OPINION: Bad omen for Trump

Editor’s note: david mark He is a political journalist, author, and speaker. He is the author of “.Going Dirty: The Art of Negative CampaigningCo-author of ‘Dog whistles, walks, and Washington handshakes: Decoding the jargon and expletives of American political speech.” The views expressed in this commentary are his own.read more opinions On CNN.

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Former President Donald Trump is the closest thing in modern political history to a sitting president who hasn’t held office.

After all, Americans elected Trump president in 2016, and he has largely disappeared from public life even after his 2020 defeat. As a result, Trump’s name recognition has virtually reached 100%.

He also had years of presidential campaign experience and a top advisor who was familiar with politics in key primary states, helping him win the Republican nomination with little effort. But these significant advantages raise questions about his chances in the general election, given his inability to win the full support of Republican primary voters.

Despite nearly sweeping Super Tuesday states and effectively clinching the Republican nomination, Trump was unable to escape the shadow of former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley. Haley dropped out on Wednesday after consistently winning around 30% in Republican primaries in the states she competed in. Although this is a minority within the party, there is a considerable amount of dissatisfaction in the party as it heads towards what is expected to be an extreme situation. The general election is expected to be a close race against President Joe Biden.

In modern political history, presidents who have faced serious challenges in primaries have not performed well in general elections. Although each survived politically and won their party’s nomination, the challengers exposed weaknesses that the other party’s candidates exploited and defeated.

It’s President Trump and Haley, who served as ambassador to the United Nations for nearly two years in the Haley administration and used her credentials and more traditional Republican foreign policy views to woo some disgruntled Republican primary participants. It could happen this year after the primary election with Mr. . In interviews with voters, they often cited President Trump’s temperament and unpresidential behavior when explaining their preference for her.

At the ballot box, Haley outperforms her old boss among suburban professionals, many of whom are independent voters who will decide the presidential race in battleground states such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. He was steadily gaining votes. While at least some of these voters are likely to ultimately support President Trump in the fall, this number also indicates that a small but meaningful number of defectors from President Trump will instead support President Joe Biden. He has indicated that he may vote or sit out the White House race.

History highlights that this type of vote diversion traditionally bodes poorly for incumbent presidents closest to Trump’s current position. The last time a president faced a serious challenge within his own party was in 1992, when Pat Buchanan sought the Republican nomination against President George H.W. Inflicted injury.

Buchanan, a former Republican White House aide who later became a syndicated columnist, ran a right-wing populist nationalist platform that in many ways foreshadowed his 2016 presidential victory. Although Mr. Buchanan did not defeat Mr. Bush in the primary, he exposed ideological fissures within the Republican Party, including in several states that Democratic candidate Bill Clinton would have won in November of that year. Dissatisfaction with the incumbent on trade and immigration also helped independent presidential candidate Ross Perot lose 19% of the popular vote, although he won no states in the Electoral College.

Before that, in 1980, Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy challenged President Jimmy Carter for the left-leaning Democratic nomination. Despite suffering a series of defeats in his early campaigns, Kennedy bounced back and won several subsequent primaries, taking his fight to the national convention in August of that year. Mr. Carter won, but his campaign had already been seriously damaged by Mr. Kennedy’s challenge, and the incumbent lost in a landslide to his Republican rival, former California governor Ronald Reagan.

Carter was made vulnerable by a combination of domestic and international crises, and Kennedy grilled him on the terrible economy. Reagan used this as one of his effective attacks against Carter during the fall campaign, rhetorically asking voters in one debate, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” was impressive.

The situation was similar in 1976 when President Reagan challenged President Gerald Ford for the Republican nomination. Ford, who took over the Oval Office from President Richard Nixon after he resigned due to the Watergate scandal, fended off attacks from the right by Reagan for months. Ford narrowly won the nomination at the Republican convention, but lost to Carter that fall.

And back in 1968, President Lyndon Johnson declined to seek re-election after a disappointing showing in the New Hampshire Democratic primary. Johnson defeated Minnesota Sen. Eugene McCarthy 49% to 42%. Johnson withdrew from the race on March 31, 1968, unable to win even a majority against an unknown senator from his party who had relentlessly attacked him for continuing the Vietnam War. The eventual Democratic candidate, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, was defeated. Republican candidate Nixon took advantage of the rift within the opposition over Vietnam and domestic unrest to become president in November of the same year.

Fast forward to 2024, and it looks ominous for Republicans to see a significant number of Republican voters in a series of primaries say they won’t vote for Trump in November. For example, exit polls in three Super Tuesday states showed that Hailey voters refused to say they would support Trump as the Republican candidate, with 78% of Hailey voters in North Carolina and 69% in California. %, and 68% in Virginia.

There is no doubt that some Republican voters who supported Ms. Haley in the primaries and caucuses will return to Mr. Trump’s base in November, perhaps becoming a majority. But even if a sizable minority supported Biden or did not vote, that would amount to tens of thousands of votes in each state.

These voters were also critical last time. According to exit polls, Mr. Biden won 6% of Republicans and 54% of independents in 2020, compared to 41% for Mr. Trump. (In 2016, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton lost independents 42% to 46%, highlighting the importance of leaning toward Biden.)

As it relates to the looming rematch between Biden and Trump in 2024, their historical similarities are different and have limitations. But the principle is clear. When a sitting president faces serious challenges in the primaries, he becomes significantly weaker politically and goes on to lose in November. Sometimes it revolves around specific issues, such as Mr. McCarthy criticizing Mr. Johnson over Vietnam. It can also create a general sense among voters that the current president is incompetent, as in President Kennedy’s criticism of Carter in 1980.

Although Biden is the true incumbent in this race and could be a one-term president like Carter, who has been blamed for the economic recession and overseas crises, the key process will depend on Trump. suggests that it is more vulnerable. Biden received very few votes in the primary, with rivals such as Minnesota Representative Dean Phillips and spiritual guru Marianne Williamson receiving only low single-digit votes. Although Trump won most of the primaries, he still faced a significant number of negative votes, similar to the incumbent president he lost in November.

To be sure, Biden on Tuesday also showed signs of weakness in the election. The fallout from Israel’s defensive war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip continues. In Michigan’s Democratic primary on February 27, thousands of Arab-American and young voters voted for Biden’s “irresponsible” vote to protest his support for Israel, making up 13% of eligible voters. It went above and beyond. The protests continued Tuesday in Minnesota, where more than 45,000 Democratic primary voters (about 19%) voted “irresponsible.”

Still, the president consolidated his lead on the nomination Wednesday after Phillips, the most-watched candidate in the Democratic primary, withdrew from the race. His poor performance suggests that the Republican Party has a large share of unhappy Republicans and Republican-leaning voters. The recent history of presidential primary challengers does not bode well for them.