Search:
www.bbc.co.uk › news › world-us-canada-67655552
This story seems to be about:
This story seems to be about:
Midway through last week’s Republican presidential-primary debate, the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy started running through conspiracy theories like a frustrated child mashing buttons on Street Fighter, alleging that the Capitol riot was an “inside job” and that the so-called “Great Replacement” theory “is not some grand right-wing conspiracy theory, but a basic statement of the Democratic Party’s platform.”
Right-wing apologism for January 6 is no longer shocking, not even from Republican presidential candidates. Trumpists often vacillate between denying it happened, justifying and valorizing those who attempted to overthrow the government to keep Donald Trump in power, or insisting that they were somehow tricked into it by undercover agents provocateurs. But the basic facts remain: January 6 was a farcical but genuine attempt to overthrow the constitutional government, which many Trump supporters think is defensible because only conservatives should be allowed to hold power.
It was slightly more bizarre to watch Ramaswamy justify “the Great Replacement,” a white-supremacist conspiracy theory holding that, in the words of the disgraced former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, “the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World.” This conviction has motivated slaughter in Buffalo, New York; El Paso, Texas; and as far away as New Zealand. Seeing Ramaswamy invoke it was strange because he, the practicing Hindu son of Indian immigrants, is an obvious example of why it is a dumb idea.
Since Trump’s election, in 2016, the Great Replacement has gone from the far-right fringe to the conservative mainstream. After a white supremacist in Texas targeted Hispanics, killing 23 people in 2019, many conservatives offered condemnations of both the act and the ideology that motivated it. But over the past several years, a concerted campaign by conservative elites in the right-wing media has made the theory more respectable. By 2022, after another white supremacist murdered 10 Black people at a supermarket in Buffalo, some prominent voices on the right were willing to claim that there was some validity to the argument that white people are being “replaced.”
[Adam Serwer: Conservatives are defending a sanitized version of ‘the Great Replacement’]
When Ramaswamy gave voice to it last week, white supremacists celebrated with joyful disbelief. Ramaswamy briefly liked and reposted one of those celebrations, despite telling CNN after the debate that “I don’t care about skin color.” The Great Replacement conspiracy theory does not make sense without reference to race. The theory itself is racist, in that it takes as a given that white Christians are the only true Americans; it opposes not illegal immigration but the presence of immigrants who are simply not white, and implies that the purpose of immigration policy should be to preserve a white majority. But it is also racist in assuming that nonwhite people are “obedient” or even liberal simply as a consequence of not being white. It manages to be both racist and stupid in assuming that political coalitions are permanently stable, and that they are not affected by the salience of particular issues, voters’ own personal experiences, or world events, because non-whites are simply interchangeable.
Arab American voters, both Christian and Muslim, are withdrawing support from Joe Biden over his thus-far unconditional support for Israel’s conduct in its war with Hamas. This shift, along with a drift to the right that had already begun among more conservative segments of the Muslim community over LGBTQ rights—is an obvious example of how religious and ethnic minority groups can realign politically in unanticipated ways. Muslim voters were a largely pro-Bush constituency in 2000, prior to the GOP embrace of anti-Muslim bigotry after 9/11. So were Hispanic voters in 2000 and 2004, and Trump showed similar strength with such voters in 2020, as well as making gains with Black voters. Many immigrants who fled left-wing or Communist regimes in Asia and Latin America—Vietnamese, Venezuelans, Cubans—lean right, much as the influx of Jewish refugees from the Soviet Union in the 1990s did. Immigrants from West Africa are often highly religious and socially conservative. And even within particular groups, there are tremendous regional, cultural, class, and educational differences—Puerto Rican voters in Chicago will not necessarily have the same priorities and values as Tejano voters living in Laredo. The far right and its admirers are too busy railing against diversity to understand that diversity is precisely why “the Great Replacement” is nonsense.
In short, the Democratic Party cannot control how these constituencies vote, because it cannot control how they interpret the world or which issues become salient. Racial identities, including definitions of whiteness, are not stable or permanent across time, and are entirely dependent on politics.
The Republican Party, and its valorization of racial intolerance, has been the Democratic Party’s most effective ally in holding its multiracial coalition together. But even this is no guarantee of party loyalty. Black voters were once a core constituency of the Republican Party, but they preferred the economic agenda of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the party of Dixie to empty Republican platitudes about racial tolerance and being the party of Lincoln.
The fantasy of a “Great Replacement” as a plan to defeat conservatism is, in short, a really dumb idea on its own terms—unless, of course, you are a white nationalist who simply thinks that nonwhites should not be allowed to live in America. In that sense, the most telling thing about Ramaswamy’s invocation of the Great Replacement is that he clearly believes that it’s the kind of thing the Republican base wants to hear.
The Great Replacement is simply another log on the bonfire of right-wing victimhood, an ideology whose consistent position is that its adherents would have unquestioned political hegemony over American life if not for the powerful, shadowy forces arrayed against them. That is the greatest injustice of all—the existence of Americans who oppose them politically, a cataclysm so traumatic that it requires a library of conspiracies to explain.
This story seems to be about:
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.
America is facing an existential authoritarian threat from Donald Trump and the Republican Party in 2024, in part because voters have for too long thought of the presidency as an omnipotent throne.
First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic:
What does the working class really want? Harvard’s president should resign, Graeme Wood argues. The era of easy money is over. That’s a good thing. Science is becoming less human.The Glare of Presidential Power
President Joe Biden is trying to run for reelection on a record of policy successes. In modern American politics, this is a nonstarter: Many Americans no longer tie policy successes or failures to individual politicians. Instead, they decide what they like or don’t like and then assign blame or credit based on whom they already love or hate. Donald Trump understands this problem and exploits it. Whatever his other emotional and intellectual failings, he has always grasped that many American voters now want a superhero, not a president.
The public’s cultish fascination with celebrity is not a new problem, but it’s getting worse. Back in 1992, I was a young professor living in New Hampshire. I was teaching political science back in those days, but I had several years of practical experience from working in city, state, and federal politics. Nonetheless, I was unprepared for the madness that settles over the Granite State during the presidential primaries. I went to several events, and I started to worry about how dysfunctionally Americans regard the office of the chief executive.
As various contenders—including the right-wing populist Pat Buchanan—made their way through the state, I got to hear voters directly addressing the candidates. As far as I could tell, they had one overriding message for the people contending to be the Leader of the Free World at a time of tremendous global instability, and it sounded something like this:
I am an unemployed pipe fitter from Laconia, and I would like to know when you’re going to get me a job.
Say what you will about Bill Clinton, but he got it. He’d bite his lip and exude kilocalories of well-practiced empathy. George H. W. Bush—who defeated Massachusetts Governor Mike Dukakis four years earlier by depicting the Duke as a liberal android with antifreeze in his veins—took his turn in the barrel, checking his watch during a debate and trying to get across a message of caring by saying “Message: I care.”
