Tuesday, May 23, 2023

Youngkin 2024 is a Byproduct of Uncertainty

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

First, over at FHQ Plus...
  • Given the 2024 primary calendar uncertainty, there has been chatter about Delaware being added to the early window when Georgia and New Hampshire are unable or unwilling to comply with the DNC rules. Is Delaware on the move? All the details at FHQ Plus.
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In Invisible Primary: Visible today...
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FHQ quipped last week that Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin's on-again/off-again consideration of presidential bid was just the sort of decisiveness that Republican primary voters seem to be after in the 2024 cycle. And no, that probably still is not fair. It is best to observe this back and forth as a measure of the uncertainty in the overall race. There are doubts about Trump, electability concerns due to the baggage, however one defines it, that the former president carries. And there have been growing doubts in recent weeks about the type of candidate Ron DeSantis will be and the kind of campaign he will run. 

That uncertainty opens doors for other possibilities, or perhaps, feeds a desire among a certain class for alternatives. And that is true of what is happening on the Youngkin front. The governor has not exactly gotten glowing reviews from everyone. He has been described as not "all in" by some donors. Yet, it is those donors, in a collective sense, that seem to be driving the latest round of "will Youngkin run?" speculation. They seem to be the ones not only pining most for a Trump alternative, but goading Youngkin into reconsidering launching a bid. It would be easy to consider Youngkin a kind of Rick Perry 2012 sort of figure in all of this, but it is likely better viewed in the broader sense of discovery, scrutiny, decline that dominated the 2012 Republican process as described by Sides and Vavreck. Like 2012, 2024 has an uneasy frontrunner with (currently) somewhere in the range of plurality to majority support during the invisible primary. But said frontrunner is happily willing to assist in the act of scrutiny if threatened. 


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Julia Azari and Seth Masket are really good in this piece over at MSNBC discussing the informal rules of the presidential nomination process. Is the system undergoing a breakdown, a rewriting, an evolution or some combination of all three? This section on the impacts of the changes on winnowing in the 2024 Republican nomination race is particularly worthy of flagging:
"Another source of mystery has to do with timing. Some of the most important unwritten rules of the nominating process come into play after the voting has begun. It’s assumed that the losers will drop out and endorse the winners after a few lackluster primaries, or when it becomes mathematically impossible to win the nomination. But given Trump’s legal troubles and the uncertainty they create — what if Trump has won enough delegates in the primaries to clinch the nomination by next April but is then convicted of a felony before the convention? — we might be more likely to see otherwise unpromising candidates ride it out to the convention. This might be significant for DeSantis, especially if he believes he could emerge victorious in a floor fight."
Highly recommend this one. FHQ certainly does more than its fair share of talking about formal rules, but the informal ones matter too!


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It is probably premature to suggest that it is Iowa-or-bust for challengers to Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination. There are, after all, seven plus months of the invisible primary yet to play out. However, if things stay on this same course, then the caucuses in the Hawkeye state may present a clear (final?) opportunity to "ding" Trump. These are not separate things, of course. What happens in Iowa will, to some degree, be a function of what has happened thus far in the invisible primary and the continued campaign organization building that will take place between now and January. 


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On this date...
...in 1972, Senator George McGovern swept the Oregon and Rhode Island primaries on his path to the 1972 Democratic nomination.

...in 2000, Texas Governor George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore won their parties' respective primaries in Arkansas. Additionally, Bush took the Idaho primary and Gore prevailed in the Kentucky primary.

...in 2020, Hawaii Democratic released results showing former Vice President Joe Biden won the party-run primary in the Aloha state.



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