Dem
51
GOP
49
Richard Shelby switched teams. Kyrsten Sinema jumped off her team into a kind of no-womans-land as an independent. Could Donald Trump do something like that if he loses the Republican primaries? So far, he has insisted that he will win the GOP nomination, so the issue is moot for the moment. But the reality is that if he is indicted and convicted, there is a realistic chance that he could lose to Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) or someone else. What then? Could he run as an independent? How would that play out?
Juan Williams has some ideas about that. Williams' main point is that Trump can't stand losing the spotlight. If he loses the primary and goes back to Mar-a-Lago to sulk and issue "truths" on Truth Social, the media will simply drop him like a hot potato and focus entirely on the Democratic and Republican nominees, not Trump. He won't be able to bear that. Also, he will be furious with the Republican Party for not anointing him. That suggests that he will try to mount a campaign as an independent.
Some states have "sore loser" laws that forbid someone who lost a partisan primary from getting on the ballot as an independent. However, most of them do not apply to candidates for president. So legally, if Trump could get enough signatures on petitions, which would be easy for him, he could get on the ballot almost everywhere. But how well would he do as an independent? A lot depends on how the "double haters" react. These are people who hate both Biden and Trump (and, generally, the two-party system). If they all flocked to Trump, he might be able to make a go of it. Would they?
There is some history here. In 2016, the double haters went for Trump by 17 points. However, in 2020, they went for Biden by 15 points. How come? Maybe in 2016, they thought Trump would upset the applecart and move in a new, bipartisan direction. Instead, he acted like an extreme Republican, and a crazed one at that. They probably didn't like that. Williams thinks that in 2024, they will mostly go for the Democratic nominee, probably Joe Biden, again, and that Trump will mostly pull votes from the Republican candidate. In a close election, a net loss of even 5 or 10 points would be fatal to the Republican nominee. Would Trump go through with a plan that would probably give Biden another term? We would say so, and Williams agrees. The former president has no loyalty whatsoever to the Republican Party, and would have no compunction against destroying the Party to feed his own ego. Williams concludes by saying he hopes the double haters realize that if they vote for Trump, they may be able to destroy the old system but they won't be creating a new one.
If Trump loses the GOP primary and decides to go it alone, we wonder who his running mate might be. If Kysten Sinema thinks she has no chance to actually be elected senator from Arizona as an independent, she has some veepish things going for her: she's a woman, she's an actual independent, Republicans like her, and she is very well known. Would she do it? Well, her love of the spotlight is second only to Trump's. (V)