I always knew that a fair number of voters would form “parasocial” relationships with presidents, a phenomenon—one that is perfectly normal, within limits—in which people think they are connected to, and know, celebrities. What I was not prepared for, however, was to see up close how ordinary citizens think of the American president as Superman (or, if you prefer, the Green Lantern), a nearly omnipotent being who can create new realities through sheer willpower. In 1992, and again during the less contentious 1996 election, I came to understand better how the presidency in the postwar era—and especially during the Cold War—had become so large and its reach so broad that the glare of its powers wiped out the ability of voters to see any office below it.
When I would sit through events in northern New England, I was stunned that the local citizenry seemed unaware of any other level or branch of government. As an occasional talking head on New Hampshire television, I would sometimes try to engage some of these folks. I would ask: Do you have a mayor? A city council? Who is your state representative? (New Hampshire has one of the smallest ratios of voters to legislators in its House of Representatives in the union.) Have you called your state senator? What about the governor? How about your member of Congress?
Sometimes, people knew who these other officials were, and sometimes they didn’t. But in the end, there was an unshakeable faith that if you were unemployed in New Hampshire, the buck stopped in Washington, D.C.
Let’s not be too harsh in blaming the voters. Politicians—in America and elsewhere— encourage this view by doing what politicians do, taking credit for everything good that happens in the nation and sticking blame for the bad stuff on their opponents. It’s a stupid and dangerous game. When it works, it’s magic. Crime fell on your watch? Of course it did; well done, Mr. President. A new wonder drug was developed? You did that, sir. But when things go bad, the temptation to evade blame is overwhelming.
Worse, partisans have every interest in catastrophizing the state of the nation: No one runs on a slogan of “Hey, things are basically okay but we can do better.” Instead, they seek to convince voters in each cycle that the nation is a hot mess and that their nominee for president is the savior who can fix everything—even the stuff that isn’t broken. (Ironically, voters generally don’t care about the one area over which presidents do have nearly full control, foreign policy, unless it’s related to terrorism.)
Republicans, in particular, are the masters at continuously depicting the country as a hellhole and then arguing that the only recourse is to have more hailing to the chief. Their position is rooted in both bad faith and logic: The GOP is becoming a minority party, and it knows that the peculiar path through the Electoral College to the White House is the best hope for exercising national power. But make no mistake: Democrats, too, have an obsession with the presidency. The scholar Mark Lilla calls this the Democratic “daddy complex,” the belief that the president is a father figure who can solve all our problems—which is why so many Democrats show up for presidential elections and then ignore almost everything else.
Trump has played to both sides of the Superman/daddy concept, encouraging a cult of personality that endows one man with saintly powers—a man who never has to deliver, and who can never fail but can only be failed by others. (Trump reportedly wanted to emerge from his COVID treatment at Walter Reed hospital by unveiling a Superman emblem under his shirt.) His GOP competitors still refuse to recognize the irrationality of the Trump cult; in the primary debates, they have argued over policies, as if those matter. Only Vivek Ramaswamy has tried to replicate the Trump celebrity dynamic, but cults do not transfer well and his featherweight Trumpism has had limited appeal even within the GOP.
Biden, meanwhile, has clumsily tried to play the personality game by branding good economic news as “Bidenomics.” Ironically, Biden actually can take at least some credit for the economy (as an extension of his legislative successes), but tacking his name onto economic conditions when voters flatly refuse to draw that connection is a risky and hollow move that cannot even begin to break through the noise of Trump’s blood-and-soil fascism and cries for social and cultural vengeance.
Cults of personality are always a danger in mass politics, and never more so than when unscrupulous opportunists such as Donald Trump or Viktor Orbán or Recep Tayipp Erdoğan warp democratic politics by fusing the idea of the nation to themselves. The world is living through an authoritarian revival, despite some democratic successes (in Poland, most recently). America should be the example to other democracies; instead, years of glorifying individual leaders of both parties have left voters in the United States with an unrealistic understanding of the presidency and its powers—a civic weakness that Trump is exploiting every day on the campaign trail.
Related:
Trump voters are America too. How Trump gets away with itToday’s News
Special Counsel Jack Smith asked the Supreme Court to rule quickly on Trump’s claim that he is immune from federal prosecution for crimes committed while in office, before an appeals court can act on the matter. The Supreme Court will not hear a challenge to Washington’s ban on conversion therapy for minors. The United States blocked a United Nations Security Council draft resolution on Friday that called for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza. The U.S. offered amendments to the draft, including a condemnation of the October 7 attacks.Dispatches
Famous People: Can a four-week online course turn you into a party-hosting genius? Kaitlyn and Lizzie sign up for one to find out.Explore all of our newsletters here.
Evening Read
Jim Young / Bloomberg / GettyThis Is What Happens to All the Stuff You Don’t Want
By Amanda Mull
When you order a pair of sweatpants online and don’t want to keep them, a colossal, mostly opaque system of labor and machinery creaks into motion to find them a new place in the world. From the outside, you see fairly little of it—the software interface that lets you tick some boxes and print out your prepaid shipping label; maybe the UPS clerk who scans it when you drop the package off. Beyond that, whole systems of infrastructure—transporters, warehousers, liquidators, recyclers, resellers—work to shuffle and reshuffle the hundreds of millions of products a year that consumers have tried and found wanting. And deep within that system, in a processing facility in the Lehigh Valley, a guy named Michael has to sniff the sweatpants.
More From The Atlantic
The bridge that divides Italy The type of charisma that saves a holiday party The “permanently orphaned”Culture Break
Will Heath / NBCListen. Many of us complain about being busy—but has that become an excuse for our inability to focus on what matters? Becca Rashid and Ian Bogost discuss on this week’s episode of How to Keep Time.
Watch. Adam Driver’s eerie intensity on Saturday Night Live (streaming on Peacock) offered an idiosyncratic antidote to bland winter cheer.
P.S.
Here in the Nichols home, we decorated the Christmas tree a bit early this year, not least because we bought ours early because of the ongoing tree supply issues. (In our little part of Rhode Island, trees are typically cleaned out by the first week of December.) My wife and I put on some Christmas specials, and I was reminded of something I wrote a few years ago about how most of the classic Christmas shows are terrible.
Don’t bother me with your Frosty or Heat Miser nonsense; those Rankin/Bass productions were creepy, especially everyone’s favorite, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Heck, I wasn’t even the first Atlantic writer to take a bat to the Rudolph special: My colleague Caitlin Flanagan torched the show thoroughly in 2020. It’s a bleak message for kids; almost everyone around Rudolph, including Santa and Rudolph’s dad, Donner, is horrible. (I particularly loathe Fireball, but don’t get me started.) I think only A Charlie Brown Christmas and How the Grinch Stole Christmas are the enduring classics, but if I’m going to be around lousy people at Christmas, I’d much rather rewatch Denis Leary in The Ref, which has more warmth (and lots more Christmas-spirit f-bombs) than any of those weird puppet shows.
