Does Trump Really Have a Chance of Winning Again?

Leaving Washington, D.C., behind, the Trumps board Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Jan. 20, hours earlier President Biden's inauguration. Pete Marovich/Pool/Getty Images hide caption

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Pete Marovich/Pool/Getty Images

Leaving Washington, D.C., behind, the Trumps board Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on January. 20, hours before President Biden'south inauguration.

Pete Marovich/Pool/Getty Images

The Senate had a examination vote this week that cast deep doubt on the prospects for convicting sometime President Donald Trump on the impeachment charge now pending confronting him. Without a two-thirds majority for conviction, there will not be a 2nd vote in the Senate to bar him from future federal office.

As well this calendar week, Politico released a Forenoon Consult poll that plant 56% of Republicans saying that Trump should run once more in 2024. As he left Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20, he said he expected to be "back in some form."

And so will he seek a comeback? And if he does, what are his chances of returning to the White House?

History provides little guidance on these questions. At that place is little precedent for a former president running over again, let alone winning. But since when has the lack of precedent bothered Donald Trump?

Merely one president who was defeated for reelection has come back to win again. That was Grover Cleveland, first elected in 1884, narrowly defeated in 1888 and elected again in 1892.

Another, far ameliorate-known president, Theodore Roosevelt, left office voluntarily in 1908, believing his paw-picked successor, William Howard Taft, would continue his policies. When Taft did not, Roosevelt came dorsum to run against him four years later.

The Republican Party establishment of that time stood by Taft, the incumbent, so Roosevelt ran as a 3rd-party candidate. That split the Republican vote and handed the presidency to Democrat Woodrow Wilson.

And that'southward it. Aside from those two men, no defeated White Business firm occupant has come back to claim votes in the Electoral College. Democratic President Martin Van Buren, defeated for reelection in 1840, sought his party's nomination in 1844 and 1848 but was denied it both times. The latter time he helped found the anti-slavery Free Soil Party and ran every bit its nominee, getting 10% of the popular vote simply winning no states.

More than a few sometime presidents may accept been gear up to get out public life by the terminate of their time at the top. Others surely would have liked to stay longer, simply they were sent packing, either by voters in Nov or past the nominating apparatus of their parties.

There accept also been eight presidents who have died in function. 4 in the 1800s (William Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Abraham Lincoln and James Garfield) were succeeded past lackluster vice presidents who were not nominated for a term on their own. Iv in the 1900s (William McKinley, Warren Harding, Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy) were succeeded by vice presidents whose parties did nominate them for a term in their ain right (Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson).

Each of these four went on to win a term on his ain, and each then left office voluntarily. Equally noted above, Theodore Roosevelt later inverse his mind, and Johnson began the 1968 primary flavor as an incumbent and a candidate simply ended his run at the end of March.

The Jackson model

A statue of President Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square nearly the White House in June. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images hibernate caption

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Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

A statue of President Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square near the White House in June.

Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

One model that might exist meaningful for Trump at this phase is that of President Andrew Jackson, who ran for president three times and arguably won each time. His first campaign, in 1824, was a four-mode contest in which he clearly led in both the popular vote and the Electoral College but lacked the needed majority in the latter.

That sent the issue to the Business firm of Representatives, where each country had one vote. A protracted and dubious negotiation involving candidates and congressional power brokers subsequently denied Jackson the prize. He immediately denounced that result equally a "decadent deal," laying the background for another bid. In 1828, Jackson was swept into part, ousting the incumbent on a wave of populist fervor.

It is not an blow that Trump, following the communication of erstwhile adviser Steve Bannon, spoke approvingly of Jackson in 2016. When he entered the White House, Trump hung Jackson's presidential portrait in the Oval Office overlooking the Resolute Desk.

Information technology is not hard to imagine Trump invoking the spirit of Jackson's 1828 campaign confronting the "corrupt deal," if he runs in 2024 against "the steal" (his autograph for the outcome of the 2020 election, which he falsely claims was illegitimate).

Jackson, the ultimate outsider in his own time, makes a far ameliorate template for Trump than either Cleveland or Teddy Roosevelt — fifty-fifty though the latter ii were New Yorkers like Trump.

Two New York governors, two decades autonomously

For now, Cleveland remains the only two-term president who had a fourth dimension out between terms. When he outset won in 1884, he was the first Democratic president elected in 28 years, and he won by the micro-margin of just 25,000 votes nationwide. He won because he carried New York, where he was governor at the fourth dimension, adding its electoral votes to those of Democratic-leaning states in the South – which preferred a Democratic Yankee to a Republican Yankee.

The latter, James Blaine of Maine, was widely known as "Slippery Jim," and his reputation fabricated him repugnant to the more reform-minded members of his ain party. Blaine was too faulted in that campaign for failing to renounce a zealous supporter who had called Democrats the party of "rum, Romanism and rebellion." That phrase, which has lived on in infamy, was a derogatory reference to Democrats' "wet" sentiments on the issue of booze besides as to the Roman Catholics and former secessionists to be found in the party tent.

Stiff as it was, that language backfired past alienating enough Catholics in New York to elect Cleveland, himself a Protestant. His margin in his home state was a mere 1000 votes, but it was plenty to evangelize a majority in the Electoral Higher.

