Warning to Republicans: Only Trump Can Win
Demographics guarantee that any Democrat can beat any Republican except for Trump
When it comes to electoral college demographics, little has changed since 2012 when Republican Mitt Romney lost to Barack Obama despite Obama’s abysmal polls.
In 2012 and 2013, Real Clear Politics’ data analyst Sean Trende determined the reason Obama upset Romney: the missing white voter. Trende wanted to know why Romney did even worse than McCain had four years earlier. His research determined this:
The most salient demographic change from 2008 to 2012 was the drop in white voters.
And not just any white voters.
No. A very specific group of voters failed to show up for Romney. Trende describes them like this:
These voters were largely downscale, Northern, rural whites. In other words, H. Ross Perot voters.
The Perot voters.
Everyone who has paid attention to politics in the last 30 years knew immediately Trende had nailed it. The Perot voters fit a very particular mold that defied all existing political dichotomies. They were neither Democrat nor Republican. They were neither conservative nor liberal. They were law-and-order and pro-military but anti-war and suspicious of the intel community.
Well, the missing white voter of 2012 is now known simply as “MAGA”. I saw the significance of Trende’s findings in 2015:
When we look at Trump’s positions over the past 20 years, they line up very well with Perot’s in 1992.
And I explained the challenge facing Republicans in 2016—the reason nominating Ted Cruz would have been noble, but Hillary Clinton would be in her 2nd term:
As Trende established in 2013, the road to the White House is tricky for Republicans. The GOP candidate will have to attract those “downscale, blue-collar whites” in big numbers in places like Ohio and Pennsylvania. They’ll need to activate all stripes of conservatives: fiscal, Constitutional, evangelical, foreign policy. They’ll need to be acceptable to libertarians. And they’ll need to get back to 10 percent of the black vote
. . .
Finally, another strategy conservatives can consider is to remain an ideologically pure, righteous remnant. That is a strategy, and a noble one. But don’t confuse it with winning. And don’t be surprised when policies move further from our ideal.
Twenty sixteen proved Sean Trende was right in 2012 and 2013. Trump activated “downscale, Northern, rural whites” like no other candidate in history.
Moreover, Trump won back the Hispanic vote and recovered the Black vote that the Bushes, McCain, and Romney drove away by their pandering and country-clubishness. Trump upset Clinton for the same reason Obama upset Romney: the missing white voter.
14% of Conservative Voters Are “Trump or Bust”
If Trump is not on the ballot, those white voters will go missing again. And they’ll take millions of black and Hispanics with them.
Data scientist Richard Baris was a guest on Steve Bannon’s War Room on March 24. Among other subjects, Baris discussed his research into the “Trump or bust” voters—people who, like me, will not vote for anyone other than Trump for president, no matter what.
Baris found that 14% of Trump supporters fit that mold—that’s about 8 million voters, mostly in battleground states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Georgia. Assuming a somewhat even distribution of those 8 million Trump-or-busters, Democrats would sweep all six battlegrounds in 2024. It would be a watershed moment, all but eliminating the GOP as a viable national party.
In other words, nominate anyone but Trump, and the Republican Party will be as dead as the republic.
DeSantis Cannot Win in November. Period.
Now we’ve learned that 14 percent of those who voted Repubican in 2020 will not vote in 2024 if Trump is not the Republican nominee. And I am one of them. So are a lot of brown people.
Among all three constituencies needed for a Republican to win the White House—14% of blacks, 40% of Hispanics, and 80% of downscale Whites—DeSantis is less popular than Mitt Romney. Any Democrat—including Kamala Harris—would run the table against DeSantis.
Even without DeSantis’s pathetic, scripted shot at Trump last week (about which some breaking news to follow) DeSantis suffers from the same reality as Romney and Cruz faced: he doesn’t appeal to Perot voters.
What’s worse for Republicans overall is that Perot voters DO NOT VOTE if they do not like the top of the ticket. If Trump is not the GOP nominee in 2024, Republicans will underperform in the Senate, House, state legislatures and governorships, all the way down to school boards.
“Yeah, but . . .”
