Trump’s Failure in the Midterms Knells for His Second Act

On Tuesday, President Trump is making a “very big announcement,” expected to be a 2024 run to recapture the White House. This leaves many Republicans — stung by underperforming on Election Day — struggling to move on from a candidate who is willing to burn down the party to get his way.Although few candidates he endorsed won, Mr. Trump declared the anemic GOP showing a “personal victory,” ignoring or not caring that elections are about the party one belongs to and the nation, not just individual accomplishments. The former president, 76, also took a swipe at the man many Republicans see as their future, 44-year-old Governor DeSantis, who won a landslide reelection by about 20 points as the Red Wave — like so many hurricanes — washed over Florida while the rest of the nation remained dry. From his vantage point at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump taunted the governor. “Shouldn’t it be said,” he asked on Truth Social, “that in 2020, I got 1.1 Million more votes in Florida than Ron D got this year, 5.7 Million to 4.6 Million?”Not really. Midterm cycles over the past several decades, according to the Pew Research Center, see 10 to 20 percent smaller turnout compared to White House years. More relevant comparisons are that Mr. Trump beat President Biden by just 3.3 percent in 2020 and eked past Secretary Clinton by half that margin in 2016.In any case, the two men did not campaign against each other, a faceoff Mr. Trump fears, as he telegraphs with continuing attempts to scare off or bait the governor, whiffing with the nickname “Ron DeSanctimonious” last week and threatening to release “unflattering information” about him should he throw his hat in the ring. These facts carry little weight with Mr. Trump, who sees himself as the titular character of the 1990s sitcom “Parker Lewis Can’t Lose.” If challenged with the misconstrued quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald about “no second acts in America,” he’d likely call the author a loser and cite President Cleveland.But America’s only president to serve non-consecutive terms won the popular vote in 1884, did it again in 1888 — losing in the Electoral College to a Republican, President Benjamin Harrison — and triumphed in both for his 1892 return. In addition to Mr. Cleveland earning the popular vote three times to Mr. Trump’s zero, Americans delivered Mr. Harrison’s party a drubbing in the 1890 midterms, and despite President Biden’s unpopularity, his Democrats managed to stave off a similar massacre. These stars don’t line up for a Trump comeback. Yet like Cleveland, sought by Democrats as a candidate as late as 1908 for a third term, he maintains a large base of supporters appreciative of his accomplishments and unphased by his boxcar of baggage.President Theodore Roosevelt was also a perennial candidate and odds-on favorite to recapture the White House in 1920 had he lived. But his run as a third-party candidate in 1912, when the moment wasn’t right, delivered the job to President Wilson, a Democrat.Following that defeat, Roosevelt did something that Mr. Trump refuses to: He left not just politics but the country, letting the movement he’d created rise or fall on its own. The Progressives posted anemic results in 1914, much like “MAGA Republicans” did this year. Cleveland and Roosevelt also enjoyed strong backing from their party establishment. Mr. Trump, however, does not. Fox News reports in a headline “Republican Mega-Donor Ken Griffin Says It’s Time to ‘Move On’ from Trump, Backs DeSantis for 2024,” and he’s not alone. The head of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, says that if Mr. Trump — like anyone else who becomes a candidate — announces a run for the White House, the RNC would no longer be permitted to pay Mr. Trump’s legal fees for the scores of lawsuits he faces. “We cannot pay legal bills for any candidate that’s announced,” Ms. McDaniel says. This would further sap Mr. Trump’s resources, although the press would still have incentive to cover him.The constellations aligned for Cleveland’s second act, but they are off kilter for another presidential comeback in 2024.

Trump’s Failure in the Midterms Knells for His Second Act

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