Former U.S. president and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gestures as he speaks during the Turning Point Action Conference in West Palm Beach, Fla. on July 15.MARCO BELLO/Reuters
This summer’s blockbuster horror movies – Oppenheimer and Barbie – cannot match the sheer scariness of the real-life political horror that is the 2024 Republican presidential race.
Any movie about the nuclear bomb or a doll that comes to life would be frightening enough. But Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan, who has said he accepts the horror label, goes to extra lengths to make us squirm in our seats. Barbie director Greta Gerwig might have set out to make a feminist satire, but its hypercapitalist Mattel marketing tie-ins give it a creepy Kafkaesque quality.
Still, neither movie is as scary as the zombie-like resilience of Donald Trump. Ever since he came down that escalator in 2015 to declare he was running for president, Hollywood has had a hard time coming up with fictional dramas that can surpass the Twilight Zone eeriness of the Trumpian age in which we all remain trapped.
Two impeachments and two criminal indictments – with a third indictment expected soon, and potentially more to follow – have done nothing to hurt his poll numbers. On the contrary, they have sent them through the roof.
Early this year, Mr. Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis were neck-and-neck in Republican primary polls. Deep-pocketed GOP donors were putting their money behind Mr. DeSantis, after his blowout November re-election in Florida by 19 percentage points. Fox News and other media outlets owned by billionaire Rupert Murdoch were jumping on the DeSantis bandwagon.
Mr. Trump now leads Mr. DeSantis by 30 percentage points or more in most polls. With more than half of GOP primary voters backing the former president, Mr. Trump’s support surpasses that of all the dozen or so other candidates vying for the party’s 2024 nomination combined. The odds of Mr. Trump ending up on the 2024 presidential ballot now seem insurmountable.
Let that sink in. The carnage Mr. Trump wrought during his first term in office left his country on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He destroyed what little decorum remained in U.S. politics. Even a generous assessment of his presidency that recognizes the odd domestic or foreign policy success, such as the rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines or the Abraham Accords, must arrive the conclusion that Mr. Trump fanned the flames of hate, violated democratic norms, and is unfit to govern.
His behaviour leading up the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, showed that, given the chance, he would subvert the democratic system and assume dictatorial powers. He is an authoritarian at heart.
It would be nice to think that the possibility of him recapturing the White House in 2024 would be alarming enough to mobilize right-thinking Americans in both parties to unite to prevent it from happening. But that is not the Barbie world we live in.
President Joe Biden’s strategists actually relish the prospect of Mr. Trump’s nomination in 2024. They believe Mr. Biden (who will be almost 82 when the next presidential election comes around) stands a better chance of beating a 78-year-old Mr. Trump than a much younger GOP contender.
That is far from certain. Mr. Biden inspires too little enthusiasm among independent voters to bet on their fear of a second Trump term to clinch his own re-election in 2024. The battleground states that will decide the election could easily swing to Mr. Trump if a recession grips the country or Mr. Biden stumbles on the campaign trail.
Whatever you think of him, Mr. DeSantis is no Donald Trump.
Yes, the 44-year-old Governor has stoked the culture wars in his state, and his administration’s overhaul of the African American history curriculum (for instance, to teach middle schoolers “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit”) is unnecessarily antagonistic. But the Yale- and Harvard-educated former Navy lawyer is a mainstream politician who remains vastly preferable to Mr. Trump.
The first GOP primary voters will not cast a ballot until early next year. At this point in the 2020 Democratic race, many pundits were already counting Mr. Biden out. So it would be premature to declare Mr. DeSantis a spent force. But his campaign just laid off 38 of its 90 staffers, and it is growing short on cash as donations dry up.
If Mr. DeSantis cannot turn it around soon, he should get behind South Carolina Senator Tim Scott. Mr. Scott has an inspiring up-by-the-bootstraps life story to tell, and he is considered a moderate in a party that has veered to the populist right in the Trump era.
Between Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Scott, one of them needs to end the Trump horror show before it’s too late.