— Tom
Katherine Hu contributed to this newsletter.
When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.
This story seems to be about:
The latest GOP presidential debate demonstrated again that Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley are pursuing utterly inimical strategies for catching the front-runner, Donald Trump.
The debate, on Wednesday evening, also showed why neither approach looks remotely sufficient to dislodge Trump from his commanding position in the race.
DeSantis delivered a stronger overall debate performance than Haley. But the evening mostly displayed the structural limitations of the theory that each campaign is operating under, and the limited progress either candidate has made toward surmounting those obstacles.
As he showed during the debate, DeSantis is grounding his coalition on the right by defining himself as an unflagging champion for the party’s most conservative elements. During the debate, the Florida governor’s frequent attacks on Haley, and more infrequent (and oblique) jabs at Trump, both represented variations on the charge that neither rival can be trusted to advance conservative priorities.
Haley, in mirror image, is grounding her coalition in the party’s center. She has focused on consolidating the centrist GOP voters and donors who have long expressed the most resistance to Trump. That includes moderates, people with at least a four-year college degree, GOP-leaning independents, and suburbanites.
DeSantis’s vision, in other words, has been to start on the right and over time build toward the center; Haley wants to grow in the opposite direction by locking down the center, and then expanding into the right.
Supporters of both Haley and DeSantis believe that the other’s approach lowers their ceiling too much to ultimately topple Trump. The problem for all Republicans looking for an alternative to the former president is that last week’s debate offered the latest evidence that each camp may be right about the other’s limitations. With the voting beginning only five weeks from Monday in the Iowa caucus, neither Haley nor DeSantis has found any effective way to loosen Trump’s grip on the party.
Neither, in fact, has even tried hard to do so. Instead, they have centered their efforts almost entirely on trying to squeeze out the other to become Trump’s principal rival. To beat Trump, or to come close, eventually either of them will need to peel away some of the roughly 60 percent of GOP voters who now say in national polls that they intend to support him for the nomination. But both have behaved as if they can leave that challenge for a later day, while focusing on trying to clear the field to create a one-on-one contest with the front-runner.
The theory in DeSantis’s camp has been that the only way to beat Trump is to aim directly at his core supporters with a conservative message. DeSantis advisers acknowledge that his positioning has not connected with many centrist voters. But his camp believes that if DeSantis can emerge after the early states as the last viable alternative to Trump, the moderates most resistant to the former president will have no choice but to rally around the Florida governor, even if they consider him too Trump-like himself.
The voters now drawn to Haley “share a goal in common with Governor DeSantis in that they want an alternative to Trump,” Bob Vander Plaats, a prominent Iowa religious conservative who has endorsed DeSantis, told me. “The more that DeSantis proves there is one alternative to Trump, he will start peeling off that lane as well.” By contrast, Vander Plaats argues, if DeSantis falls out of contention, his support is more likely to flow back to Trump than toward Haley. “I haven’t heard any supporter of DeSantis yet saying: ‘I’m deciding between him and Haley,’” he told me. “Basically, they are between Trump and him.”
DeSantis’s supporters anticipate that his strategy will pay off if he finishes strongly in Iowa. But so far, his decision to offer voters what amounts to Trumpism without Trump has returned few dividends. With his Trump-like agenda on immigration and foreign policy, and emphasis on culture-war issues such as transgender rights, DeSantis has alienated many of the centrist GOP voters most dubious of the former president while failing to dislodge many of his core supporters.
“Ron DeSantis should have consolidated the non-Trump wing of the party from the get go and then gone after soft Trump supporters,” Alex Stroman, a former executive director of the South Carolina Republican Party, told me in an email. “Instead, he tried to out-MAGA Trump from the right and alienated not only soft-Trump voters but also the more pragmatic wing of the party. It was a strategic blunder.”
Haley has filled that vacuum with the elements of the party most skeptical of Trump. Her approach has been to start with the primary voters who like the former president the least, with the hope of eventually attracting more of those ambivalent about him. Her backers believe she has a better chance than DeSantis to reach those “maybe Trump” voters. As the veteran GOP pollster Whit Ayres told me, DeSantis “has tried to appeal to some of the ‘always Trump’ voters, but the ‘always Trump’ voters are always Trump for a reason. Nikki Haley seems to have figured out the job is to consolidate the ‘maybe Trump’ voters who supported Trump twice but now … want a different style and different temperament.”
DeSantis still leads Haley in most national polls, though that may be changing. And he remains even or ahead of her in the polls in Iowa, where he has campaigned relentlessly, won support from most of the state’s Republican leadership (including Governor Kim Reynolds), attracted broad backing in the influential religious-conservative community, and spent heavily on building a grassroots organization.
But DeSantis is in a much weaker position in the other early states. A recent poll by CNN and the University of New Hampshire found him falling to fourth in the Granite State. That poll found Haley emerging as a clear second to Trump, as did another recent CNN survey in South Carolina. In each state, she attracted about twice as much support as DeSantis did. Polls also consistently show Haley running much better than DeSantis, or Trump, in hypothetical general election match ups against President Joe Biden.
All of these positive trends largely explain why DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy, another GOP contender, attacked Haley at the debate. Haley was right when she suggested that the attention reflected anxiety in DeSantis’s camp about her rise. But that motivation doesn’t necessarily make the attacks any less effective.
After delivering the most assured performances in the first three GOP debates, Haley seemed wobbly last week as DeSantis and Ramaswamy pummeled her from the right. Dave Wilson, a longtime Republican and social-conservative activist in South Carolina, told me that Haley had not faced that kind of sustained ideological assault from the right during her career in the state. “It hasn’t been used against her in South Carolina,” Wilson said. “Nikki has never been some kind of mainstreamer or a shill for the big corporations. That’s not who she has portrayed herself as, or how she governed, when she was governor of South Carolina.”
[Read: Trump voters are American too]
At the debate, Haley never seemed to find solid ground when DeSantis accused her of resisting the hard-line approaches he has championed in Florida on issues affecting transgender people. Haley neither embraced DeSantis’s agenda nor challenged it and instead insisted he was mischaracterizing her own record, without entirely clarifying her views. “Especially on those types of cultural issues, it is probably always going to be advantage DeSantis,” Vander Plaats told me. “I think if you turned down the volume and just [looked at] the physical appearance, Nikki was very concerned at that point, like she knew she was in a tough space, and DeSantis was in a very confident space.”
