2024 election

The term ‘Florida man’ usually comes loaded with negative connotations, but not if you’re talking about Ron DeSantis. The first-term Republican governor’s approval ratings have reached 64 percent; a recent poll had him at 55 percent, still high for an unabashed conservative in a swing state. Enterprising apparel companies are already selling ‘DeSantis 2024’ gear — and a Trafalgar poll of likely contenders (excluding Trump) shows DeSantis leading the pack with 35 percent support among Republican voters. The Florida governor also bested Trump in a straw poll conducted during June's Western Conservative Summit in Denver. DeSantis’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic has earned him adoration from the right.

The vice presidency, as even the most remedial student of American politics will tell you, is not the most exciting gig in the world. Our first veep, John Adams, famously hated it so much that he called it ‘the most insignificant Office that ever the Invention of Man contrived’. It’s a sleepy position, one that doesn’t typically involve, say, surviving a mob that believes you’re conspiring to steal the election away from your own ticket. Yet this is the fate that’s befallen Michael Richard Pence. Prior to January 6, Pence had been wraithlike even by vice-presidential standards, overshadowed by one of the most inescapable presidents in American history. The attack on the Capitol fixed the attention of the world upon him. Would he carry out his constitutional duties?

Some say the Roman Republic died when the Senate murdered Tiberius Gracchus, a populist reformer. When the elites whose negligence and hubris had fueled in the first place the rise to prominence of Tiberius and his brother, Gaius, chose violence over the political process, they peeled away any pretense of civility with the ruled. Something similar happened with Donald Trump. His presidential record is a mixture of half-truths and half-measures. He was too soft and too undisciplined for all the bluster about him as a competent threat to the established political order. He did, however, help reveal the true face of the regime as it attempted to snuff him out. In February, TIME ran a story about the 'shadow campaign' that altered the course of the 2020 election.

Vice President Kamala Harris is not historically very popular. Her approval rating rarely topped 40 percent during her campaign in the Democratic presidential primary. Her poll numbers sagged in her home state of California. It wasn't until Biden chose her as his running mate that Harris enjoyed consistently higher approval ratings, but even as of April of this year, her unfavorability ratings were just about as high. Despite being pretty unlikable (and as that nervous laugh suggests, awfully inauthentic), Harris has managed to maneuver herself into arguably the most powerful position in the country. If she does eventually run for president, who would be her base? Who actually likes Kamala Harris?

Say what you want about the media in 2021, they never let a dream die. For over a year now, the activists who play journalists on TV have been hell-bent on destroying Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. The press is trying, with all their might, to turn him into the second most evil man in America. The latest hit job, by 60 Minutes’s Sharyn Alfonsi, was particularly egregious because of CBS’s incredibly sloppy execution. At a press conference, Alfonsi asked DeSantis about a scandal she was desperately trying to gin up. Her spiel was this — Publix received exclusive rights to the vaccination distribution from the DeSantis administration because the grocery chain had contributed $100,000 to the governor’s PAC.

Just a sec. Let me check my notes. Ah, right. Hurgh. 'My message to the American people is: help is here. Hope is on the way.' 'Can I go home now?' he asked with his eyes. Joe Biden looked like he wanted to call an end to his first presidential press conference before he even got started. But he soldiered on. Having prepared for a few weeks to talk to — what, seven? Eight? — carefully selected members of the press, he was not about to give up on this chance to bask in some adulation. And boy was the adulation ever on offer. 'Was it because you were such a a nice man that you had more success than the awful Voldemort who proceeded you?' oozed one female correspondent. No that’s not a direct quote. The original was more embarrassing.

OK, I’ll stick my neck out — Meghan Markle is never, ever going to be president of the United States of America. If I’m wrong, kill me. I mean it. No grudges — set me on fire, chop off my head, take me out with a drone missile marked #Loveislove. I wouldn’t want to live. We hear this week, through amusingly dubious sources, that Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex is ‘considering running’ for the White House ‘if Joe Biden rules out a second term’. The British tabloids are talking about ‘mounting speculation’ which is what they say when they know they are publishing gibberish for clicks.

Donald Trump is not retiring. He’s not disappearing to live the range life and he has no intentions of remaining quiet over the coming months and years. Acknowledging his loss somewhat for the first time from the CPAC stage this weekend was simply a way of paving a golden road heading into 2022 and 2024. Trump still believes he’s the future of the Republican party, even as a one-term defeated president pushing 75 years old. He clearly still has enthusiasm of the CPAC crowd — but straw polls and speeches will not be the deciding factor for Trump in 2024 so much as the success of candidates he backs heading into 2022 in GOP primaries, designed to upset incumbents Trump considers unfavorable.

