I find your optimism charming.

@patrickrhone It’s all I’ve got. Unfortunately optimism doesn’t win elections.

Yes. But charm changes minds.

@manton If only our forefathers had the foresight to put a provision in the Constitution that forbids insurrectionists from running for any office at any level of government we could all sleep easier in 2024.

@DanFox Maybe, it is really hard to predict. Certainly the enthusiasm will be much lower in the base.

@braker1nine One thing I worry about is Democrats not feeling the urgency if Trump isn’t the nominee. So maybe there’s lower turnout on both sides.

I think it’s a really unstable situation, so it’s hard to predict what will happen. We are certainly in uncharted waters, with a former president facing off against a current president, with both of them close to, or in, their eighties, and with both of them dragging along a significant number of unenthusiastic, if not downright reluctant, supporters – plus the specter of a third-party candidate or two. Any number of things could upset various apple carts at any moment.

@DanFox This is almost certainly true for any non-Trump candidate. He’ll go scorched earth if he isn’t the nominee and sink the whole GOP ticket up and down stream rather than concede defeat. So in some way it likely doesn’t matter if Haley is the nominee; in another, it matters a lot for the post-Trump elections of 2026 and beyond whether the right-populist wave finally subsides. (It seems to have on the left since there hasn’t been a prominent figure to take up the post-Sanders mantle.)

I’ve got my faith that Someone is in control, but I don’t see, humanly speaking, how that doesn’t mean that the United States as we’ve known it is dying, and I have no faith that The One in control has decreed that we shall ever again be Cock O’ the Walk. Consequential times, these.