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Hello, and welcome to the Common Bridge. I'm your host, Rich Helppie. We've had some great guests and great topics, talked about a lot of policy ideas. A lot of times the policy issues aren't addressed; they go on for a long time with seemingly no action from those that we elect. The thought occurred to me that maybe we haven't had a good presidential nominee for ten years, this being 2022. So maybe we have to go back to 2012 to find a person that's qualified, that people also were enthusiastic about voting for. So I thought I would talk a little bit about the mythical Biden/Trump rematch - which isn't going to happen - and I'll give my view on why. So welcome to The Common Bridge for a wee bit of political analysis from me, your host, Richard Helppie, without a guest today.
So apparently, the established pundit class is running out of political material. I say this, because there's been a lot of press about a 2024 presidential rematch of Donald Trump for the Republicans and Joe Biden for the Democrats. A Biden/Trump rematch, in my opinion, is not going to happen. Now I get that the speculation is a source of revenue for various media outlets. I understand it's a distraction for others, and probably speculation about such a rematch is a fundraiser for both parties. But I don't think we'll see either Joe Biden or Donald Trump on the 2024 ballot. First reason is this; it's just demographics. The 2024 voters will be aligned differently than the 2020 voters. If either major party tries to run the same playbook in 2024 that they did in earlier wins, they're going to get wiped out.
But more importantly is the foundational issue, and the foundational issue is this; the two major parties continue to get more dysfunctional. At the presidential level, we have one party with a candidate they know is too weak to run again and the other party has a candidate they just want to go away without actually having to make an effort to send him packing. Now on the Democrat side - and I include their supporting media - their claim is pretty loud, you've heard it all over the place; the country cannot sustain more Donald Trump. But the only reason that Donald Trump became president in the first place was because the Democrats shut down the person who would have beaten Trump - that being Bernie Sanders - and nominated a terrible candidate that ran an arrogant, and frankly awful, campaign and I've talked about that before. What really puzzles me though, is that the Democrats tried so hard to get rid of Donald Trump by what I'll call extracurricular means, and the results just kept Mr. Trump's chances alive. Why not just let the guy's behavior drag him down? The Democrats kept pumping life into him from the far fetched Russian claim to the endless "he's cornered now" stories.
Donald Trump's behavior in office, his pre-emptive disparaging of the election, his disgusting inability to be gracious to his successor, is a chapter the country needs to see in the rearview mirror. What are the Democrats afraid of? Why do they want to make sure Donald Trump cannot run? It seems a dream matchup would be the Republicans nominating Donald Trump. Why would they fear him? They beat him with a very aged guy operating mostly from his basement. Unless they think their performance since 2020 would not warrant re-election - and I'm just kidding here - or they didn't think they actually beat him. Again, I'm not going to suggest that; it'd be like, yeah, let's run against that guy again. While Democrats - again, they supposedly fear and loathe Donald Trump - they want to have voters of their party vote against other candidates and for Trump-backed candidates in primaries, and their strategy is to turn the contest into a "vote blue no matter who".
Again, a strategy that basically excuses them from doing any kind of actual governing. Okay, so in other words, ignore how we've governed and just pick your team.
So shouldn't that make it a layup for the grand old party? Well, here's the Republican side of this. Their supporting media claim Joe Biden is too old, too weak to do a full campaign or the job as president. Yet, to my knowledge, not one leading Republican raised the question if Trump really believed his command of such tough material as person, woman, man, camera, TV, proved anything other than Donald Trump's audience loves to be lied to, or that Trump himself believes that proves his mental acuity - it doesn't. Democrats do not have a bench, say the Republicans, but it was their own narcissist who delighted in telling people that Gavin Newsom is saying some nice things about me, or beaming like a kindergartener being named student of the week when it was suggested he get a Nobel Prize for opening the door with North Korea.
