Donald Trump & the 2022 Midterms

Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) & President Donald Trump (R-FL)

Trying to make sense of Donald Trump has always been a fruitless endeavor, and yet unabashedly easy.  For the past five years, ever since he rolled down an escalator, the media has been trying to attach logic to increasingly erratic actions & decisions, hoping that they could find a way to put a tornado into a box.  As the twilight of Donald Trump's presidency wears on, the media seems to have not figured this out still, and it's probable that they never will, and this has increasingly dire consequences for all of us.  It seems near certain that while the miracle of a vaccine is coming from pharmaceutical companies in 2021, some people will have to wait longer to get the vaccine than they should've due to Trump's gross incompetence in the rollout & red-tape from a Republican Senate, and as a result more people will be sick, more businesses will shutter, & more people will die.

This is a conversation worth having, but the focus on this blog (politically-speaking) is usually in the scope of elections, and I want to talk about the shadow effect that Trump might have in 2022 & beyond.  Donald Trump, as any media outlet will forewarn (and potentially whisper into their nervous stock broker's ears due to his effect on news ratings) is not going away after January 20th.  While I don't know if he's petty (or stupid) enough to announce a run in 2024 on Joe Biden's Inauguration Day (I think he'd be wise to not bury the lede on a day where he can't possibly get the top of the headlines, though he's foolish enough to want to try), Trump will continue to threaten the GOP with a third run for president as long as he can, milking the campaign dollars & trying to ensure fealty from a party that doesn't seem capable of escaping his grasp.

This is apparent in Trump's relentless attacks on three politicians in recent days: Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp & SoS Brad Raffensberger.  Ducey, Kemp, and Raffensberger are not Susan Collins or Mitt Romney-they are not Republicans who tepidly supported Trump.  Indeed they campaigned for him, endorsed him, and surely voted for him.  But they are people who are currently standing in the way of Trump's narrative, that the election is still ongoing & that he didn't lose legally (both of which are categorically false, but you knew that if you're reading this).

These three men are now stuck in an impossible situation, where they are doing the right thing, but are doing so at the risk of their own political careers.  This has been a problem that many Republicans have had in the past four years-where they are doing things they wouldn't normally do to appease a man who might otherwise destroy their electoral prospects.  One of the problems that journalists never really underlined is that Trump cares about himself first, but also only cares about himself-there are no other people in the room other than Donald Trump.  He has no core principles other than him retaining what he has.  If it meant giving up all three of his Supreme Court seats to three 40-year-old Bernie Sanders-style liberals, and he got to win another term, Trump would do it in a nanosecond.  Trump does not, ultimately, care what happens in the Georgia Senate races, or if potential primaries to these three men might lead the Democrats to win their seats-that is not something he thinks about.

So it's worth asking as we move on from the Trump presidency, and start to consider the future of the Republican Party, just where men like Ducey, Kemp, & Raffensberger's ambitions lie.  Former presidents don't typically remain kingmakers in primaries, and they certainly don't continue to hold power in a traditional sense over the future of the party (even popular former presidents like Bill Clinton & Barack Obama faded relatively quickly from television screens).  Without this blueprint, it's not apparent where this is going.  But if Trump sticks around, both sides are going to have to reclaim the stakes.

President Trump with Gov. Doug Ducey (R-AZ)

This is because Kemp & Raffensberger want to run for second terms, and likely will, and someone like Ducey is probably going to seek the US Senate seat against now-incumbent Mark Kelly.  If Trump continues to hold the kind of leverage he has now, these men won't be able to win in two years as Trump will push his base (the vast majority of primary voters) to go against them, dooming their careers.  That will mean that the Democrats have a conundrum-they'll have weakened opponents in the general elections, but the stress will be quadrupled on them to win.  Because it won't be ideology that separated these men from winning their primary (they are all extremely conservative politically), but instead it's going to be respect for the rule of law.  Trump's going to demand that the people he endorses in 2022 and 2024 not only are aligned with him, but with the idea that the 2020 election was stolen (it wasn't) and that these men should've thrown out the will-of-the-people since it disagreed with Trump.  That's essentially the definition of a dictatorship, and as a result in 2022 in Georgia & Arizona (both states the Democrats won, but by slim margins), they'll have to prove just like in 2020 that they're willing to acknowledge the clear-and-present-danger the "Trump First" ideology poses, even if that man is no longer in the White House.  We will have a better understanding of this in the coming weeks & months (particularly after the Georgia runoffs-a surprise win by one or both Democrats could be the final alarm to the GOP that the best way to get past Trump is to ignore him, rather than acquiesce), but Trump's post-presidency continues to pose a shadow to the Republican Party, and his ability to maintain his hold will be the question mark hanging over men like Ducey, Kemp, & Raffensberger...and anyone who dares dream of the nomination in 2024.