“Winning” Was a Losing Message For GOP Also-Rans
Trump’s primary challengers made a big mistake. Will Biden do the same?
When the primary results of March 12 officially clinched the 2024 nomination for former President Donald Trump, it capped off a nomination process that became predictable early and quickly.
Trump’s now-inevitability didn’t look so inevitable a year ago, when polls showed Republicans open to a new standard-bearer. The 2024 Republican field was more accomplished and well-positioned than the gaggle Trump faced during his surprise primary victory in 2016. This year’s field included a two-term swing state governor (Ron DeSantis), a former red-state governor and former ambassador (Nikki Haley), a popular sitting United States Senator (Tim Scott), and the most recent Republican Vice President (Mike Pence) among others, many of whom had developed broad national networks of donors and supporters in advance of their run.
In particular, DeSantis and Haley both ran the type of technically sound campaigns that had won them election and re-election in challenging states. Yet each fell to a guy who got his keyster handed to him by now-President Joe Biden back in 2020.
How did this happen?
Most election contests, regardless of office or level, boil down to a similar dynamic: One candidate drives the debate while the other candidate (or candidates) must react and attempt to re-frame. The former identifies the issues the campaign is about and articulates a proactive policy vision; the latter tries to rally support against that vision. Typically, the side that sets the agenda wins.
There are several ways to re-tell the story of the 2024 primary, but each version fits this common theme: Almost every Republican challenger’s campaign fell into a messaging trap by defining their respective candidacies based on Trump. As the primary continued, the major campaigns (Haley and DeSantis) clung to the erroneous belief that if they could only face Trump one-on-one, they could win by consolidating the “anti-Trump” vote, or being the “Trump-alternative.” These are code-phrases that cede the pole position to another candidate.
Just look to the final weeks of Haley’s campaign. Facing off against Trump one-on-one, Haley’s main case was that polls showed her performing better against Biden. The image below is from a piece that hit mailboxes (including mine) in Virginia (and other states, no doubt) came from Americans For Prosperity (AFP), but its message about “winnability” echoes the talking points Haley made in her speeches and interviews:
Obviously, both the designers of this mailer and Haley’s speechwriters saw numbers that suggested people found this message the most persuasive and motivating. It’s not a bad talking point for analysts or surrogates to mention in interviews or to press contacts. But as the central message of a campaign, it lacks substance. The voters reacted accordingly.
Haley wasn’t the only one caught in this trap, either. DeSantis’s campaign (which launched late because he still had stuff to do as governor of Florida) tried to create some policy daylight between himself and Trump — but still found himself branded as “Trump without the baggage.” Perhaps Republican voters told pollsters that’s what they wanted. But when it came time to pull the primary levers or show up for caucuses, voters shrugged and accepted the baggage.
Almost every Republican candidate had some version of this message: While acknowledging Trump’s popularity (and striving not to offend his supporters), each promised to be marginally better in some way that would help the Republican party beat Joe Biden in November.
“Marginally better” is not exactly awe-inspiring stuff, is it?
Other candidates sacrificed authenticity to couch and contextualize their opposition to Trump to avoid offending his supporters. In contrast, Trump never has feared alienating his opponents’ backers. Setting aside the content, Trump’s messaging is — and almost always has been — aggressive and proactive. As Haley did in her final weeks, all the other candidates could do was meekly promise a better shot at victory in an election eight months in the future. That wasn’t enough for voters. It almost never is.
In that respect, the Republican primary season carries a warning for President Biden and his camp.
In Trump, Democrats have a useful foil. And looking at their candidate’s shortcomings, it must be tempting for the Biden campaign to believe their path to victory lies in keeping the spotlight on the other guy.
We saw what that might look like recently. In a speech, while promising to use high tariffs to freeze out Chinese auto imports, Trump warned that the American auto industry would face a “bloodbath” if he lost. While the context of the speech makes Trump’s meaning clear, Biden’s camp seized on the turn of phrase immediately, accusing Trump of inciting violent rebellion (again).
If that’s a preview of the next seven months, it’s a preview to a Biden loss.
One could forgive the Biden campaign for looking at current polls and landing on a strategy that repeatedly calls out Trump’s distastefulness. While Trump is deeply unpopular, so is Biden — with voters showing specific concern about the latter’s age and cognitive ability. Further, polls show tepid support for the Biden Administration’s specific policies. Logically, one might look at those numbers and reason that Biden’s best bet for reelection is to put Trump front and center as a modern-day Robespierre.
Outside of a sliver of the electorate highly motivated by anti-Trump sentiment, Biden will have to stand on his own record. For what it’s worth, that record includes passing a few significant pieces of legislation, fulfilling (or at least doggedly attempting to fulfill) his campaign promise to forgive student loan debt, and overseeing an economy that is stabilizing even if the post-COVID recovery has not been particularly robust. Don’t forget that Biden was elected in 2020 to be a sane, steady hand on the levers of American government after four chaotic years with few legislative victories. Even if his specific policies don’t poll well, the fact that Biden has successfully gotten any bills at all through Congress will count for something with voters.
At least, that fact will count if he and his campaign remain focused on it. If Biden’s campaign instead focuses its message completely on Trump, they will make the same mistake as Haley, DeSantis, and others — and likely meet the same result.