The Republicans have more reason and more incentive to see Donald Trump gone from politics than the Democrats. But instead, they're relying on culture war matters and pointing at the alternative to try to generate a negative vote. So It puzzles me - it puzzles me greatly - that the Republicans are not leveraging the revelations of the January 6 committee to push past Trump once and for all. And I don't know if this is an exact law or just a rule, but apparently one can't do any kind of political analysis without speaking about the January 6 hearings. I'll try to do that here as briefly as I can. So first of all, it's a well orchestrated media event. I think it really punctuates that the Democrats need the foil of a Donald Trump, that's their thing, that's who they've got to go after. But not only them, the struggling cable "news" networks, as they like to call themselves, well, frankly, they love it. MSNBC viewers were up 26% from May to June. But look, they're just playing to the faithful. It's kind of like NHL fans tuning in to the Stanley Cup finals in the summer, while 30 other cities are largely tuned out. Yeah, people kind of know what's going on, but they're not paying that much attention.
So what do we get from the established media? The soothing refrain of defending our democracy. Now this is a catchphrase that apparently must be repeated about every 90 seconds or so. At the same time, ignoring the years long nonsense of relentless prosecutions of Donald Trump and all those near him, and walking away from the Democrats own big tech censorship that they enabled, and their fictitious voter suppression stories. Okay, I will say it's been entertaining. And until one compromised, so called "legal analyst" was paid or bribed or threatened to make a case for a manslaughter charge against the ex-president, the funniest bit for me was the story that quote "Trump defrauded banks and insurance companies" close quote. That was a mantra along with the similar mantra "Trump undervalued his real estate holdings to avoid taxes.” This was fed to millions as some big crime, millions who didn't know that banks and insurance companies have valuation teams, and that municipalities have assessors, or maybe to the few people who would actually sell their own home for the figure on their tax bill.
In any case, despite the entertaining nature of all this, there are only four possible outcomes remaining. And they are this; that Donald Trump's indicted, Donald Trump's not indicted, Donald Trump's convicted, Donald Trump's not convicted. That's where we stand at this point. And of course, there are millions who passionately do not want to see Mr. Trump in prison. And there are millions who have been advocating for a life sentence since about 2015 - this is their moment. Those that see the former president as a sympathetic figure - and there are still a lot of them - believe a trial or trials will see public opinion pivot after a defense is offered. I don't really want to see that, but if there's an indictment, we're going to. And there's millions of others who believe that he must be guilty of something given all of the accusations to date.
So, here's the serious question; which group is more likely to accept an outcome they don't like? In case anyone needs reminding, there were riots in the past two presidential inauguration periods. The country was torn apart by orchestrated civil disturbances. And both losing candidates in the two most recent presidential elections, fought and expressed that the election was stolen from them - granted one more ardently than the other. As I've said often in my speaking and in my writing, I want justice and some assurance that we won't ever see this type of behavior from the White House again, or anything even close to it and all people that are found guilty are punished to the extent of the law. But we have a party - the Republicans - who will not publicly force the issue, and another party - the Democrats - who seemingly want to mow down any elements of our constitutional republic that didn't give them their way on whatever the most recent issue was - it didn't go [our] way so we got to destroy it. In any case, we shall see January 6 play out and there's no scenario I see that will be pleasing or pretty to watch. But in any case, neither of the 2020 candidates will be on the ballot.
Let's just break that down a little bit. Trump never expanded his base. Opportunity after opportunity he just got nuttier and nuttier. This is the guy who thought that the COVID briefings were a reality show starring himself, a guy who wants to rule by "you're fired," and if you believe some of the more recent allegations, trying to put that into law or into practice. Democrats have provided a broad attack surface both culturally and economically but Donald Trump is the worst person to actually make that case. Imagine, if you will, Donald Trump arguing that the Democrats don't respect women due to the language gyrations that the Democrats have done. Democrats were smart enough to not re-nominate their last losing presidential candidate. I wonder if the Republicans are that smart. And how dumb would the Republicans need to be to nominate Donald Trump?
