What If?
I’m not a big fan of the “what if” game…what if this happened, or what if that happened, as opposed to what did happen.
But it did occur to me the other day, as Donald Trump prepared to push Grover Cleveland aside as the only president to return for a second, but non-consecutive, term in office.
What if Trump had won in 2020? Not weighing in on how votes were counted in that election, just saying what if he had won?
I’m tempted to say that he would just be finishing up his eighth year in office and preparing to hand things off to a successor in about six weeks. But who would that be?
There would not have been a January 6th incident had Trump won. Would Republicans have trusted Vice President Mike Pence to be Trump’s successor? Would Trump have endorsed him? Or would there have been a long caucus and primary fight, with someone claiming to be a better heir to the MAGA throne than the man who had been #2 for eight years?
Had Trump won in 2020, who would have won the Democrat nomination in 2024? Likely not Kamala Harris, who had a failed 2020 effort and would have still just been a U.S. Senator from California. Hard to predict that, since in reality no one seriously challenged Joe Biden this time, so we don’t know who with aspirations would have raised their hand had it been an open seat. You could imagine names like Newsom and Whitmer would have been in the mix.
Again, it’s not a terribly interesting exercise. But it occurred to me that if Democrats—and some Republicans—were hoping to be rid of Trump as soon as possible, the 2020 outcome only prolonged that…because now his departure date will be January 21 of 2029.
