It’s not that I feel the least bit sorry for them. They made their bed with eyes wide open. Nor is ethical or civic decision very hard. But as a purely political matter, the choice now faced by Republicans in tight reelection battles must be an excruciating one – particularly for embattled senators like Ayotte, Toomey, Heck and the rest.
On the one hand, withdrawing their endorsement and saying they won’t vote for Trump leaves them a little less vulnerable to what is likely to be a dramatic escalation of political guilt by association. And to be clear, ‘guilt by association’ is much more legitimate in a political context because partisans are all associated. In any case, it’s a help. But I’m not sure how much of one it is. It gives them something affirmative to say. And that’s important in political terms. But they’ve been running with him for months. And it’s been pretty clear for all that time who Trump was. So it helps. But I don’t think it helps that much. It certainly doesn’t remove Trump as a political albatross.
Then there’s the other side of the equation. Trump has tens of millions of diehard supporters. Especially if the defections remain limited to a relatively small number of candidates, there’s no doubt Trump will be hammering them for the remaining weeks. It’s who he is. He can’t brook that kind of disrespect, that kind of sleight. He’ll respond. Trumpers will already be angry at this turn of events. Not because of what he said or did but with the cratering of his campaign. They’ll be looking for people to lash out at. Embattled senators who abandoned Trump will be a good place to start. It’s hard to believe there won’t be some number of Trump supporters who refuse to vote for anti-Trump Republican senate candidates.
I generally think pundits and partisans vastly overstate regular voters propensity to stay home because they’re not inspired by the candidates or don’t like either one of them. That’s a pundit myopia. People seldom operate like that. But this seems like the rare occasion in which some diehard Republicans who simply can’t abide Trump decide not to vote at all. If that happens, Republicans lose their down ballot votes as well.
What you have shaping up looks like it may be an unprecedented situation in modern American politics, perhaps in all of American history, though prior to the 1830s and 40s there was no modern equivalent of the two party system. You’re seeing the beginnings of major Republican defections thirty days out from the election. We don’t know whether this will pick up steam or dissipate. But even this level is basically unprecedented. And yet Trump can’t be removed.
Trump says he’ll never quit. It’s the rare case where this squares with what we know of the man. I believe him. The RNC has no means to compel him to quit if he chooses not to. But even if he did quit, there’s little that can be done. In theory, this would trigger a meeting of the Republican National Committee which would choose a new candidate, a pretty tough proposition 30 days before the election. The problem is you can’t get Trump off the ballot no matter what. In many cases, the ballots are literally already printed. In some states voting has already started. At the end of last week almost half a million people had already voted. During the Khan debacle Republicans looked into whether they still had a chance to replace Trump. The upshot was that the beginning of September was the last possible chance. In theory Republicans could file lawsuits in all fifty states, trying to force states to change their voting regulations and allow a change. But that’s a pipe dream. And in many or most cases I suspect it wouldn’t even be logistically possible even if a judge ruled in their favor.
The best Republicans could hope for is a scenario in which Trump drops out and then Republicans ask voters to vote for Trump’s name on the understanding that the Republican electors in the Electoral College will vote for some other designated person. In theory that could work. But it’s such a Rube Goldberg electoral strategy and message that it would likely end in cataclysmic failure.
What we now have emerging is a perfect storm, or rather a cataclysmic storm which nevertheless cannot break out of its contained environment. Or to put it another way, you have a ship drifting down the river toward the waterfall. It’s busted up. It’s taking on water. But it can’t sink. Even if the passengers try to sink it, it won’t sink. It will arrive at the water fall. But a veritable political Guernica can happen on the ship on the way there.