The Democrats far left instincts have resulted in new voter registrations for Republicans, a watershed Governor election in Virginia, and deep distrust for the party of FDR, JFK and Barack Obama. The new registrations are with the Republicans because they think Donald Trump is the past, not the future. So the Republican, Independent and crossover voters who gave a narrow electoral college win to Donald Trump will be muted by the new Republicans who are just asking for sanity. The Republican voters in 2024 will be a different group than 2020 unless the GOP is stupid enough to believe Donald Trump's exaggerated claims of popularity and nominate him again. Then they'll all be voting for anyone but Trump or staying home. Now, Joe Biden's not going to be on the ballot either. People who can imagine Joe Biden enduring even a modest primary campaign and then a full national campaign are the same group of people who believed Jussie Smollett, think destruction of a city can be defined as fiery but peaceful, and nodded in approval as the obviously lying Christine Blasi Ford set the stage for future attacks on justices of the supreme court, the negatives on the economy, rising China, the border mess that has now expanded into New York City and Washington DC, mixed messaging when the rapist of a pregnant child turned out to be a Columbus man in the country illegally, when concern parents from being labeled domestic terrorists want to know why their tots must be masked up in school. Joe Biden is not the person to lead that discussion. And unless the Republicans finish off their chances for control of the House in November, the revelations of influence peddling courtesy of Hunter Biden will again be front and center.
Look, Joe Biden has done this country a great service. He provided a station off the Trump train - that's it. With that chapter, it's over, it's time to move on. But move on to what? I think the answer is pretty clear. We need to demand that both the Democrats and Republicans grow up and actually govern. Let me say that again. Democrats, Republicans grow up and actually govern. Look at all the issues we have. We have student debt, the border, wage growth, inflation, health care, international competition, price of drugs, fentanyl invading our country. The basics of a sound society are going wanting - quit wishing for distractions. You know, I saw one local congressional candidate's ad, and he said he's going to fight the next pandemic, the next pandemic. That's his message. The populace demands for a society and an economy that provides safe neighborhoods, good policing, equal justice, and opportunity for all to improve their standing, has not gone away. If such a set of populace demands can give us Donald Trump, can those unmet demands get the entrenched parties to grow up and govern? Can we turn that energy to asking them all to step up? Look, we're facing this insular world of inside the beltway - and a few other locales, just for shorthand, think of New York and Los Angeles - but the fact is, this is a broad country that is hungry for leadership and wants real action. They want a government and a media system that reflects the industriousness, the generosity, and kindness of the vast majority of Americans. We're not who we've been depicted, and we shouldn't be divided.
Now, what about this shift to growing up and actually governing? Republicans should like this, because it turns the narrative away from being the party of Trump, and it would advance their historic gains with demographics that are leaving the Democrats for the GOP. Republicans will not like growing up and actually governing because they need to take actual positions on stuff, especially those important to younger voters like climate, like energy action, and a chance for economic opportunity. Democrats would like the idea of a campaign focused on growing up and governing, because a look forward means not running on one's track record; need we say the COVID response or the Afghan withdrawal. Democrats will not like the idea of just getting better candidates and finding compromise, but because it will disrupt the strong momentum that party loyalty supersedes anything and everything. For reference, see Joe Manchin and the word "undermine" or Joe Manchin and the word "traitor".
Better candidates is the answer. I'm sad to say that this answer remains obvious. We need better candidates, we need better governing from the two major parties, or we need new parties to take their place. We need processes that won't keep serving up the same type of party against party wars that do nothing for the vast majority of Americans. We also need an objective, serious and even-handed media model. The extreme "join our team" approach has worn quite thin. I'm a sports fan. It works great for sports, but in politics and in governing it's brought us to an existential crisis. So look, what can our listeners and viewers and readers do? First of all, don't despair. Don't buy the distractions. Insist on real candidates. And again, it won't be Donald Trump, it won't be Joe Biden. Don't give in to the exasperation, don't give into the exaggeration, all that just leads to violence ultimately. It's time to step back from the brink of civil war now, we have all the tools, all the rights and responsibilities in our Constitutional Republic, and far more that unites us than divides us. Let's use the tools and exercise our rights and meet our responsibilities. And let's find where we can agree; no one's going to get one hundred percent of their way. Compromise is not a bad word. Let's all step off the partisan extremes and onto the Common Bridge. Thank you. I'm your host, Richard Helppie on The Common Bridge, please again, join us at substack.com; look up The Common Bridge. Find us on your favorite podcast outlet and on YouTube TV, as well as on your radio garden app. Thank you and this is Rich Helppie signing off on The Common Bridge.
Transcribed by Cynthia Silveri
2024 Won’t Be A Biden-Trump Rematch