The word must have gone out recently. Time to back the big man.
Both of Tennessee’s two United States senators and three of its nine U.S. House members over the last few days have endorsed former President Donald Trump in his comeback bid.
U.S. Sens. Marsha Blackburn, Bill Hagerty and U.S. Reps. Diana Harshbarger and John Rose all said they want the 45th president to become the 47th president in 2024.
Late Monday, U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann endorsed Trump, saying “… most importantly, President Trump put Americans first. I believe Americans deserve that again.” Earlier this year, U.S. Rep. Mark Green had been named a member of Trump’s Tennessee Federal Leadership Team.
In a Monday tweet, Blackburn said, “Under President Trump, our economy was booming, gas prices were low, and inflation was under control. Our order was secure, our adversaries feared us & our military was strong.”
Hagerty tweeted his support Saturday: “It is my honor to give my whole-hearted endorsement to Donald J. Trump to be the next President of the United States.”
Rose tweeted Saturday: “Now more than ever, America needs a strong leader with a track record we can trust. I am endorsing Donald Trump for President in 2024.”
For her part, Harshbarger said in a Sunday statement that Trump had a proven track record of putting America first. “He has done it before, and he can do it again,” she wrote.
According to a Business Insider article Monday, one governor, nine senators and 43 House members now have endorsed the former president.
Trump won Tennessee with 60.7% of the vote in both 2016 and 2020.
Millions of Americans would love to return the former president to office, and, as Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen said on this page on Saturday, there are compelling reasons to do so. He ticked off “the first comprehensive tax reform in three decades, low inflation, rising wages, energy independence, securing the border with Mexico, destroying the Islamic State caliphate, taking out Iran’s terrorist mastermind Qasem Soleimani, four Arab-Israeli peace treaties, Operation Warp Speed” and, he said “the list goes on.”
Progress in most of those areas has reversed or been stagnant under President Joe Biden.
The reality of the situation, though, is that Trump did not win a majority of the national popular vote in 2016 or 2020. Heck, he didn’t even win a plurality. It took the country’s odd but fair Electoral College to put him in office.
The states that allowed him to win in 2016, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, voted for the other guy in 2020. It’s hard to imagine them switching back in 2024, given what has transpired since.
For Trump to win the presidency — not the nomination of the Republican Party — in 2024, without the above three states, he would have to concoct a scenario that included winning back Georgia (which he won in 2016), winning Arizona (which he won in 2016), winning Nevada (which is competitive but which he has not won), winning New Hampshire (competitive but which he has not won), winning one electoral vote in Maine (which he did in 2016 and 2020), and not losing any state he won in 2020. That would give him 270 electoral votes, the exact number he needs to win.
That’s akin to drawing an inside straight in poker. It’s rare.
Oh, we know there are other unlikely combinations that could give him the needed 270 electoral votes, but all that is without factoring in Trump’s extenuating circumstances. Not only does he continue to push the theory that he was robbed of the 2020 election, turning off the suburban voters and independents who helped him win in 2016, but he has a few — shall we say — legal snares that may get in the way.
Meanwhile, all the Republican states the former president won in 2020 and 2016 are willing to vote for a candidate who can reclaim the office in 2024. Many of them still favor him for the nomination but understand he is handicapped in a general election.
Trump endorsed Blackburn in her race to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Bob Corker in 2018, Hagerty in his 2020 race against Marquita Bradshaw and likely all the Congress members who have endorsed him. Perhaps not endorsing Trump would make them feel disloyal, but it’s much more important for them as legislators that someone in their party be elected president. Their ideas — especially if Republicans are able to win the Senate — would have a greater chance of seeing the light of day with a Republican president.
If Trump wins the nomination with even more baggage than he had in 2016 and 2020, the country is almost certainly looking at four more years of Biden, who would begin his second term in 2025 at the age of 82. For whatever good Trump did as president (see above), enough voters are tired of the 2020 election rehash, the caustic pronouncements and the general chaos that ensued during his presidency that they would mark the other guy’s name.
Nominating the former president, at this point, looks like a suicide mission for Republicans. But many things could happen before the primaries next year. We hope our elected officials will re-think their endorsements.