Her uneasy response on issues of LGBTQ rights was a stark contrast to the confident course she has set on abortion. One reason Haley has gained favor with more centrist Republicans is that she has so clearly argued that the GOP cannot achieve sweeping federal abortion restrictions and must pursue consensus around more limited goals. “I think Nikki Haley talks about social issues the same way that real people do: not through demagoguery or hysterics like some candidates, but having real policy disagreements while showing compassion for those affected—and I think that’s the winning formula,” Stroman said.
But at the debate, Haley was unwilling to apply that formula to LGBTQ issues, even as she seemed to seek a more empathetic tone than DeSantis.
“She has clearly thought through a more moderate, nuanced position on abortion that would have greater appeal in a general election,” Alice Stewart, a longtime GOP strategist who has worked for leading social-conservative candidates, told me. “It appears she has not mapped out her position on other culture-war issues, such as transgender procedures and school bathrooms.”
Doubling down on his message at the debate, DeSantis’s campaign told me afterward that “within the confines of the Constitution” he would support nationalizing the key laws affecting transgender people that he has passed in Florida, such as banning gender-affirming care for minors. Haley’s campaign still appeared focused mostly on deflecting this argument: In comments to me after the debate, her aides stressed that although DeSantis criticized her for opposing legislation as governor requiring students to use the restroom of the gender they were assigned at birth, he similarly indicated that the issue was not a priority for him not long thereafter, during his first gubernatorial campaign in 2018. Their message was that DeSantis is stressing these issues now merely out of expediency. But in an email exchange with me after the debate, Haley’s campaign drew a clearer distinction with DeSantis than she did during the encounter: rather than national action to impose on every state the restrictions Florida has approved on LGBTQ issues, the campaign said Haley would “encourage states to pass laws” that ban classroom discussion of sexual orientation or regulate bathroom use for transgender kids. The one exception the campaign noted is that, like DeSantis, she would also support national legislation banning transgender girls from competing in school sports.
The debate drew only a small audience and is unlikely by itself to significantly change the trajectory of the DeSantis and Haley competition. Wilson and Stroman both said they doubt that DeSantis’s ideological attacks will hurt Haley much in the South Carolina primary. “It’s going to be harder in South Carolina than he thinks, because everyone knows what Nikki Haley did in this state,” Wilson said. “Under her leadership, a lot of strong conservative stands were taken.”
But, of course, GOP voters don’t know nearly as much about Haley in the cascade of states that will vote in early March, after South Carolina. DeSantis supporters view her unsteady response to his ideological assault at the debate as validation of their belief that Haley can never attract enough conservative voters to genuinely threaten Trump. “There’s just no path for her to win the nomination,” Vander Plaats argued. “That lane doesn’t exist.”
The path for any alternative to beat Trump is a rocky one, but it’s premature to assume that Haley cannot outlast DeSantis to become the last viable challenger to the former president. She still has time to formulate better responses to the charge that she’s insufficiently conservative for the Trump-era GOP. Portraying Haley as too squishy in the culture war might help her in New Hampshire, the state where she’s hoping to emerge as Trump’s principal rival.
But the debate underscored her need to sharpen her answers on those issues as the race moves on. And for Haley’s supporters, it raised an ominous question: If she couldn’t respond more effectively to an attack on her conservative credentials from DeSantis and Ramaswamy, how would she hold up if she ever becomes enough of a threat for Donald Trump to press that case himself?
www.theatlantic.com › politics › archive › 2023 › 12 › gop-presidential-debate-nikki-haley › 676263
This story seems to be about:
Anyone watching the fourth Republican primary debate tonight would be forgiven for thinking Nikki Haley was the favorite to win the GOP presidential nomination next year.
Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy sure were acting like it. Neither man had finished answering their first question before they began attacking the former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador. “She caves any time the left comes after her, anytime the media comes after her,” warned DeSantis, the Florida governor. Ramaswamy went much further. He called Haley “corrupt” and “a fascist” for suggesting that social-media companies ban people from posting anonymously on their platforms.
The broadsides continued throughout the two-hour debate in Tuscaloosa, Alabama: DeSantis and Ramaswamy used every opportunity to go after Haley, even when they were prodded to criticize the Republican who is actually dominating the primary race, Donald Trump.
“I’m loving all the attention, fellas,” Haley said at one point. What she’d love even more is about 30 additional points in the polls. As well as Haley has been doing lately, she is capturing just about 10 percent of Republican voters nationwide, according to the polling average. Time is running out for her—or any other GOP candidate—to catch Trump. He skipped this meeting of the Republican also-rans, just as he did the three previous debates. This debate narrowed to four Trump alternatives, but the evening devolved into a familiar dynamic: Most of the challengers largely declined to criticize—or even discuss—Trump.
[Read: The 2024 U.S. presidential race: a cheat sheet]
Chris Christie was the exception, as usual. The former New Jersey governor lit into Trump and mocked his rivals for being too “timid” to do the same. “I’m in this race because the truth needs to be spoken: He is unfit,” Christie said. Acting the part of pundit as much as candidate, Christie noted ruefully how little Haley, DeSantis, and Ramaswamy wanted to talk about Trump and how fearful they seemed to be of angering him. DeSantis tiptoed toward criticism of Trump when he warned Republicans not “to nominate somebody who is almost 80 years old.” “Father Time is undefeated,” DeSantis said. But when he danced around the question of whether Trump was mentally fit to serve again as president, Christie bashed him. “This is the problem with my three colleagues: You are afraid to offend.”
Ramaswamy was next to speak. Instead of contradicting Christie and confronting Trump, he held up a handwritten sign that read, NIKKI=CORRUPT.
The reluctance of Trump’s rivals (aside from Christie) to attack the former president has frustrated Republicans who are rooting against his renomination. But on some level it makes sense. Haley, DeSantis, and Ramaswamy aren’t actually running against Trump—at least not yet. The best way to think of these Trump-less debates is as a primary within a primary. The four Republicans on stage tonight were battling merely for the right to face off against Trump. In sports terms, these preliminary matchups are like the divisional round of the NFL playoffs, except that Trump has already earned a bye to the league championship. (The general election would be the Super Bowl.)
The all-important question is whether one of these four can break away from the others in time to wage a fair fight against Trump. The window for doing so is closing fast, but it is not shut completely. Although Trump is capturing nearly 60 percent of Republican primary voters in the national polling average, he remains below 50 percent in Iowa and New Hampshire, the early states where his challengers are campaigning most aggressively. A majority of Republicans in both Iowa and New Hampshire are backing someone other than Trump at the moment, suggesting at least the possibility that Haley or DeSantis could consolidate the anti-Trump vote and overtake him in one or both states. Trump’s lead has been consistent—and it has actually grown since the debates started without him—but historically, primary races are most volatile in the final few weeks before voters begin casting ballots.
