IMHO, the sackcloth and ashes routine is unwarranted. Trump will get to finish the job that Bannon got him to start - fire all the GOP incumbents opposed to the Trump agenda during the primary process. He’ll then have people who owe him when he returns to the White House in 2024.
You may think this is far-fetched and whistling past the graveyard. But there are solid historical reasons for optimism. Let’s assume the Democrats’ basic premise is true, i.e. that Trump lost fair and square. Trump’s loss wasn’t terrible - a couple of hundred thousand votes short in the swing states that decide the White House race. This is in the face of two outlier events - a mass casualty pandemic and the resultant economic depression representing the worst downturn since the Great Depression.
The Democrats expected a complete sweep of the states, both at the White House and Congressional levels. FDR got a 413 electoral vote victory margin. Biden’s was 74. The 1932 House elections gave the Democrats a 196-seat margin, vs the ~12-seat margin they got in 2020. The 1932 Senate elections moved the Democrats to a 22-seat margin, vs the 1-seat margin (thanks to the VP tie breaker vote) they just got after the 2021 GA runoffs. This was a blue wave a toddler could safely paddle in, not a tsunami.
If you accept the Democratic premise that Trump lost by 7m votes, that’s a Biden popular vote margin of 4%. FDR’s victory margin over Hoover? 28%.
That’s why they’re trying to prevent Trump from running again. He’s no Herbert Hoover, whose political career was over the day the results came in. The Dems aren’t afraid Trump will get the 2024 GOP nomination and lose in the general. They’re worried that one hiccup or other before 2024 will send Trump back to the White House with commanding GOP majorities, but this time cleansed of the never-Trumpers who gave him so much trouble in his first term.
If Trump intends to run again, the interval from now until presidential season should* involve the installation of Republicans who support the Trump agenda in the midterms, and the removal of those who don’t. Bannon’s quest to populate elected offices with Trump supporters needs to resume, so that when Trump re-enters the White House, his agenda is ready to go from Day 1.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1932_United_States_presidential_election
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1932_United_States_Senate_elections
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_Senate_elections
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1932_United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_House_of_Representatives_elections
You could also compare the numbers to those from the Spanish Flu election of 1920. Something similar happened, except this time, the incumbent Democrats lost big, with the GOP getting a 2/3 majority in the House. They would probably have gotten the same thing in the Senate, if every seat was up for grabs, rather than just 1/3. Point being that the pollsters were presumably modeling their blue wave poll results on 1920 and 1932, which were disastrous for the incumbents and resulted in ~300 and up electoral vote victory margins (i.e. winner - loser EV’s). Now that was a mandate. Whereas Biden had a ~70 EV margin, based on 1-2% popular vote margins in the swing states being litigated over. He’s skating on very thin ice.
* The big question is obviously whether Trump will run. Given what we’ve seen of Trump’s decision-making process, maybe he himself doesn’t know the answer.
The thing about such a comeback is that it’s so rare, it would be another superlative to add to his record - a real feather in his cap. Health permitting, I don’t see him not running. Fred Trump only began displaying signs of dementia at age 86, dying at age 93, so it would not surprise me if the Donald were physically up to the challenges of another term in the White House.
I haven't heard anyone compare such an election to the 1912 three-way with Teddy Roosevelt attempting to return to the Presidency after the then-deep-stater Taft took over. Which probably means it's been written about numerous times in the last week or so :-)
1. Trump was very much an anomaly. He was almost certainly the only GOP contender who would have won in 2016.
2. Trump attracted the support of a large cohort of minorities, independents and even many Democrats. Very few of these people are going to come out and vote for Republicans in 2022 — or at any time in the next 50 years.
3. For all his bluster and his combative personality, Trump has gone out of his way to avoid contentious battles within the GOP in recent years. The last thing he ever wants to do is support a loser, so he’s never going to out on a limb to push MAGA challengers to run against RINO incumbents unless it’s a heavily Republican state or district (Lizard Cheney is an ideal target for him). He would rather support a RINO who wins than a “Deplorable” who loses.
I have often compared Trump to Churchill, in that like Trump, Churchill was really not well-liked by other politicians, even within his own party.
Let’s look at the 1945 election when Labour whupped the Tories and Clement Atlee took Churchills place, remember in Britain you don’t vote direct for the PM, it’s based on representation in Parliament.
Many ask, why did Churchill lose, after what he did during the war? Several reasons, First of all, Labour did a better job of getting out the message of their post-war vision for Britain, which was basically Socialism. But this was also at a time when the British economy was in such dire straits, that even the private businesses were literally begging to be taken over by the government. What was the Tories’ message? “We’ve Got Churchill!”.
Also Churchill shot himself in the foot, with a dissatrous radio broadcast right before the election, where he stated that Labour would use “Gestapo”-tactics to implement Socialism. Well you can only imagine how the press went to town on that, “Churchill Compares Labour to Gestapo”, especially so soon after the war, and with the knowledge of the Nazi’s atrocities. Even his own party was appalled, and if it wasn’t for his popularity with the people, the Consevatives would have sent him out to pasture, after the election.
But at the time, Churchill was all the Tories really had, so they were at least smart enough to keep him on as Leader of the Party.
Fast forward to 1951, Churchill was back at 10 Downing Street , where he served until 1955 when he retired at the age of 80.
But of course, it’s not a total happy ending, Labour basically got their socialist program installed, which is still there to this day.
2022? 2024? Does anybody seriously believe they will allow Trump and his family to live? He’s far too dangerous to their cause, in or out of the White House.