The Republican donor class and the consultants who feed off them will object. “Yeah, but suburban women and immigrants and blah, blah, blah.” Well, the Republican donor and consultant classes make money no matter who wins, as long as it’s not Trump.
The GOP’s big donors make money from war and war alone.
Consultants make money by skimming 30% off the cost of ad buys.
Neither gives a hoot in hell who wins elections, so long as the winner supports wars and is too lazy to do his or her own campaigning. (Consultants advise candidates against knocking on doors and meeting voters because it’s “inefficient.” Consultants are masters at losing efficiently.)
Trump upsets both classes. He doesn’t like war, and he campaigns directly to the voters, skipping the consultant class altogether.
And it is Trump’s direct appeal to voters that attracts blacks, Hispanics, and downscale Whites to his cause.
Phyllis Schlafly Was Right: Trump Is America’s Last Hope
Nominating Trump in 2024 doesn’t guarantee victory, but nominating anyone else guarantees defeat. It’s that simple.
In 2015, I supported Dr. Ben Carson, as you know. But by November, I was moving toward Trump. What put me over the top was Phyllis Schlafly’s interview in which she said Trump is America’s last hope.
Though Mrs. Schlafly passed away in 2016, she was right then and is right now. Trump is the only Republican alive with a chance at winning the White House in 2024. Nominate anyone else, and Democrats take back the presidency, the House, and the Senate. Then, you can kiss your country goodbye. (There’s no guarantee Trump can restore the republic, btw, but he remains our last and only hope.)
The good news is that, since his staged, rehearsed, fraudulant press conference on Monday, Ron DeSanctimonious is crashing like a hobby balloon shot by an F-18. Look at this Fox News headline from 4 days ago:
Wow. Poor Ron.
But it gets even worse.
On the advice of Paul Ryan and Karl Rove, Ron DeSantis decided to kick off his undercover presidential campaign by publishing a ghost-written autobiography. It’s the typcial Republican donor-class strategy.
Sadly, no one wants to read his book or meet Ron. The only peope showing up to to his book signings are Trump supporters demanding to know why he took a cheap shot at Trump instead of attacking the weaponized justice system. Like an action hero, DeSantis refuses to talk to these Trump supporters. He just stares past them into the empty space where he expected to see throngs of giddy fans.
In another unforced error (but following the GOP consultant playbook to a T), DeSantis called the police to have anyone wearing Trump gear removed or arrested. (He’s such a tough guy.)
And NBC News has more bad news for DeSanctimonious:
A number of the Florida governor’s donors and allies are worried his recent stumbles suggest he may not be ready for a brutal fight against Donald Trump. Some feel DeSantis needs to accelerate his timeline to run for the GOP presidential nomination and begin directly confronting Trump if he's to have any chance of thwarting the former president’s momentum. Others believe DeSantis should sidestep Trump altogether and wait until 2028 to run.
And even DeSanctimounious’s early supporters have stopped donating, including billionaire Richard Uihlein:
A person familiar with the strategy around Uihlein’s spending said that right now, “The brakes are pumped,” adding, “The polling really made different people pause.”
Ron’s collapse in the polls came after DeSanctimonous became his Forever Name last week. I wrote about it, you’ll remember:
DeSantis was the only possibly viable alternative to Trump in 2022, but a combination of Trump Derangement Syndrome gone viral and Ron’s DeSanctimonious moment have cleared the field for Trump. He will obliterate the pygmies who’ve already announced by the third debate this fall.
Statistically, it’s Trump or a Democrat, and a Democrat means the End of America for good. You can’t be pro-America and anti-Trump anymore than you can be a Democrat and a Christian. Some things are just mutually exclusive.
This article blew me away with all the incredible facts! Sharing w/like-minded family & friends.
I saw a headline this week about Missouri becoming a "caucus" state for the presidential primary. I'm embarrassed to admit I was clueless. So what's the deal? Another Danforth move? It's almost guaranteed that Trump wouldn't come out as the candidate via a Missouri Republican Country Club caucus. Can you shine any light on this? I'm hoping I read an AI created fictitious article . . . but I doubt it?