Welcome to Byron York’s Daily Memo newsletter.
Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here to receive the newsletter.
THE MOST UNCERTAIN PRESIDENTIAL PICTURE EVER. The 2024 presidential election is three years from now. But it is dominating current politics even more than the next midterm elections, which are less than a year away. That is because of a set of unique — truth be told, bizarre — conditions of U.S. presidential politics on both the Democratic and Republican sides.
Start with the Democrats. A first-term president is expected, assumed, to be running for reelection. He has clout because he 1.) just got elected, and 2.) might be elected again. We call a president who no longer has the possibility of winning an election a “lame duck” — a description of weakness. It is generally assumed that a new president, were he for some reason to say that he would not or could not run for reelection, would be a lame duck from the start.
Joe Biden does not want to be that kind of president. He says he intends to run for reelection in 2024. But increasingly “even some of his allies are not sure he will,” reports the Washington Post. Biden, who has been in office just 10 months, is already the oldest president in U.S. history. He will turn 79 this Saturday and will be 82 at the end of his term. Were he to run for reelection, he would be asking voters to trust him in office until he is 86 years old. There is no precedent for that in presidential politics.
What is happening now is that some Democrats are taking actions based on their suspicion that Biden will either choose not to run again or be unable to run again. Speculation has broken into the press that this or that figure — Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, or Sen. Elizabeth Warren, or fellow Sens. Cory Booker or Amy Klobuchar — are positioning themselves to be ready to run in 2024 should Biden not be in the picture.
Subscribe today to the Washington Examiner magazine that will keep you up to date with what’s going on in Washington. SUBSCRIBE NOW: Just $1.00 an issue!
But the most intense speculation focuses on Vice President Kamala Harris. After all, she would be the natural heir to Biden should he not run again. But more than a few Democrats worry that Harris, who failed to connect with voters during her own run for the 2020 nomination and has had a rocky relationship with the president’s team since taking office, might not be the most electable choice for 2024. On the other hand, she is the vice president. And not just that, she is the first woman vice president and the first vice president of color. Would Democrats push her aside if Biden doesn’t run? Not without a big fight.
Nevertheless, it is clear that elements inside the Biden White House are pushing Harris. They are telling reporters about “dysfunction” in the VP’s office. They are suggesting she is getting nothing done. They bemoan the frustrations of working with Harris and her team. Why are they doing it? In part because, so far at least, Harris is an unimpressive vice president. But the bigger reason is the uncertainty surrounding Biden. The king is weak. He senses that his successor is circling him. But the successor is weak, too, and senses challengers circling around her, too.
The bottom line is that the Democrats’ presidential prospects are in virtually unprecedented flux because of the president’s age. But the Republicans’ presidential prospects are in virtually unprecedented flux, too, for a different set of reasons.
There has never been any presidential situation quite like the one Donald Trump presents for Republicans. There is no incumbent GOP president, and most would assume there would be a rigorous, multi-candidate primary contest for 2024. Instead, the potential candidates are running what amounts to a wait-for-Trump campaign. They are going to Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, making early connections there. But they’re doing it to be ready in case Trump does not run. If he does, many will probably step aside.
Look at Iowa, the first-voting state. In recent months, it has seen a parade of potential candidates: Mike Pence, Tom Cotton, Mike Pompeo, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, Rick Scott, Marco Rubio, and Kristi Noem — just about everybody who is being mentioned as a candidate, with the significant exception of Ron DeSantis.
It’s a potentially strong list. But, at the moment, all will play second fiddle if Trump decides to enter the race. The reason, Iowa Republican Party chairman Jeff Kaufmann says, is that state Republicans are so appalled by what they see as the excesses of the Biden administration that they believe it has to be stopped as soon as possible, and they believe Trump remains their best chance to do that.
“For the large bulk of Iowans, the hunger to stop what they see as the nonsense in D.C. actually outweighs whether Trump runs again or not,” Kaufmann said in an interview Tuesday. “They want this to stop. At this point, I think most Iowans see Trump as the vehicle for doing that. I don’t think it’s ‘We love Trump, therefore we have to stop Biden.’ It’s ‘We have to stop this craziness and right now Trump is the best vehicle for doing that.'”
Kaufmann divided Iowa Republicans’ views toward Trump into three categories. First, there are those whose loyalty to Trump is greater than their loyalty to the party, a group Kaufmann estimates to be about one-quarter of Republicans. Second is the broad group, perhaps 50%, who identify as strong Republicans and also believe Trump should be the party’s 2024 candidate. And third is the group, about 25%, who would like to see a vigorous caucus race, with lots of candidates, but who, if push comes to shove and Trump enters the field, will vote for him.
“The one thing across the board is they all support his policies,” Kaufmann said. And if Trump were not in the race, they would support who they saw as the strongest candidate advocating Trump policies. But they believe the truly strongest advocate would be Trump himself. “That middle 50% group, Republicans first — for some of them it is difficult to see anyone else being able to do what they want in D.C. without Trump’s personality,” Kaufmann explained. “Looking back at the era of the Bushes, they see Republicans as being complicit in the problem. Now, they worry that a non-Trump pushing Trump policies will not be strong enough.”
Strength. It’s a word that has come back over and over with Republican voters since Trump first entered the race in 2015. Back then, and today, a significant number of Republicans believe that Trump has a unique strength to push back against what they see as the Democratic-progressive threat to the American way of life. Now, Kaufmann believes a Trump entry would essentially clear the Republican field in Iowa. Yes, there would be a few other candidates — Chris Christie is already talking about running — but the way for Trump would be mostly clear.
But what about all that has happened? For millions of people, his actions after last year’s elections — the refusal to concede, the failed lawsuits, the scheming to find a way to overturn key state results, the plan to challenge the Electoral College vote on Jan. 6, culminating in the riot at the Capitol that followed — are disqualifying. As bad as Biden is — and it appears the current president is working 24/7 to create conditions favorable to a Trump comeback — it seems highly unlikely that a winning coalition of all voters, as opposed to a majority of Republicans in Iowa or other red states, would choose to return Trump to the White House.
In New Hampshire, Trump’s support does not appear to be quite as strong as in Iowa. But it is still strong. And in South Carolina, Republican support for Trump is so intense that some politicos view a GOP primary there — if one is held at all — as a sort of Apprentice-like contest to identify Trump’s running mate.
All that could change, of course. Trump might not run. He might have some health problem — after all, he would be 78 years old beginning a second term, the same age as Biden today, and would be asking voters to put him in office until he is 82. If Biden is too old to be president, Trump will be, too. And, of course, if elected, Trump would be a lame duck from the beginning since he would be serving his second term.
The nation has had one president who served two nonconsecutive terms in the White House — Grover Cleveland, who served from 1885 to 1889 and again from 1893 to 1897. So it has been done. But it’s still accurate to say Republicans find themselves in a situation that has happened only once in nearly 250 years. Who knows how it will turn out?
Now add that to the uncertainty that exists in the Democratic Party. Together, the conditions in both Democratic and Republican camps could make for the most unsettled — not to mention just plain weird — presidential campaign season ever.
For a deeper dive into many of the topics covered in the Daily Memo, please listen to my podcast, The Byron York Show — available on the Ricochet Audio Network and everywhere else podcasts can be found. You can use this link to subscribe.
