Stoneage Ramblings

By John R. Stone

Here’s some theoretical political scenarios for 2024.

What if President Donald J. Trump gets convicted in one of the multiple criminal cases in which he is a defendant. While this would certainly activate his base of supporters, others might decide that the “law and order” wing of the Republican party would not support a convicted felon and would look for a different candidate to support.

Granted, the former president would appeal any conviction, but that might not be resolved prior to election day which would be another issue.

At the time the rising Republican candidate might be Nikki Haley, which could be kind of a coup since she would offer something different to the women who are turned off by Mr. Trump’s attitude toward women.

This, of course, would set Democrat’s plans aflame. Not only would Haley be a woman making the Republicans the first major party in modern times to have a female in the lead candidate role, the contrast between her age, 51, and President Joe Biden’s, 81, would be very stark indeed.

Still another scenario is that either Mr. Trump or President Biden has a health related medical incident in the next six months or so. That would put the age issue up front for both candidates, even the one that didn’t have the incident.

The point here is that there are around 10 months until the election and a lot of things can happen.

Former President Trump has been running his campaign for nearly a year now and dominates in Republican polling and is in the lead in some overall polling at this point.

President Biden has said he is running for reelection. In a sense, he has to. As soon as he says he is not running he becomes a lame duck and he will find he lacks any power with Congress. He might also lose some support within his own party because people will be looking towards the best replacement for him. Remember, too, that Biden did not jump into the race in 2020 until fairly late. At this point Biden has one challenger Minnesotans know, Minnesota Representative Dean Phillips.

Is the Democratic party working behind the scenes in case Biden pulls out of the race? What would Democrats do if suddenly Haley were the Republican nominee? Wouldn’t that almost automatically mean Democrats would need a female lead candidate as well? Would they go with Vice-President Kamela Harris or someone else?

Outside the Republican and Democratic parties the above issues may affect the unaffiliated. People who owe no loyalty to either party will make up their own minds about what they want to see in future leadership. The impact of the above mentioned issues on swing voters and independents will probably swing this election.

For example, former President Trump said he would like TV cameras in the courtroom because he thinks he is being persecuted and it would turn people to him. Others may watch those trials and think he is guilty and unworthy of the presidency whether a jury votes to convict or not.

Top all of this off with new technology that can create a video of a political candidate saying things he or she did not say. And toss in the “my opponent is the devil” approach of some campaigns and we could see some ugly stuff.

So both parties have their frontrunners now but a lot can happen in 11 months. Some new and very different issues can arise with one candidate facing trials in multiple upcoming cases. What happens if he is convicted? Could he be sentenced to jail? What if he is elected anyway? And what will become of the Biden impeachment inquiry?

Next month primaries and caucuses start that will determine candidates for president on a state to state basis. There could be some surprises there as well.

It should be an interesting 10 months!