins that stray electoral vote in 2024 anyway. This would force Biden not only to win all of the above “Blue Wall” states in the Great Lakes region, but also to win in at least one state where his chances currently appear far poorer in every recent poll taken — Georgia, Nevada, or Arizona.
In the case of an Electoral College tie vote, the presidency would be decided by the new House of Representatives in January 2025, but with a twist: each state would get just one vote. Republicans would easily dominate such an election, as there are 26 states (including Wisconsin) with so-called “safe” Republican House delegations, whereas Democrats have completely “safe” majorities in the delegations of no more than 14 states (Vermont, Delaware, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Hawaii, California, Illinois, Oregon, New Mexico, and Washington).
Pennsylvania: There have been many criticisms of the odd outlier poll released by Franklin and Marshall last Thursday. The survey shows Trump trailing Biden by an astounding ten points, 48 to 38 percent. This is at odds with all other surveys and is actually dragging the average in the wrong direction.
Largely unnoticed, however, is one of the fishiest results of this poll. When third-party candidates were included, it put Biden just two points ahead of Trump, 42 to 40 percent.
So, how does RFK’s inclusion cause Trump’s percentage to go up, even if only by two points? This is almost impossible to explain, even if one is willing to accept that RFK causes Biden to slide by six points. It’s just not rational, and neither are the results of this poll generally.
The fact that they don’t line up with other polls of the Keystone State is just one more reason to ignore them as outlying results.
Senate 2024
Maryland: Rep. David Trone (D) is using a medical excuse to avoid a scheduled April 19 debate against Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks (D). This came just after video went viral of Trone (almost certainly accidentally) using the racist epithet “jigaboo” in a congressional hearing.
Trone’s official statement is especially weird: ““Out of an abundance of caution David’s doctor encouraged him to seek further testing at a local hospital.” One would expect that any candidate canceling an event more than a week away for medical reasons probably ought to drop out of the race for those same medical reasons.
Trone almost certainly meant to say “bugaboo,” and had no intention whatsoever of giving a racial offense. But it is satisfying for many conservatives to see him punished in the same way others have been punished by his brand of progressive for innocent statements that offended the politically correct.
Incredibly, all polls suggest that former Gov. Larry Hogan (R) is highly competitive, even the frontrunner, for the open seat being vacated by the retiring Sen. Ben Cardin (D).