Forty minutes into Donald Trump’s remarks at CPAC, I’d formed a conclusion. Donald Trump hasn’t just taken over the Republican party, I thought, the Republican party has taken over Donald Trump. The speech got off to a slow start, with Trump’s familiar critiques of illegal immigration failing to elicit much excitement from the audience. Was this tried and true, as far as they were concerned, or just tired and true? Soon enough Trump was uttering phrases that any Republican leader of the last 30 years might have recited: socialism, radical Democrats, exceptional nation, Judeo-Christian values. Farmers this and farmers that. Mostly fine — all routine. The urgency was gone. But the speech kept going. And while little was new, Trump started to sound like Trump again.

Donald Trump was over an hour late for his first speech since leaving the White House at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida. The former president finally emerged at 4:47 p.m., kissing the American flag as the PA system blasted Lee Greenwood’s ‘God Bless the USA’. He waited, applauding the crowd for the duration of the song before beginning his prepared remarks at 4:50 p.m. ‘Hello CPAC — do you miss me yet?’ he asked the crowd. Trump quickly laid to rest some of the stories that have swirled since his departure from office. ’We’re not starting new parties,’ Trump said. ‘We have the Republican party…that was fake news.’ He then launched into the issue everyone expected him to tackle: immigration.

Tulsi Gabbard will retire from Congress at the end of the year. The Hawaii representative is going out with a bang, introducing several bills that show why she is so despised by her establishment Democratic counterparts — and why she could potentially become a very powerful broker in the American political realignment. Last week, Gabbard introduced the Protect Women's Sports Act, legislation that would prevent biological men from competing in women's sports. Gabbard understands that keeping men and women's sports separate is a question of basic fairness for female athletes — Chelsea Mitchell, a high-school track runner, for example, has lost out on four state titles because she's had to compete against two individuals who were born male.

In a sane world, Andrew Cuomo would be America's least popular politician, a welcome target for a primary campaign or a robust Republican challenge in 2022. Yet the anti-Cuomo chorus has included precious few voices this year. The New York Post has been unrelenting in its criticism, as have conservatives in publications such as this one. ProPublica and the Associated Press rigorously reported out the nursing home debacle. But Cuomo's performance has been largely been lauded by liberal New Yorkers and pundits in the mainstream media. In July the New York governor was the 'politician of the moment', according to the New York Times.

While Donald Trump appears to have lost the 2020 presidential election, Trump’s agenda of populism focused on the working class and putting America first won, well, bigly. Contrary to the Democrats’ claim that Joe Biden’s razor-thin win gave them a mandate, the only mandate America’s voters gave this year is that they want more Trumpism. To wit, the swing of roughly the same number of voters in a handful of states by which Trump won in 2016 is the gap of Biden’s win. Going forward, Republicans must focus on maintaining that sentiment and fight off attempts by NeverTrumpers and Establishment Republicans to throw Trumpism out with Trump.

There’s been lots of speculation, even in The Spectator, about the direction of the Republican party after Trump. But less attention has been paid to the other big question: what happens to the Democratic party if Joe Biden loses? The consequences could be very ugly. ​A good blueprint for the Democrats blowing everything up would be the fallout of the GOP after the 2012 election defeat. Biden himself is a Romney-esque type candidate — the guy whose turn in line it was, hoping to put across a message of good character and soul of the nation. Romney, like Biden, ran on a message of optimism in divided times. More so than Romney, Biden is today desperately attempting to hold off the radical barbarians at the gate of his party.

Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley effectively launched her 2024 presidential campaign during her Monday night speech at the Republican National Convention to much media fanfare. Less noticed was an equally qualified and camera-ready Republican woman that is arguably much better positioned to carry the party torch post-Trump: South Dakota governor Kristi Noem. The media was split on reactions to Haley's audition: some mocked her declaration that America isn't a racist country, but others applauded her as the GOP's own 'return to normalcy' and 'compassionate' candidate. Voters who support the Trump agenda ought to be wary of this praise.

Joe Biden owes his nomination to black Democrats, who never joined the revolution led by Sen. Bernie Sanders, closed ranks around the former vice president, and overpowered the rest of the Democratic coalition to rescue his candidacy. But Biden is struggling with black men and younger black voters and Democrats know the votes of black Americans will become more difficult with each future election. Many black Americans feel taken for granted by the party and have become increasingly disillusioned with politics and politicians in general.