[Read: The Republican primary is slipping away]
The debate stage has shrunk by half since the first GOP primary forum in August, when eight candidates met the Republican National Committee’s criteria for participation. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina ended his bid after appearing in last month’s debate in Miami, as did North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, who did not qualify.
Yet four candidates might be as small as it gets. No more RNC-sanctioned debates are scheduled before the Iowa caucuses on January 15 or the New Hampshire primary eight days later. If Trump wins both states against a divided field—as polls suggest he will—his nomination would likely seem unstoppable.
The most likely path to preventing Trump’s nomination is the same as it was when the primary began: for anti-Trump Republicans to agree on a single candidate to go up against him one-on-one. Nikki Haley is making her move. But if tonight’s debate revealed anything, it’s that her Republican competitors aren’t ready to let her have that chance.
This story seems to be about:
No one alive has seen a race like the 2024 presidential election. For months, if not years, many people have expected a reprise of the 2020 election, a matchup between the sitting president and a former president.
But that hasn’t prevented a crowded primary. On the GOP side, more than a dozen candidates are ostensibly vying for the nomination. Donald Trump’s lead appears prohibitive, but no candidate has ever won his party’s nomination while facing four (so far) separate felony indictments. (Then again, no one has ever lost his party’s nomination while facing four separate felony indictments either.) Ron DeSantis is still barely clinging to his position as the leading challenger to Trump, but Nikki Haley has closed most of the distance with him—though the title seems ever more meaningless. Behind them is a large field of Republicans who are hoping for a lucky break, a Trump collapse, a VP nomination, or maybe just some fun travel and a cable-news contract down the road.
[David A. Graham: The first debate is Ramaswamy and the rest]
On the other side, Democratic hesitations about a second Joe Biden term have mostly dissolved into resignation that he’s running, but Representative Dean Phillips is making a last-ditch effort to offer a younger alternative. Biden’s age and the generally lukewarm feeling among some voters have ensured that a decent-size shadow field still lingers, just waiting in case Biden bows out for some reason.
Behind all of this, the possibility of a serious third-party bid, led by either No Labels or some other group, continues to linger; Cornel West is running, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has leapt from the Democratic primary to an independent campaign. It adds up to a race that is simple on the surface but strangely confusing just below it. This guide to the candidates—who’s in, who’s out, and who’s somewhere in between—serves as a road map to navigate that. It will be updated as the campaign develops, so check in regularly.
REPUBLICANS (Joe Raedle / Getty) Donald TrumpWho is he?
You know him and you love him. Or hate him. Probably not much in between.
Is he running?
Yes. Trump announced his bid to return to the White House at Mar-a-Lago in November 2022.
Why does he want to run?
Revenge, boredom, rivalry, fear of prosecution, long-standing psychological hang-ups.
[Read: Trump begins the ‘retribution’ tour]
Who wants him to run?
A big tranche of the GOP was always fully behind Trump, and as his rivals have failed to gain much traction, he's consolidated many of the rest and built an all-but-prohibitive lead.
Can he win the nomination?
Yes, and he very likely will.
What else do we know?
More than we could possibly want to.
Who is he?
The second-term governor of Florida, DeSantis was previously a U.S. representative.
Is he running?
Yes. He announced his run in a train wreck of an appearance with Elon Musk on Twitter Spaces on May 24.
Why does he want to run?
DeSantis offers a synthesis of Trump-style culture warring and bullying and the conservative politics of the early-2010s Republican Party.
Who wants him to run?
From the advent of his campaign, DeSantis presented the prospect of a candidate with Trump’s policies but no Trump. But his fading polling suggests that not many Republicans are interested.
Can he win the nomination?
A better question these days: Can he hold on to take honorary silver in the race?
Who is she?
Haley, the daughter of immigrants, was governor of South Carolina and then ambassador to the United Nations under Trump.
Is she running?
Yes. She announced her campaign on February 14, saying, “Time for a new generation.”
Why does she want to run?
Haley has tried to steer a path that distances herself from Trump—pointing out his unpopularity—without openly attacking him. She may also be the top foreign-policy hawk in the field.
[Sarah Isgur: What Nikki Haley can learn from Carly Fiorina]
Who wants her to run?
Haley is on the rise now, and seems to be challenging DeSantis for status as the top Trump alternative—but still lags far behind Trump himself.
Can she win the nomination?
Dubious, but she may at this point be the favorite for second.
Who is he?
A 38-year-old biotech millionaire with a sparkling résumé (Harvard, then Yale Law, where he became friends with Senator J. D. Vance), Ramaswamy has recently become prominent as a crusader against “wokeism” and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing.
Is he running?
Yes. He announced his campaign on February 21.
Why does he want to run?
“We’re in the middle of a national identity crisis,” Ramaswamy said in a somewhat-hectoring launch video. “Faith, patriotism, and hard work have disappeared, only to be replaced by new secular religions like COVIDism, climatism, and gender ideology.”
Who wants him to run?
That remains a bit unclear—though his Republican rivals all seem to viscerally detest him. Ramaswamy had a summer surge when he was a new flavor, but it’s subsided as people have gotten to know and, apparently, dislike him.
Can he win the nomination?
No. Ramaswamy broke out of the ranks of oddballs to briefly become a mildly formidable contender, but his slick shtick and questionable pronouncements have dragged him down.
Who is he?
Hutchinson, the formerly longtime member of Congress, just finished a stint as governor of Arkansas.
Is he running?
Yes. Hutchinson announced on April 2 that he is running. It would have been funnier to announce a day earlier, though.
Why does he want to run?
At one time, Hutchinson was a right-wing Republican—he was one of the managers of Bill Clinton’s impeachment—but as the party has changed, he finds himself closer to the center. He’s been very critical of Trump, saying that Trump disqualified himself with his attempts to steal the 2020 election. Hutchinson is also unique in the field for having called on Trump to drop out over his indictment in New York.
Who wants him to run?
Old-school, very conservative Republicans who also detest Trump.
Can he win the nomination?
No.
Who is he?
A South Carolinian, Scott is the only Black Republican senator.
Is he running?
No. He said on November 12 that he was suspending his campaign.
Why did he want to run?
This was never entirely clear. Scott offered a somewhat sunny personal story but also some hard-line ideas.
Who wants him to run?
Scott’s Senate colleagues adore him, and voters’ views of him were favorable, but he never translated that into real support.
Can he win the nomination?
No. He could never find a way out of the second tier of candidates.
Who is he?
The former vice president, he also served as the governor of Indiana and a U.S. representative.
Is he running?
No! He shocked a Las Vegas audience by dropping out on October 28. He’d been running since June 7.
Why did he want to run?
Pence has long harbored White House dreams, and he has a strong conservative-Christian political agenda. As the campaign went on, he slowly began to develop a sharper critique of Trump while still awkwardly celebrating the accomplishments of the administration in which he served.
