2024: Replay Of 1912?

 History doesn't repeat, but people repeat what has happened previously.

In 1904 Theodore Roosevelt was re-elected in a a landslide.

On election night, after being declared victor, TR thanked the nation and said that he would not run again in 1908.

That is one of the truly bizarre political actions ever in American history.

I have never seen an answer to the question "why would a successful, popular and just re-elected president make himself a lame duck on election night"?

But he did.

The companion action taken by TR as 1908 began to come into sight was to enthusiastically endorse his Vice President, William Howard Taft.

Taft won in 1908 and TR went on a world tour.

The longer he was not president, the more he missed being president and the more he found that he disagreed with his protégé.

That alienation grew and grew and in 1912 TR tried to get the Republican nomination.

He failed, Taft won the nomination, so Roosevelt formed a third party, the Bull Moose Party.

He got a lot of votes but not enough to win the presidency.

But he got enough votes to keep Taft from winning.

So Woodrow Wilson became president.

If some Republican - not mudsill inhabiting republican, but a real one like Nelson Rockefeller or Mark Hatfield - has the guts to challenge donnie, and, if by some amazing quirk he or she gets the Republican nomination, donnie and his mob will go berserk; he will form a third party: MAGA FOREVER, and whoever the Democrats nominate will win.

That is all unlikely.

But if we get that far - a Republican challenging the white race party - it may not matter who wins the primary: after going to that much trouble (and establishing a fund raising infrastructure) I would expect the primary losing Republican to form a third party.

If either of those things happen 2024 will be interesting.

As near as I can figure it, even with the 25 white race party states doing their best to disenfranchise Democrats and Independents, two non-Democratic alternatives can split the popular votes across those two alternatives to give the popular majority to the Democrat and turn the Electoral College against donnie in white race party country.

That could be a historic Electoral College Landslide for the Democrat.

Could end up like 1912.