January 6: A Win for Divided Government?

Over at Hot Air, Allahpundit speculates that the big winner in the January 6 hearings is Ron DeSantis, who already looks like the Republican's best bet to win in 2024:

America, navigating its two (anti-freedom) party system. (Image by Alessandro Allori, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)

Logically the only winners from the hearings are Republican 2024 hopefuls who need the base to move off of Trump cultism so that challengers are viable in the next primary. Brit Hume intuited that a few weeks ago when he marveled that the committee was actually helping the GOP by incentivizing them to nominate someone with less baggage in 2024. Neither the committee nor anyone else will convince MAGA voters to feel moral disgust at Trump's coup plot; if the video of goons in red caps beating cops at the Capitol wasn't enough to shake their loyalty, nothing will. Yet the ongoing testimony could become an excuse for many who are quietly tired of Trump to move on without feeling "disloyal." Of course he did nothing wrong by trying to overturn the election, they might say, but ... the hearings have unfairly hurt him with swing voters, which means he can't win in 2024, which means we must regrettably nominate someone else. [link omitted, emphasis in original]

I think this analysis is spot-on, but I think that Trump will run again unless he dies or is legally barred from running again, which I am inclined to think he should be.

If Trump is the Republican nominee, he will probably lose simply because he antagonizes enough people -- as we saw in 2020 when he lost with the second-highest popular vote total in history. (If you think Biden's total reflected enthusiasm for that Obama retread, I have an expensive real-estate deal/life lesson special for you.)

A potted plant could beat Donald Trump head-to-head at this point.

And if he isn't the nominee? I think Trump is nuts/vindictive enough that he will run as an independent, splitting the votes that would otherwise go to the Republican nominee. I would not put it past the Democrats to have exactly this possibility in mind.

Watch for them to not bar Trump from running for office, and for Trump -- if he is not the nominee -- to sabotage the GOP's 2024 presidential campaign just like he did the Senate races in Georgia with his sore loser act after he lost.

That said, I can't see the Democrats doing well in congressional races, so my extremely early forecast for 2024 is that we get a Democrat president and one or both houses controlled by the GOP. Considering that the Democrats want to outlaw reliable, affordable energy -- and the Republicans want to enact Christianity into law -- that might be the best-case outcome.

-- CAV