Add in political gadflies
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West and you have a clear recipe for a Trump
win. Real Clear Politics is giving
Kennedy about 16 percent and West nearly 4. That gives Trump a 39-32 lead over
Biden. That would produce one of two outcomes. First, a narrow Trump Electoral
College win, even while he loses the popular vote, which is likely. Or second,
on the off chance that some candidate—say, Joe Manchin or Larry Hogan, who are
floated as possible entrants—actually wins a state, keeping Biden and Trump
below 270, you arrive at the No Labels-driven “contingent election” scenario
where the House of Representatives steps in to decide the winner.
That vote would be taken by
the next House, not the current one, with each state casting one vote (that’s
right—Wyoming’s voting weight would be equal to California’s). In the current
House, Republicans control 26 state delegations, Democrats 22, and two are tied
(the District of Columbia, though it is represented in the Electoral College,
would have no role here). It is extremely unlikely that the Democrats will
emerge from the election with control of 26 House delegations. So in a scenario
in which a contingent election decides the winner, the result would likely put
Trump back in the White House. That this
will be the inevitable end result of their caper is something that No Labels
well knows. It’s an open question if any of their media interlocutors, who’ve
proven to be good at whistling past democracy’s graveyard, are willing to call
them out on it.
Finally, the Democratic Party
now faces an inevitable generational implosion over Israel-Palestine. If
they’re lucky, it might not happen this year. If the war doesn’t last much
longer; if Israel gets a new and less radical government; if that government is
talking with some representative Palestinian organization about two states,
then perhaps the disagreements that exploded into view after Hamas’s October 7th
attacks might be papered over for November. But if Bibi Netanyahu drags this
war out, he hands Biden a terrible Hobson’s choice—stick with Israel and risk
alienating young voters by the millions, or punish Israel (attach conditions to
its aid, say) and risk alienating the older Jews who vote Democratic to the
tune of 70 percent. And since Netanyahu obviously would prefer to have Trump
back in the White House, because Trump will hand him a blank check, why would
he not do this? And should I even mention the possibility of a wider war that
involves Hezbollah and Iran, and possibly the United States more directly?