But Have You Thought About Trying to Win?

A question for both presidential tickets.

There’s been an extraordinary amount of drama in this presidential election cycle, and very little of it, in my view, has been beneficial to the country. In fact, electorally speaking, the only positive development I can think of was Joe Biden’s eleventh hour decision not to run for reelection. The rest has been an escalating clown-show of terrible judgment.

The GOP renominated a twice-impeached former president who tried to overturn the last election, caused a deadly insurrection at the Capitol, and handed the Republican Party its worst electoral defeats in over half a century (losing the presidency, House, and Senate). And he was just getting warmed up at the point. After leaving office, he went on to cost Republicans additional seats in the 2022 midterms (including a Senate majority for the second time), and added to his impending legal woes by refusing to give back boxes of stolen classified material that included nuclear-arsenal and war plans (that he showed off to random guests at his country club).

I’m not sure what’s crazier: the fact that Republican voters kept their faith in Trump through such profound failures, or that only two long-shot GOP primary candidates bothered to challenge Trump on any of them until it was too late.

Upon winning the nomination, Trump selected J.D. Vance as his running mate, perhaps the only individual on Trump’s short-list who offered nothing in the way of expanding the ticket’s electoral appeal. Vance, of course, was a vanity pick — a former NeverTrumper who submitted entirely to Trumpism in order to secure a place in Republican politics… from which he pursued a strange interest in publicly disparaging childless Americans.

The Democrats? They’ve been a mess as well. The party disallowed a proper presidential primary, and even went as far as punishing those within their ranks who called for one. This, despite Joe Biden’s mental shortcomings becoming increasingly apparent, and his poll numbers (going back two years) not only revealing bleak general-election prospects for 2024, but also a majority of Democratic voters who believed he wasn’t up to the job, and thus wanted someone else.

It took an absolutely disastrous debate performance, and an even steeper decline in the polls, to finally convince the Democratic establishment to apply serious pressure to their incumbent. It ultimately worked, and that was a good thing. But Biden was quickly replaced with Vice President Kamala Harris, without any serious consideration of stronger and safer Democratic alternatives. And though Harris has enjoyed a positive swing in the polls amidst a rhetorical wind-sprint to moderate her policy positions, she passed on a prime opportunity this week to further broaden her appeal (and perhaps even clinch the election) by choosing a popular, moderate running mate from a key swing state.

She instead tapped progressive Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, known among other things for granting driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, letting convicted felons vote, expanding access to gender-transition services, and providing tax-payer funded medical leave. It’s a record I don’t think will persuade many persuadable voters, and it certainly won’t help that Walz fabricated details about his military service.

Oh, and before anyone jumps on me about this… Yes, I know there’s another presidential candidate of note: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. But for the umpteenth time in this election cycle, we’ve learned that the man’s a literal freak of nature. He’s becoming less and less of a factor as the election-cycle progresses.

One has to wonder if any of these people are actually trying to win. The Republican and Democratic parties are almost entirely focused on energizing their respective bases rather than appealing to, in a country in which 41% of voters identify as “independent,” the type of people who actually decide elections.

Now, it’s certainly possible that nothing that’s happened since Biden bailed will hurt the Democrats’ prospects. It may be that Nikki Haley was absolutely right back in January when she said, “The first party to retire its 80-year-old candidate is going to be the one who wins this election.”

The Democrats did exactly that. The GOP, unfortunately, did not. Republican voters took a hard pass on far better suited (and more favorable) general-election candidates, and stuck with the guy who’s now back to questioning his opponent’s ethnic origins, and trashing insufficiently loyal Republicans (including the very popular governor of an important swing-state).

But as the saying goes, anything can happen. An economic crisis, terrorist attack, or something of that nature could swing the momentum back over to Trump in a race this close.

What remains frustrating is that both parties have had huge opportunities to secure a blow-out win come November. Instead they’ve spent the game punting on third down.

Don’t want to receive John Daly’s solo columns and podcasts by email? No problem. Just click here, and turn off notifications for “John Daly’s Commentary.”