It is a truth (virtually) universally acknowledged that a man like Donald Trump in possession of a good fortune (and a lack of any coherent human values), is in want of a presidential nomination.

Our apologies to you, Jane Austen, for appropriating some of your most famous words. But, if you were alive, now, in our era of social media, unending commentary, omnipresent streaming channels and the 24/7 glare of news coverage, you would be an excellent member of the commentariat. 

Quick on the draw, with those withering insights, and near-omniscient judgements about people, Austen would have been a great panellist for one of CNN’s, or even MSNBC’s or Fox News’s politics talk shows. We could really use someone like her right now, because the opening round of the 2024 general election is nigh upon us, and lord knows we will be needing clarity and insight about it.

In January, the first of the caucus and primary contests will take place (the Iowa caucus on 15 January and New Hampshire’s primary on 23 January – see the full schedule here). They will be followed by primaries and caucuses in the rest of the US, state by state. One date, 5 March (with 16 states voting), will host multiple elections on the same day — and those results are likely to be crucial for locking down the Republican nomination. 

These primaries and caucuses are the mechanism for selecting pledged delegates for the two parties’ national conventions – the Republicans on 15 July and the Democrats on 16 July. The goal is simple and straightforward for a victorious candidate: To assemble a sufficient number – at least a simple majority – of the total number of pledged delegates such that one candidate captures the nomination from their respective party’s convention.

Inevitably, things are somewhat more complicated in practice, because the entire process has evolved organically over time, rather than through any sort of national legislation and carefully worked out national plan. Each state has slightly – or very – different rules to be applied in their primaries and caucuses. 

These can vary over who qualifies to be on any of the state primary ballots, as well as who can vote in a primary. New Hampshire, for example, allows independent voters to vote in whichever party race they choose. That can generate an unpredictability for the actual outcome, as the unfortunate President Lyndon Johnson learnt in 1968.

The New Hampshire primary, and the Iowa caucus – where registered voters gather across the state in school, town, and church halls to listen to surrogate speeches in favour of a candidate and then vote for their choice – are first up. As things move forward, the primaries serve as a winnowing process that leads to calculations about which candidate will gain how many of those state’s apportioned delegates, and would-be nominees drop out of the race because of the hopelessness of their circumstances or because they have simply run out of money to continue.

In some individual states, the delegate tally from the primaries and caucuses becomes a winner-take-all process, while in others, the delegates are divided proportionately, in accord with the percentage of votes gained by the respective candidates. Taken as a whole, the system produces a whole range of permutations and combinations, giving commentators, pollsters and political advisers much to chew on as the days go forward. 

Meanwhile, in the case of the respective candidates’ political operatives, they may attempt to implement adjustments in their principals’ campaign messaging to respond to voter moods and the available polling data. (Spoiler alert: Shock and horror – messaging may matter rather more than actual intellectual and political consistency and coherence on the part of candidates.) This becomes especially urgent as there are fewer and fewer state votes left before one candidate reaches a majority of pledged delegates.

Simultaneously, as more and more primaries and caucuses take place, there are fewer options left for someone trailing a frontrunner to forestall a frontrunner’s win through changing the texture and messaging in their own campaign, and getting the chattering class to buy into such efforts. Desperation begins to take hold with trailing candidates about that time, as commentators begin to smell the scent of the blood of the wounded candidate. 

In 2024, this moment of inevitability is likely to be at hand by early March for Republicans – if not even earlier, given Donald Trump’s massive lead in most polling data, even as Trump begins facing moments of truth from court cases he has been named in. 

The incumbent

US President Joe Biden. (Photo: Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images)

For Democrats, this year is a different story. They have the incumbent, President Joe Biden, as their candidate, despite rising dissatisfaction with him. But, as the modern political landscape has repeatedly shown, as parties and their leaders have learnt through the bitter experiences of Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George HW Bush, and, arguably Lyndon Johnson, they should head off efforts to encourage challengers to the renomination of an incumbent president. Otherwise, the message becomes one saying the president’s own party wants to reject him over policies or personality – or both. 

Accordingly, despite Biden’s age, a strong bench of potential alternative candidates, his weak performance in polling so far, the not-so-quiet mutterings about his leadership skills among some Democrats, and in spite of a strong economic recovery, none of the frequently mentioned names are prepared to challenge Biden for their party’s nomination in 2024 — unless there is an extraordinary, unanticipated, existential stumble by the incumbent. 

Read more in Daily Maverick: Biden ‘not sure’ he’d be running if Trump was not in 2024 race

Biden is facing quixotic challenges from a little-known Congressman from Minnesota, Dean Phillips, and the equally unlikely self-help actualisation author Marianne Williamson. But a heavy-duty, experienced roster of names, including, among others, California Governor Gavin Newsom, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, have all held their respective ambitions in check. They are preparing, no doubt, to contemplate taking the plunge, but in 2028. They may also be joined by incumbent Vice President Kamala Harris, but that would depend on how she fares in the upcoming election. If she is a star on the campaign trail, she will be in the mix; but, if she does not deliver, she won’t be in the 2028 list of hopefuls.

Trump’s campaign of grievance

Republican presidential candidate, former US president Donald Trump, at a campaign event at the Whittemore Center Arena on 16 December 2023 in Durham, New Hampshire. (Photo: Scott Eisen / Getty Images)

Among Republicans, the situation still is complex. While Donald Trump is a former president, albeit complete with a vast inventory of criminal and civil legal proceedings coming directly at him, he is campaigning as a kind of prince royal unjustly deprived of his throne. His repertoire of grievance and authoritarian-sounding language effectively praising people like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Hungary’s Victor Orban is – and should be – increasingly alarming to many. 

