My job naturally leads to me engaging with plenty of different people about what they think the future holds. The other day when I went to the doctor he asked me to prognosticate about the future of Democrats in Texas. I generally dodge these questions because I mostly want to talk about my allergy medication at my appointment and not Ted Cruz’s reelection campaign. However, one thing that will generally get me talking is when people say that things are an inevitability. I hear political professionals saying that Trump has already won the nomination! In my opinion this is a bit goofy.
First off, I do personally think it very likely Trump wins the nomination. His base has shown time and time again that they are dedicated to him personally, over many classically conservative policy stances. For instance, Trump bucked party tradition on free trade but no one in the GOP seems to care. Similarly, Trump’s relationship with Putin is the sort of foreign policy that I would expect a proper conservative to despise, and yet no one bats an eye. Moreover, Trump continues to do well in polling and fundraising numbers despite plenty of other candidates jumping in and the initially strong performance by DeSantis.
However, it is certainly not a given. There’s roughly a 5% chance a 77 year old man dies of natural causes. That is the chance as rolling a crit in DND! This doesn’t take into account Trump’s obesity or nonsense beliefs about exercise. Suppose we assume Trump doesn’t die or face some ailment that ends a run. I’ll even ignore the nonzero chance Trump is in jail by the time the primary rolls around (the last set of indictments in particular are very serious). I still think there is a reasonable possibility that he loses.
Firstly, there is clearly some willingness from the grassroots to dump Trump. The runup podcast from the New York Times identifies notable supporters from his base while still approving of Trump, are willing to drop him if that is what the MAGA movement needs. Polling on this question is mixed but there certainly are some framings of questions which demonstrate that people in the GOP may have more loyalty to the conservative movement than Trump himself.
Secondly, we don’t know what is going to happen! Maybe Trump gets caught on camera mocking his supporters. I can see that happening. He could have a Walker-esque falling out with key figures in his family. We all know that family is dysfunctional. Trump’s is noticeably slower than he used to be and could definitely stumble on a debate stage. He is a messy candidate and gets involved in a lot of nonsense so it is hard to rule anything out. So far nothing has really stuck, but that doesn’t mean nothing can. Do I think its likely? No. But its possible.
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