Although even if he is convicted of something or other over next few months, there’s still a good chance that Trump will be the GOP’s nominee when we all show up to vote on November 5th. And if he’s still the Presidential candidate for the red team on that date, I suspect he’ll be defeated for the second time.
John Quincy Adams lost two Presidential elections in 1820 and 1828, but he also was elected President in 1824. William Jennings Bryan lost two back-to-back elections in 1896 and 1900, and then lost a third time in 1908. Dewey lost in 1944 and 1948, Stevenson took the shneid in 1952 and 1956, and there were several third-party candidates like Ross Perot who also made the Presidential ballot a few times but never went further than that.
I have to assume that after Trump craps out later this year, he’ll try to stick around for a while but sooner or later even the MAGA Republicans will get sick of him and tell him to shut the fuck up and go away.
At which point, the question is this: Who will take over as the chief honcho of MAGA and will that person try to grow MAGA to the point that it becomes a bone-fide political party and make the GOP join Trump by going away?
Don’t laugh, okay? Ever hear of the Federalist Party which ran candidates in 7 Presidential elections, including a guy named George Washington who was elected President in 1792? How about the Whig Pary which ran candidates in 5 Presidential elections and was the winning choice for the Presidencies of William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, and Winfield Scott?
The last time we elected a President who wasn’t a Democrat, or a Republican was 1848 with the election of Zachary Taylor. That’s 176 years ago – isn’t it time for a change?
The current Democrat(ic) Party appears to have two different factions, with one faction referring to itself as ‘progressives’ and the other one simply saying they are still Democrats without any kind of adjective in front of their party’s name.
This progressive nonsense has been going on since Bernie Sanders swiped the Occupy Wall Street email list back in 2016 and ran a primary campaign against what’s-her-name. There have been other instances where the Democrat(ic) Party split informally into two halves, with George McGovern getting a whole, big 17 electoral votes from Massachusetts in 1972, which happens to be my current state of residence, btw.
As for the GOP, the first problem in turning MAGA into a full-fledged political party is that Donald Trump happens to own the name. That’s right – he copyrighted MAGA back in 2012, which puts a buck in his pocket every time that some idiot puts a MAGA flag on the back of his truck.
But you know Trump. He’s that guy who thinks he’s the best and the brightest when it comes to making a deal. So, someone will give him some cash for the slogan and name him the party’s Executive Chairman or Chairman for Life or whatever the fuck he wants to be called.
But no more running for President, okay? We need to find some new blood if MAGA is going to replace the GOP.
I’m willing to bet that the outspoken MAGA-ites like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz and Josh Hawley are seriously thinking about running a MAGA campaign in 2028, particularly if Trump gets his assed kicked in later this year and the GOP’s image gets tarnished to the point that the conservative vote in this country is up for grabs.
I also happen to think that if Trump gets convicted and does a little bit of time at Butner or at some locked-down facility in some Air Force base, that he’ll be released just in time to show up at some MAGA rallies, pump his fist in the air and tell the crowd that so-and-so now deserves his or her chance.
Think I’m kidding? I’m not. I’ll take the short odds on a couple of Jacksons right now that Trump will lose the election later this year, that he’ll then get convicted of some felony or felonies in one of those trials where he’ll be facing Jack Smith, and then he’ll come out of stir as the Grand Old Man to be feted and applauded for the rest of his life.
We’ve never had a Chief Executive who followed his term in office by doing a jail term. Then again, we’ve never had a Chief Executive who invented and copyrighted a political slogan to create some cash flow to help pay off all those legal bills.
God Bless America – Land of the Free and Home not only of the Brave, but of a political system which gives every red-blooded American the chance to earn a good buck.
God Bless America!