Chris Christie went to a surprising outlet a few days after the August GOP presidential candidates’ debate to warn Republicans not to nominate Donald J. Trump, again.
The former New Jersey governor told MSNBC’s Morning Joe that if Trump wins a third nomination, “we’re going to lose this election.” Words that Democrats as well as never-Trumper Republicans — at least those also turned off by Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy and maybe Nikki Haley — want to hear.
“And if we lose to Biden, Republicans need to understand that we’re going to be looking at a packed Supreme Court, we’re going to be looking at the end of the filibuster.”
But Trump’s lead in the GOP presidential race has only grown since his no-show in Milwaukee, while Biden’s lead over the ex-president for the 2024 general election continues to shrink.
Despite economic improvements under Joe Biden, the president’s approval rating keeps sinking to Trump administration levels. A CNN poll reported Thursday has Biden's approval rating at just 39%.
Biden still has an advantage of 42% to 40% over Trump in a head-to-head matchup, according to an August Franklin & Marshall College poll of Pennsylvania voters. Many of these voters — 16% — are “looking for an alternative to both candidates,” but that could be “a product of way-too-early polling,” writes Berwood Yost, director of F&M College’s Center for Opinion Research. Alternative candidate-seekers made up 29% of the poll in April, he says.
In a September 4 national poll by Morning Consult, Biden has a 44% to 41% advantage over Trump, though Trump is ahead in others listed by FiveThirtyEight.
This recalls polling for the 2016 presidential election, when Hillary Clinton led for most of the race, until Trump came within their margins of error … and Trump overcame a popular vote loss with an Electoral College win, anyway.
“No one should discount the possibility that Donald Trump can win the state of Pennsylvania in 2024,” Yost writes, noting that 58% of the state’s voters have an unfavorable opinion of Biden, to 40% favorable. That’s 19 Electoral College votes potentially for Trump from the nation’s biggest swing state.
Let’s throw in Wisconsin, one of the most gerrymandered states in the union, and its 10 electors. There, the GOP-majority legislature is trying to impeach the state’s newly elected Supreme Court judge, Janet Protasiewicz, who has yet to hear a case.
The Democratic Party contributed nearly $10 million to Protasiewicz’s 20-point victory over a conservative, anti-abortion candidate earlier this year (which flipped the court’s majority to 5-4 liberal), and Republican lawmakers argue she cannot fairly rule on redistricting cases that could deflate the legislature’s Republican majority. (The Wisconsin Democracy Project found that all but one Wisconsin Supreme Court justice — a liberal — has taken significant campaign funds from either the Democratic or Republican party, The Associated Press reported Thursday.)
Now throw in persistent inflation levels or a hike in gas prices or even a strike likely next week by the United Auto Workers against General Motors, Ford Motor Company and Stellantis — or a No Labels candidate — and Biden’s tenuous lead could quickly be chipped away.
On the plus-side for liberal democracy, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the Independent State Legislature Theory and sent Alabama’s cynical congressional map back to Alabama, where a federal court just sent back a second cynical congressional map. (Can Alabama keep drawing such gerrymandered maps for another year?)
Democrats and democrats might just want a Republican candidate who is pro-liberal democracy and pro-Ukraine to run against the incumbent, just in case. It’s clear a hell of a lot of Democrats and democrats want someone other than the incumbent to win the Democratic presidential nomination, but few want that person to be the current vice president, and no one on that side knows how to pull off another LBJ.
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