Later Cleveland'due south showtime term, the ballot was excruciatingly shut again. The salient event of 1888 was the tariff on appurtenances from strange countries. Republicans were for information technology, making an argument not unlike Trump'due south own America Beginning rhetoric of 2016. Cleveland, on the other hand, said the tariff enriched large business organization just hurt consumers. He won the national popular vote merely not the Balloter College, having fallen 15,000 votes short in his domicile state of New York.

But Cleveland scarcely broke stride. He continued to campaign over the ensuing years and easily won the Democratic nomination for the third consecutive time in 1892. He so dismissed the one-term incumbent to whom he had lost in 1888, Benjamin Harrison, who received less than a third of the Balloter College vote.

A statue of Theodore Roosevelt in New York City. After leaving function, Roosevelt tried unsuccessfully to render to the White Business firm. David Dee Delgado/Getty Images hibernate caption

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David Dee Delgado/Getty Images

A statue of Theodore Roosevelt in New York City. After leaving office, Roosevelt tried unsuccessfully to return to the White House.

David Dee Delgado/Getty Images

Cleveland stepped down afterward his second term, as other reelected presidents had seen fit to practise in emulation of George Washington. The Republicans reclaimed the presidency with William McKinley in 1896 and iv years later renominated him with a new running mate who brought youth and vigor to the ticket. Merely 41 at the fourth dimension, Theodore Roosevelt had all the same been a police commissioner, a "Rough Rider" cavalry officeholder in the Spanish-American War and governor of New York.

Less than a yr into that term, McKinley was fatally shot, making Roosevelt president at historic period 42 (still the record for youngest chief executive). He won a term of his own in 1904 and promptly pledged non to run once again. True to his word, in 1908 he handed off to his hand-picked successor, Taft.

Roosevelt did so assertive Taft would continue his policies. But if Roosevelt had managed to find entreatment as both a populist figure and a progressive, Taft more often stood with the party'south business organisation-oriented regulars. So "T.R." decided to challenge Taft for the Republican nomination in 1912.

He did well in the nascent "primary elections" held that year, but Taft had the party machinery and controlled the convention. Roosevelt led his delegates out of the convention and organized a third political party, the Progressive Party (known colloquially as the "Bull Moose" political party).

That fall, Roosevelt had his revenge on Taft and the GOP. The incumbent Taft finished a poor third with just eight votes in the Electoral Higher. But Roosevelt was not the main beneficiary, finishing a distant second to Wilson, the Democrat, who had 435 electoral votes to Roosevelt's 88. Although the two Republican rivals' combined popular vote would have hands bested Wilson, dividing the party left them both in his wake.

A alarm to the GOP?

That is the model some Republicans may fear seeing played out in 2024. If nominated, Trump would need to replicate Cleveland'due south unique feat from the 1890s, and he would demand to overcome the demographics and voter trends that have enabled Democrats to win the popular vote in 7 of the last eight presidential cycles.

And if he is non nominated, Trump running as an independent or every bit the nominee of a third party would surely split the Republican vote and make a repeat of 1912 highly probable.

Nonetheless, the grip Trump has on half or more than of the GOP voter base makes him not only formidable but unavoidable every bit the political party plans for the midterm elections in 2022 and the ultimate question of a nominee in 2024.

To exist clear, Trump has not said he will run once again in 2024. On the 24-hour interval he left Washington he spoke of a return "in some form" but was vague near how that might happen. He has sent aides to discourage talk of his forming a third political party.

For the time being, at to the lowest degree, Trump seems intent on wielding influence in the Republican Party he has dominated for the by five years — making it clear he will be involved in primaries in 2022 against Republicans who did not support his campaign to overturn the ballot results.

That is no idle threat. Near Trump supporters have shown remarkable loyalty throughout the post-election traumas, even after the anarchism in the U.S. Capitol. The fierceness of that attachment has sobered those in the GOP who had thought Trump's era would wane after he was defeated. But Trump has been able to agree the popular imagination inside his party, largely by convincing many that he was not defeated.

The results of the election accept been certified in all fifty states by governors and state officials of both parties, and there is no evidence for any of the conspiracy theories questioning their validity. All the same, multiple polls have shown Trump supporters continue to believe he was unjustly removed from office.

Assuming Trump is non convicted on his impeachment charge of inciting an insurrection before the Jan. 6 invasion of the Capitol, he will non face a ban on futurity campaigns.

Some believe Trump might still be kept out of federal function past an invocation of the 14th Amendment. That part of the Constitution, added after the Civil War with former Amalgamated officers in heed, banned any who had "engaged in insurrection" confronting the government.

Simply that diction could well be read to require activeness against the government, not simply incitement of others to action by incendiary speech. It could also require lengthy litigation in federal courts and a balancing of the 14th Amendment with the free speech protections of the First Amendment.

All that can exist said at this betoken is that the onetime president will settle into a mail-presidential routine far from his previous homes in Washington and New York Urban center. And the greatest obstacle to his return to power would seem to be the pattern of history regarding the mail service-presidential careers of his predecessors.

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Source: https://www.npr.org/2021/01/30/961919674/could-trump-make-a-comeback-in-2024

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