Essential Politics: Democrats’ Trump trap

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis hasn’t officially entered the presidential race. But his chances of overtaking former President Trump for the Republican nomination took another symbolic hit this week when the dominant video from his trip to Asia was of the governor looking like a bobblehead — his eyes and mouth agape while his head and shoulders wiggled, as he tried to wave off an uncomfortable question about his low poll numbers.

Many Democrats are gloating, in part because they despise DeSantis’ culture war politics. But they also have a strategic reason to root against DeSantis: They believe former President Trump, who lost the popular vote twice and led his party to underperform in two midterm elections, is a more beatable candidate in the general election.

That may be true. But it raises an important question. If you agree with President Biden that Trump is a threat to Democracy, shouldn’t you be rooting for an alternative?

Welcome to Essential Politics. I’m Noah Bierman, subbing for David Lauter, who is off. This week, I will explore a debate I’ve heard among Democrats in Washington: Is there a difference between Trump and the rest of the Republican Party when it comes to protecting democracy? And is it better to face a more flawed candidate — Trump — even if it means a higher risk of putting him back in the White House?

Is Trump easier to beat?

Let’s start with a few reality checks. 1) Republicans, not Democrats, will choose the GOP nominee. 2) Current polls of Republicans suggest Trump has withstood an indictment and a DeSantis wave and now holds a commanding position in the Republican primaries. 3) Biden, who officially announced his reelection campaign this week, is designing his campaign around defeating Trump, mirroring his 2020 message that democracy is on the line.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Despite DeSantis’ recent struggles against Trump, he performs better than Trump against Biden in a general election in many surveys. That has led many elite Democrats to believe they are better off facing Trump.

“The MAGA movement inside the Republican Party is the dominant force,” said Jamal Simmons, former communications director to Vice President Kamala Harris. “Whatever name is attached to the candidate, it’s the movement that’s concerning.”

“Donald Trump as the nominee makes it easier to make the case against the movement because you don’t have to educate voters about Donald Trump,” he added. “They know.”

In other words, Simmons argues there is no difference between Trump and his fellow Republicans when it comes to democracy. But it’s easier to make the case against Trump.

As evidence that DeSantis is on par with Trump, Simmons and other Democrats point to DeSantis’ “Don’t Say Gay” legislation that restricts teaching about gender and sexuality in Florida’s public schools, his moves to penalize Disney when the company objected to the bill and his support for a law banning abortion after six weeks.

Biden once praised ‘good Republicans’

Do those policies amount to the singular threat that Democrats accused Trump of posing? Biden, in the 2020 election, praised “good Republicans” while arguing that the rest of the party would snap back from Trump’s anti-democratic impulses once he was defeated.

Since then, Trump has inspired an insurrection based on his lie that he won the 2020 election and attacked former Vice President Mike Pence and other Republicans who refused to help him overturn the result. He is under indictment in New York over a hush money payment to a porn actress and faces possible charges elsewhere related to retaining classified documents and his attempt to overturn the election.

Simmons argues that Republican leaders’ efforts to “contort themselves” to fall in line with Trump, even after those transgressions, make them complicit in Trump’s actions. That may be true. But most Trump-backed candidates who lost 2022 midterm elections did not follow Trump’s 2020 playbook in trying to overturn them.

Regardless, Biden’s most plausible path to reelection is beating Trump.

And Cornell Belcher, a pollster for former President Obama, gives him a pretty good chance.

He believes it is hard for Trump to get more than 46% of the popular vote, the approximate level he reached in 2016 and 2020. The electorate in 2024, will be “2-3 points browner,” than it was in 2020, which was a more diverse electorate than the one that elected Trump in 2016, Belcher said, making it an even tougher climb for Trump, whose base is overwhelmingly white.

The electorate is also getting younger, another factor that favors Biden. Trump’s best hope, Belcher argued, is a low-turnout election with fewer people of color and fewer millennial and Gen Z voters.

Yes, Trump won the electoral college in 2016. But lightning had to strike, Belcher said. “Is it probable that it will strike you twice? No.”

That said, the 2016 election demonstrated that even a flawed candidate who wins a major party nomination is capable of winning in a two-party system. Whether you think that chance is 50%, 30% or 10%, it’s still a chance.

And there are plenty of questions around Biden. He is 80 years old and could face health issues that cause him to stumble or cause voters to question his viability. The economy could slide into a recession, especially if the U.S. defaults on its debt later this summer. Some other event or issue in the chaotic world could shake up the race.

That is all to say that Trump, if he wins the nomination, could win the presidency.

The latest from the campaign trail

— Is it possible that San Francisco has never had an openly gay congressman? Melanie Mason wrote a fascinating profile of Scott Wiener, who is trying to earn that distinction. But it’s hardly the most interesting thing about him.

— Goodbye to old Missoula. This dispatch, following the silencing of Montana’s first openly transgender lawmaker, explored why the college town that sent her to the legislature is a “blue island in a vast red state.”

The view from Washington

— Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) persuaded fellow Republicans to pass a bill to sharply cut federal spending, which he hopes to use as leverage in negotiating with Biden to pay the nation’s debts and avoid a default.

— Courtney Subramanian and Tracy Wilkinson dived into the “thorny issues” at stake amid South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol‘s red-carpet visit to Washington this week.

The view from California

— Columnist Gustavo Arellano, dived into Wendy Carrillo‘s motivation for challenging her former ally, embattled city Counselor Kevin de León.

— Columnist George Skelton broke down why Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis is jumping so early into the race to replace Gov. Gavin Newson, who has more than three years left on his term.

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