Who wanted him to run?
Conservative Christians and rabbit lovers, but not very many people overall.
[Read: Nobody likes Mike Pence]
Could he have won the nomination?
It wasn’t in the cards.
Who is he?
What a journey this guy has had, from U.S. attorney to respected governor of New Jersey to traffic-jam laughingstock to Trump sidekick to Trump critic. Whew.
Is he running?
Yes. He announced his campaign on June 6 in New Hampshire.
Why does he want to run?
Anyone who runs for president once and loses wants to run again—especially if he thinks the guy who beat him is an idiot, as Christie clearly thinks about Trump. Moreover, he seems agitated to see other Republicans trying to run without criticizing Trump.
Who wants him to run?
Trump-skeptical donors, liberal pundits. But some Trump critics are pressuring him to drop out in order to allow the non-Trump vote to consolidate.
Can he win the nomination?
Highly doubtful.
Who is he?
Do you even pay attention to politics? Nah, just kidding. A self-made software billionaire, Burgum is serving his second term as the governor of North Dakota.
Is he running?
No more. Burgum suspended his campaign on December 4. He’d kicked it off on June 7 in Fargo.
Why did he want to run?
Vanity? Boredom? Noble but doomed impulses? Who knows. His campaign-announcement video focuses so much on North Dakota that it seemed more like a reelection push. He told a state newspaper that he thinks the “silent majority” of Americans wants candidates who aren’t on the extremes. (A wealthy outsider targeting the silent majority? Where have we heard that before?) He also really wants more domestic oil production.
Who wanted him to run?
Practically no one. He had to give people $20 gift cards to get them to donate to his campaign so he could qualify for debates.
Could he have won the nomination?
“There’s a value to being underestimated all the time,” he has said. As it turns out, the naysayers estimated accurately.
Who is he?
A former CIA officer, Hurd served three terms in the House, representing a San Antonio–area district.
Is he running?
No. Hurd, who announced his campaign on June 22, dropped out on October 9 and endorsed Nikki Haley.
Why did he want to run?
Hurd said he had “commonsense” ideas and was “pissed” that elected officials are dividing Americans. He’s also been an outspoken Trump critic.
Who wanted him to run?
As a moderate, youngish Black Republican and someone who cares about defense, he is the sort of candidate whom the party establishment seemed to desire after the now-discarded 2012 GOP autopsy.
Could he have won the nomination?
No.
Who is he?
Suarez is the popular second-term mayor of Miami and the president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
Is he running?
No. He suspended his campaign on August 29, less than three months after his June 15 entry.
Why did he want to run?
Suarez touted his youth—he’s 45—and said in October 2022, “I’m someone who believes in a positive aspirational message. I’m someone who has a track record of success and a formula for success.”
Who wanted him to run?
Is there really room for another moderate-ish Republican in the race? Apparently not! Despite dabbling in fundraising shenanigans, Suarez failed to make the first Republican debate (or any other splash).
Could he have won the nomination?
No way.
Who is he?
Hogan left office this year, after serving two terms as governor of Maryland.
Is he running?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Hogan ruled himself out of the GOP race on March 5, saying he was worried it would help Trump win the nomination, but he is now rumored as a potential No Labels candidate, even though such a run might hand the presidency to … Trump.
Why does he want to run?
Hogan has argued that his experience of governing a very blue state as a Republican is a model: “We’ve been really successful outside of Washington, where everything appears to be broken and nothing but divisiveness and dysfunction.”
Who wants him to run?
Dead-ender centrists.
Could he win the nomination?
No.
Who is he?
The governor of New Hampshire, he is the little brother of former Senator John E. Sununu and the son of former White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu.
Is he running?
No. On June 5, after weighing a campaign, he announced that he would not run. Warning about the dangers of a Trump reprise, he said, “Every candidate needs to understand the responsibility of getting out and getting out quickly if it’s not working.” Points for taking his own advice!
Why did he want to run?
Sununu seems disgusted by a lot of Washington politics and saw his success in New Hampshire, a purple-blue state, as a model for small-government conservatism. He is also a prominent Trump critic.
Who wanted him to run?
Trump-skeptical Republicans, old-school conservatives.
Could he have won the nomination?
No.
Who is he?
Pompeo, a former member of Congress, led the CIA and was secretary of state under Trump.
Is he running?
No. On April 14, Pompeo announced that he wasn’t running. “This is not that time or that moment for me to seek elected office again,” he said.
Why did he want to run?
Pompeo has always been ambitious, and he seems to think he can combine MAGA proximity with a hawkish foreign-policy approach.
Who wanted him to run?
That’s not entirely clear.
Could he have won the nomination?
Maybe, but probably not.
Who is he?
Youngkin, the former CEO of the private-equity Carlyle Group, was elected governor of Virginia in 2021.
Is he running?
No. He spent much of 2023 refusing to categorically rule out a race but not quite committing. As Ron DeSantis’s Trump-alternative glow dimmed, Youngkin seemed to be hoping that Republican success in off-year Virginia legislative elections would give him a boost. After Democrats won control of both the state’s legislative chambers, however, he said he was “not going anywhere.”
Why did he want to run?
Youngkin is a bit of a cipher; he ran for governor largely on education issues, and has sought to tighten abortion laws in Virginia, but the legislative defeat makes that unlikely.
Who wanted him to run?
Rupert Murdoch, reportedly, as well as other wealthy, business-friendly Republican figures.
Could he have won the nomination?
Certainly not without running, and almost certainly not if he did.
Who is he?
Rogers is a congressman from Alabam—wait, no, sorry, that’s the other Representative Mike Rogers. This one is from Michigan and retired in 2015. He was previously an FBI agent and was head of the Intelligence Committee while on Capitol Hill.
Is he running?
No. He thought about it but announced in late August that he would run for U.S. Senate instead.
Why did he want to run?
He laid out some unassailably broad ideas for a campaign in an interview with Fox News, including a focus on innovation and civic education, but it’s hard to tell what exactly the goal is here. “This is not a vanity project for me,” he added, which, okay, sure.
Who wanted him to run?
It’s not clear that anyone even noticed he was running.
Could he have won the nomination?
Nope.
Who is he?
A longtime conservative radio host and columnist, he ran as a Republican in the unsuccessful 2021 attempt to recall California Governor Gavin Newsom.
Is he running?
Not anymore. Elder announced his campaign on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show on April 20, but then disappeared without a trace. On October 27, he dropped out and endorsed Trump.
Why did he want to run?
Glad you asked! “America is in decline, but this decline is not inevitable,” he tweeted. “We can enter a new American Golden Age, but we must choose a leader who can bring us there. That’s why I’m running for President.” We don’t have any idea what that means either.
Who wanted him to run?