The New York Times reported on Sunday:

“Former President Donald J. Trump on Saturday invoked Vladimir V. Putin to support his case that the four criminal indictments he is facing are political payback, quoting the Russian president saying that the charges undercut the argument that the United States is an example of democracy for the world.

“Mr. Trump made the comment during a campaign speech in Durham, N.H., in which he focused on pocketbook concerns of voters, hammered the state’s Republican governor, who endorsed one of his rivals, mocked his lower-polling competitors for not performing better and painted a dystopian vision of a country in ‘hell’ under his successor, President Biden.

“ ‘Even Vladimir Putin says that Biden’s – and this is a quote – politically motivated persecution of his political rival is very good for Russia, because it shows the rottenness of the American political system, which cannot pretend to teach others about democracy,’ Mr. Trump said as he railed against the 91 criminal charges he is facing, citing Mr. Putin speaking in September.

“Mr. Trump added: ‘So, you know, we talk about democracy, but the whole world is watching the persecution of a political opponent that’s kicking his ass. It’s an amazing thing. And they’re all laughing at us.’ ”

In a previous television appearance, Trump had denied he hoped to become a permanent dictator, by riffing that maybe he could become one for just a day so that he could close the border against all foreign immigrants and “drill, drill, drill” for oil everywhere possible. Historian Robert Kagan, no leftwing radical, has written a long column saying voters should take Trump’s threats more seriously than just the rants of an ageing blowhard. 

Trump has also appropriated the language of fascism and sounding like a Nazi acolyte, saying immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” Notwithstanding such rhetoric, he remains the favourite of a majority of Republican-registered, likely voters, if the early polling is accurate.

It is important to note some polling nationally also says voters would prefer neither of the two older men as their choices for president. At this point, trailing Trump are Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Governor and US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, who are neck and neck with each other, along with former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and biotech wonder boy Vivek Ramaswamy. Some polling now says Haley is in second place and slowly, slowly gaining ground. But, at the current rate, she would be unlikely to upset the Trumpian applecart before the convention, unless, for example, Trump is actually convicted in one of the pending cases against him. And maybe not even then.

Determining majorities

Of course, a quadrennial election in America is not simply about the race for the presidency. Once the primaries and caucuses and conventions are past, the remaining two candidates must win the national election where it is not a direct popular election. Instead, it is effectively 50 separate elections for the population weight of each state, expressed in the number of electors — with 270 of those needed out of a total 538 electoral votes. (That number is equal to the total number of congressmen, senators and three electoral votes for the District of Columbia.) Moreover, in a quadrennial election, the entire membership of the House of Representatives, a third of the Senate, dozens of governors, hundreds of state legislators and hordes of local officials are also on the various state ballots. 

As a result, the issue of how important a presidential candidate’s “coattails” for convincing voters to go with a presidential candidate plus other candidates becomes important. This phenomenon, along with more local issues, and the appeal of individual candidates, will, collectively, determine which of the parties will hold majorities in the two houses of Congress. Currently, the House of Representatives is barely held by Republicans and the Senate is controlled by Democrats, also by a very small majority. This makes legislative progress slow and painful.

As far as key issues in this election are concerned, aid to Ukraine and Israel (and military assistance/sales to Taiwan) may be hopelessly entangled with a struggle over how to proceed with new efforts and funding for stronger border control – a favourite of the Republicans. (Most analysts say Republicans remain supportive of aid to all three nations – but that party definitely does not want to give Biden an easy win without pushing him very hard on border control upgrades.)

At this point, Congress still has been unable to achieve a successful outcome that encompasses the various aid measures and a stronger border control effort that is not anathema to parts of the Democratic coalition. An unsuccessful outcome in achieving such an agreement could have major repercussions for Biden’s foreign policy objectives – let alone for the countries concerned. 

Meanwhile, while the border control question motivates many Republicans (and others), women’s reproductive health and a defence of any remaining state-by-state rights to abortion is a similarly strong motivation for many Democrats (and women, obviously). It is not clear how these two questions will effectively motivate how many people will vote – and for whom, once they queue up at a polling station or cast an advance ballot by mail.

Would-be candidates

At this early date, one other interesting question may be the role of third, fourth, or even fifth party candidates in the upcoming election. So far, leftist academic Cornel West is planning to run as an independent, and Dr Jill Stein hopes to gain the Green Party nomination yet again. (Some blame her for Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016 with votes taken by Stein that might otherwise have gone Democratic.) There is also Robert F Kennedy Jr (son of the slain attorney general and senator) who is seeking a third party candidacy, and who is best known as a vaccine denier and conspiracy theory advocate. Beyond these, there is also a coalition of less than publicly known individuals who say they are promoting a “No Label” party – with no actual, corporeal candidate, at least not yet.

Crucial in all this is actually getting one’s name on the ballot for the November 2024 election. That is another question largely left up to the individual states, with requirements in some states more onerous than in others. (The federal government has significant regulatory oversight over the financing of electoral campaigns, however.)

It will be crucial to see how much pull any or all of these would-be candidates ultimately have, vis-a-vis the two main parties’ nominees, once the real campaign season begins at around Labour Day, the first Monday in September. When that date comes along, people are back in school, back from vacations, and at least willing to contemplate the choices before them on the ballot. That will be a hard one for many. We shall keep readers informed about the main story, as well as many other aspects of this election cycle. Stay with us on this one, it will matter. DM