By José Ramón Cabañas Rodríguez on June 10, 2023 from Havana
From left to right, top to bottom, Ron DeSantis, Donald Trump, Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, Tim Scott and Mike Pompeo.
In recent weeks, names have been added to the list of U.S. politicians seeking the Republican nomination to run as candidates for the November 2024 presidential elections.
We are still a year and a half away chronologically from such an event, but some ideas can already be developed that will allow us, not to guess who might be elected, but to prepare ourselves for the probable scenarios that we will have before us.
The fact that an American politician announces such a purpose means something more than believing that he or she is better than others, that he or she has the best conceived program to face the country’s pressing problems, or that he or she has the minimum necessary resources to promote sufficient support among the electorate.
While Donald Trump had to obtain the nomination during 2016 in the face of a crowded Republican contest, by 2020 he was the undisputed nominee. In four years he tripped up enough, considerably weakened the party’s infrastructure, threatened, pressured and blackmailed as many potential challengers as he could have faced. Moreover, he adequately repaid those who decisively financed his first campaign, with tax savings and other business advantages.
The fact that more than one name has already emerged to oppose his intentions for 2024 means several things. One of them is that it could be of interest to those groups of financiers who notably influence, or often decide who will receive the most votes.
In this sense, several things could be happening: a) Trump is considered by those high risk, unmanageable, b) a change of image is needed to achieve the same purposes; or, even, c) the existence of several candidates helps to weaken the opposition that the second strongest rival would offer him.
There is yet another factor that is embedded in the American culture: Trump is already considered a loser because of the 2020 results and the common citizen of that country does not bet on losers either for president, school principal, or band leader.
It is true that his entire current campaign is based on the argument that he was robbed in the last elections, but there is less and less evidence to support such judgment, which is becoming credible only to the same people who claim that they have breakfast with a gremlin at home every day.
Whatever the fundamental reason behind the decision of each and every one of these people to aspire to the candidacy, the most tangible thing is that they have taken a step unthinkable 4 years ago and would be willing to face the reactive artillery of Trumpist personal attacks, or would have the resources to acquire the necessary antibodies.
The group of current aspirants would have to be divided among those who have a less developed career and aspire, not to be nominated, but to become more visible at the national level and eventually be chosen for positions in the top executive. However, there are so far none among them who can be considered newcomers to politics.
It will not be until the spring of 2024 that it will be possible to have a more or less clear idea of who will have the best chances of representing the Republicans against an aging Joe Biden, against whom there are constant doubts about his health condition, who technically could be reelected only to leave the office later in the hands of an unskilled vice-president who does not even attract the support of her home state.
Although at this moment the polls make us believe that Trump has an undisputed favoritism among the Republican sympathizers, there are too many months in between to be unaware that some judicial ruling against him may incapacitate him (or multiply the number of followers), or that his health may also play a dirty trick on him.
As has happened on other occasions in the past, the presidential elections of 2024 could be decided not so much by the physical votes in favor of one party or another, but by the large numbers that see their right to vote limited, based on the endless list of regulations and conditions that have been approved by the 50 state assemblies, which are mostly Republican. There is no bibliography so far that summarizes the number of local election authority seats that have been filled with followers of the “2020 robbery” myth, nor how many seats on appellate courts will be filled by judges of verifiable Republican leanings, in case claims by the other side must be answered.
Nevertheless, in the face of this overwhelming amount of incomplete reasoning, half-measures and lack of data, some near-truths can be related that will prove their specific weight in the face of the upcoming presidential elections.
It is the first time that among the Republican pre-candidates a woman (Nikki Haley) and a man of African descent (Tim Scott), former governor and incumbent federal senator from South Carolina respectively, are running, which in itself would indicate the need felt by some party operatives to give the group a makeover, at least in appearances. It is also the first time that a former president in his bid to return to the ring would be opposed by his former vice president (Mike Pence, Indiana), in a clear sign of a split at least between those who are traditional pro-bureaucrats and those who are not.
The Republicans are today a deinstitutionalized party in the sense that the internal mechanisms that have traditionally sought balance among figures, have imposed a certain order to keep the forms before the public and that often manage to have the most critical issues dealt with in private, are not working.
The Republican Party continues to be the main representative of the “old economy” and of the economic sectors that have lost in the bid for free trade, ranging from coal and steel to agriculture. It is the main container of a frustration that has accumulated for years, which is synthesized in the phrase “Washington does not represent us”, which already attacked the capitol on January 6, 2021 and which they would be willing to do it again in the federal capital, or in the state capitols. And all this even without the shadow of a new economic crisis, an inflationary spiral, or a setback in the stock markets, which would give the whole panorama a more intense gray color.
The Republicans in Trump’s time spoke of Make America Great Again, Biden’s Democrats have bet on Build Back Better, but neither of the two purposes, nor their respective slogans, yielded concrete results.
The most evident example of the lack of coherent agendas and ways to implement them in the domestic order has been the latest agreement of the partisan elites to increase the federal debt ceiling, which can be illustrated by the image of the bedspreads that our grandmothers sewed with scraps of fabrics of different quality and color. Something that in the movies is called a Frankenstein.
This scenario would point to a foreign policy that will be increasingly erratic, less programmatic, more inclined to make costly mistakes, in worse conditions to articulate alliances, more focused on partial and immediate objectives and more inclined to the use of coercive measures or force.
Given the complexity of variables that are intertwined in the U.S. national reality and also in its contacts with the outside world, these may be true only for the next 24 hours, so the right questions will have to be asked very often in the remaining months.
José Ramón Cabañas Rodríguez is Director of the International Policy Research Center (CIPI) in Havana, Cuba.
translation: Resumen Latinoamericano – English