Practically no one.
Could he have won the nomination?
Absolutely not.
Who is he?
Perry was a three-term governor of Texas before serving as energy secretary under Donald Trump. He’s also run for president three times: in 2012, 2016, and … I forget the third one. Oops.
Is he running?
Oh, right! The third one is 2024, maybe. He told CNN in May that he’s considering a run. Nothing’s been heard since. We’ll say no.
Why did he want to run?
He didn’t say, but he’s struggled to articulate much of a compelling case to Republican voters beyond the fact that he’s from Texas, he looks good in a suit, and he wants to be president, gosh darn it.
Who wanted him to run?
Probably no one. As Mike Pompeo already discovered, there wasn’t much of a market for a run-of-the-mill former Trump Cabinet member in the primary—especially one who had such a forgettable turn as secretary, mostly remembered for being dragged peripherally into both the first Trump impeachment and election subversion.
Could he have won the nomination?
The third time wouldn’t have been a charm.
Who is he?
Before his current gig as a U.S. senator from Florida, Scott was governor and chief executive of a health-care company that committed massive Medicare fraud.
Is he running?
The New York Times says he’s considering it, though an aide said Scott is running for reelection to the Senate. He’d be the fourth Floridian in the race.
Why does he want to run?
A Scott campaign would raise a fascinating question: What if you took Trump’s pose and ideology but removed all the charisma and, instead of promising to protect popular entitlement programs, aimed to demolish them?
Who wants him to run?
Not Mitch McConnell.
Can he win the nomination?
lol
Who is he?
After decades of trying, Biden is the president of the United States.
Is he running?
Yes. Biden formally announced his run on April 25.
Why does he want to run?
Biden’s slogan is apparently “Let’s finish the job.” He centered his launch video on the theme of freedom, but underlying all of this is his apparent belief that he may be the only person who can defeat Donald Trump in a head-to-head matchup.
[Read: The case for a primary challenge to Joe Biden]
Who wants him to run?
There’s the catch. Some prominent Democrats support his bid for a second term, but voters have consistently told pollsters that they don’t want him to run again.
Can he win the nomination?
Barring unforeseen catastrophe, yes. No incumbent president has lost the nomination in the modern era, and Biden has pushed through changes to the Democratic-primary process that make him an even more prohibitive favorite.
What else do we know?
Biden is already the oldest person to be elected president and to serve as president, so a second term would set more records.
Who is he?
A pundit from the party’s left flank, Uygur is probably best know for his The Young Turks network. He was briefly an MSNBC personality and also ran for Congress in California in 2020.
Is he running?
Apparently. He announced his plans on October 11.
Why does he want to run?
Uygur believes that Biden will lose the 2024 election and thus wants to force him to withdraw. “I’m going to do whatever I can to help him decide that this is not the right path,” he told Semafor’s Dave Weigel. “If he retires now, he’s a hero: He beat Trump, he did a good job of being a steward of the economy. If he doesn’t, he loses to Trump, and he’s the villain of the story.”
[Read: The case for a primary challenge to Joe Biden]
Who wants him to run?
We’ll see if anyone does. Uygur has a sizable audience—his YouTube channel has millions of subscribers—but that doesn’t mean he has any real presidential constituency.
Can he win the nomination?
No, and he has a deeper problem: He is ineligible to serve, because he was born in Turkey. This isn’t an interesting nuance of the law, as with misguided questions about Ted Cruz’s or John McCain’s eligibility, or disinformation, as with Barack Obama. Uygur is just not a natural-born citizen. He claims he’ll take the matter to the Supreme Court and win in a “slam dunk.” As Biden would say, if he were willing to give Uygur any attention: Lots of luck in your senior year.
Who is he?
Phillips, a mildly unorthodox and interesting figure, is a Minnesota moderate serving his third term in the House.
Is he running?
Yes. He launched his campaign October 27 in New Hampshire. That follows a Hamlet act to make Mario Cuomo proud—in July, he said he was considering it; in August, he said he was unlikely to run but would encourage other Democrats to do so; then, after finding no other Democrats willing to run, he said he was not ruling it out.
Why does he want to run?
In an in-depth profile by my colleague Tim Alberta, Phillips said he’s most concerned about beating Trump. “Look, just because [Biden’s] old, that’s not a disqualifier,” Phillips said. “But being old, in decline, and having numbers that are clearly moving in the wrong direction? It’s getting to red-alert kind of stuff.” He added: “Someone had to do this. It just was so self-evident.”
Who wants him to run?
Phillips told Alberta that even some Biden allies privately encouraged him to run—but no one will say it openly. Though many Democrats feel Biden is too old, that doesn’t mean that they’re willing to openly back a challenger, especially a little-known one, or that Phillips can overcome the structural barriers to beating an incumbent in a primary. There’s a reason Phillips couldn’t draft another Democrat to run.
Can he win the nomination?
Almost certainly not in 2024—even if Biden leaves the race.
What else do we know?
His grandmother was “Dear Abby,” and he made a fortune running the Talenti gelato company.
Who is she?
Harris is the vice president of the United States.
Is she running?
No, but if Biden were to bow out, she’d be the immediate favorite.
Why does she want to run?
One problem with her 2020 presidential campaign was the lack of a clear answer to this question. Perhaps running on the Biden-Harris legacy would help fill in the blank.
Who wants her to run?
Some Democrats are excited about the prospect of nominating a woman of color, but generally Harris’s struggles as a candidate and in defining a role for herself (in the admittedly impossible position of VP) have resulted in nervousness about her as a standard-bearer.
Can she win the nomination?
Not right now.
Who is he?
Mayor Pete is Secretary Pete now, overseeing the Department of Transportation.
Is he running?
No, but he would also be a likely candidate if Biden stepped away.
Why does he want to run?
Just as he was four years ago, Buttigieg is a young, ambitious politician with a moderate, technocratic vision of government.
Who wants him to run?
Buttigieg’s fans are passionate, and Biden showed that moderates remain a force in the party.
Can he win the nomination?
Not at this moment.
Who is he?
The senator from Vermont is changeless, ageless, ever the same.
Is he running?
No, but if Biden dropped out, it’s hard to believe he wouldn’t seriously consider another go. A top adviser even says so.
Why does he want to run?
Sanders still wants to tax billionaires, level the economic playing field, and push a left-wing platform.
Who wants him to run?
Sanders continues to have the strong support of a large portion of the Democratic electorate, especially younger voters.
Can he win the nomination?
Two consecutive tries have shown that he’s formidable, but can’t close. Maybe the third time’s the charm?
Who is she?
Whitmer cruised to a second term as governor of Michigan in 2022.
Is she running?
No.
Why would she want to run?
It’s a little early to know, but her reelection campaign focused on abortion rights.
Who wants her to run?
