09-30-2020, 11:54 AM
I look at the primary votes (nearly 10% in New Hampshire and Pennsylvania) for William Weld as internal dissent within the GOP. As barely as he won in 2016, any significant loss of support within his own Party would mean a loss in the next election. Unless one wins by at least a near-landslide, a President seeking re-election must at the least keep those who held their noses while voting for him (which includes those who vote strictly on party lines) to get re-elected. Winning new2 supporters when another part of one's winning coalition moves away from one's Party. Jimmy Carter would have had a good chance of getting re-elected had he been able to hold onto the new evangelical Christians who voted for him in 1976 but went Republican in 1980 -- and picked up the vast majority of Anderson voters of 1980.
The hazard with the second key does not come from a perennial candidate Harold Stassen* at a ridiculously-old age or an extremist like Lyn Larouche or David DuKKKe. It comes from people who identify with the Party of the recent nominees who decide this time (although it might be a transition) to the more conventional nominee of another Party (Democrats for Nixon in 1972, Democrats for Reagan in 1980, and Republican Voters Against Trump in 2020.
So contrast Trump to the last three Presidents, all of whom faced no more than a nominal challenge to their campaigns for re-nomination. Obama? Nothing. Dubya? I forget. Clinton? I forget. It is far more difficult to win re-election as Presidential if one spends much of one's time rebuilding bridges to those who voted against one in the primary election. Basically the third key is a strong one (with even a mediocre record of achievements, voters from the initial election are not likely to see their first vote as a mistake), but the second key can take it back. If reliable voters on the Other Side despise the incumbent, then such does not matter. If people within one's Party are getting the heebie-jeebies about what they have, then that incumbent President has deep problems.
Party unity matters, and Trump lacks it this time. Maybe I have a slightly-different formulation for failure than does Lichtman, but when you see people fitting Republican stereotypes and the boilerplate ideology of the Republican Party turning against him and even recent elected officials, then one is almost doomed to defeat.
*I made a joke one time about the Republican Party nominating Stassen, who was finally dead. Nothing in the Constitution takes away the right to run for office from someone just because he is dead.
The hazard with the second key does not come from a perennial candidate Harold Stassen* at a ridiculously-old age or an extremist like Lyn Larouche or David DuKKKe. It comes from people who identify with the Party of the recent nominees who decide this time (although it might be a transition) to the more conventional nominee of another Party (Democrats for Nixon in 1972, Democrats for Reagan in 1980, and Republican Voters Against Trump in 2020.
So contrast Trump to the last three Presidents, all of whom faced no more than a nominal challenge to their campaigns for re-nomination. Obama? Nothing. Dubya? I forget. Clinton? I forget. It is far more difficult to win re-election as Presidential if one spends much of one's time rebuilding bridges to those who voted against one in the primary election. Basically the third key is a strong one (with even a mediocre record of achievements, voters from the initial election are not likely to see their first vote as a mistake), but the second key can take it back. If reliable voters on the Other Side despise the incumbent, then such does not matter. If people within one's Party are getting the heebie-jeebies about what they have, then that incumbent President has deep problems.
Party unity matters, and Trump lacks it this time. Maybe I have a slightly-different formulation for failure than does Lichtman, but when you see people fitting Republican stereotypes and the boilerplate ideology of the Republican Party turning against him and even recent elected officials, then one is almost doomed to defeat.
*I made a joke one time about the Republican Party nominating Stassen, who was finally dead. Nothing in the Constitution takes away the right to run for office from someone just because he is dead.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.