Whitmer would check a lot of boxes for Democrats. She’s a fresh face, she’s a woman, and she’s proved she can win in the upper Midwest against a MAGA candidate.
Can she win the nomination?
Not if she isn’t running.
Who is she?
If you don’t know Williamson from her popular writing on spirituality, then you surely remember her somewhat woo-woo Democratic bid in 2020.
Is she running?
Supposedly. Williamson announced her campaign on March 4 in D.C., but the only peeps from her have involved staff turnover.
Why does she want to run?
“It is our job to create a vision of justice and love that is so powerful that it will override the forces of hatred and injustice and fear,” she said at her campaign launch. She has also said that she wants to give voters a choice: “The question I ask myself is not ‘What is my path to victory?’ My question is ‘What is my path to radical truth-telling?’ There are some things that need to be said in this country.”
Who wants her to run?
Williamson has her fans, but she doesn’t have a clear political constituency.
Can she win the nomination?
Nah.
Who is he?
The governor of Illinois is both a scion of a wealthy family and a “nomadic warrior.”
Is he running?
No.
Why does he want to run?
After years of unfulfilled interest in elected office, Pritzker has established himself as a muscular proponent of progressivism in a Democratic stronghold.
Who wants him to run?
Improbably for a billionaire, Pritzker has become a darling of the Sanders-style left, as well as a memelord.
Can he win the nomination?
Not now.
Who is he?
The son of a presidential candidate, the nephew of another, and the nephew of a president, Kennedy is a longtime environmental activist and also a chronic crank.
Is he running?
Yes. He announced his run for the Democratic nomination on April 19, but on October 9 he dropped out of that race to run as an independent.
Why does he want to run?
Running for president is a family tradition. His campaign is arranged around his esoteric combination of left-wing interests (the environment, drug prices) and right-wing causes (vaccine skepticism, anger about social-media “deplatforming”), but tending toward extremely dark places.
Who wants him to run?
Soon after he announced his campaign, Kennedy reached double digits in polls against Biden—a sign of dissatisfaction with the president and of Kennedy’s name recognition. It has since become clear that Democratic voters are not interested in anti-Semitic kookery, though some other fringe elements might be.
What are his prospects?
It is possible, if unlikely, that Kennedy could play a serious spoiler role by drawing enough votes from either Trump or Biden in key states to swing the election. The short answer is no one knows what might happen, but he very well might boost the president’s chances.
Who is he?
A Democratic U.S. senator and former governor of West Virginia, he was the pivotal centrist vote for the first two years of Joe Biden’s term.
Is he running?
It’s hard to tell how serious he is. Manchin has been courted by No Labels, the nonpartisan centrist organization, to carry its banner, and on November 9, Manchin announced that he wouldn’t run for reelection to the Senate in 2024, forgoing what would have been the toughest race of his career. His announcement suggested some interest in a third-party bid: “What I will be doing is traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together.” (He never made any noises about a Democratic primary campaign, and wouldn’t have fared well.)
Why does he want to run?
Some mix of true belief and umbrage. I’ve described him as “a middle-of-the-road guy with good electoral instincts, decent intentions, and bad ideas,” but he also periodically seems personally piqued at Biden and the Democrats over slights perceived or real.
Who wants him to run?
No Labels would love to have someone like him, a high-profile figure who’s willing to buck his party and has policies that would appeal to voters from either party. It’s hard to imagine that he’d have much of an organic base of support, but Democrats are terrified that he’d siphon off enough votes to hand Trump or another Republican the win in a three-way race.
What are his prospects?
“Make no mistake, I will win any race I enter,” he said in April. If that is true, do not expect to see him in the presidential race.
Who is he?
West is a philosopher, a theologian, a professor, a preacher, a gadfly, a progressive activist, an actor, a spoken-word recording artist, an author … and we’re probably missing a few.
Is he running?
Yes. He announced his campaign on the People’s Party ticket on June 5. Soon thereafter he switched to the Green Party, which might have gotten him the best ballot access. But as of October, he’s running as an independent.
Why does he want to run?
“In these bleak times, I have decided to run for truth and justice, which takes the form of running for president of the United States,” he said in his announcement video. West is a fierce leftist who has described Trump as a “neofascist” and Biden as a “milquetoast neoliberal.”
Who wants him to run?
West was a high-profile backer of Bernie Sanders, and it’s easy to imagine him winning over some of Sanders’s fervent fans. Now that he is running as an independent, he will likely have trouble building a base of his own.
What are his prospects?
Let’s hear from Brother West: “Do we have what it takes? We shall see,” he said. “But some of us are going to go down fighting, go down swinging, with style and a smile.”
Who is she?
Here’s what I wrote in 2016: “A Massachusetts resident and physician, she is a candidate of nearly Stassen-like frequency, having run for president in 2012 and a slew of other offices before that.”
Is she running?
So it seems. Now that Cornel West’s campaign (which she briefly managed, whatever that means) has dropped out of contention for the Green Party nomination, she has filed to run on the Green line.
Why does she want to run?
Though she hasn’t laid out a platform yet, you can get a decent sense of what her campaign is likely to look like from her 2016 issues: a pretty standard leftist focus on social justice, the environment, and peace. Her weird comments after the 2016 election make one suspect that vanity plays a role, too.
Who wants her to run?
The Green Party has a small but consistent batch of voters and ballot access in many states. It’s also clear who doesn’t want her to run: Democrats who fear that an even halfway effective Green candidate will cost Joe Biden just enough votes to lose in key swing states. (For the record, the case that she cost Hillary Clinton the 2016 race is shaky.)
What are her prospects?
Since she’s the closest thing the Greens have to a proven quantity, she should be in a strong position for the nomination. And then what? Maybe voters’ dread of a Biden-Trump rematch will drive some non-Greens to her. Or maybe they will mostly be over her.
Who is she?
The scion of a rock-ribbed Republican family in Wyoming, she served in House GOP leadership before breaking with Trump and losing her 2022 primary.
Is she running?
Maybe. “Several years ago, I would not have contemplated a third-party run,” Cheney told The Washington Post on December 4, but now she says she is reconsidering.
Why does she want to run?
She says she will do “whatever it takes” to deprive Trump of a second term. It also can’t hurt to tease a campaign when you’re launching a new book, as she is.
Who wants her to run?
As a lifelong conservative, Cheney would draw the support of many Never Trump Republicans. Because she has become an unlikely resistance hero, she might also attract independents and even Democrats who detest Trump but aren’t hot on Biden.
What are her prospects?
Cheney wouldn’t win, but that presumably isn’t her goal. Whether she’d do much to hurt Trump is another question. The optimistic case for her is that she’d draw Republican votes but, unlike a No Labels or Jill Stein or Cornel West campaign, not cut into Biden’s margin. That may or may not be true.