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Donald Trump’s opponents at Wednesday night’s Republican presidential primary debate reserved their harshest attacks for his decision not to participate. Trump’s response: a call for future debates to simply be canceled.
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Even before the debate officially wrapped up, Trump’s campaign issued a statement saying that the proceedings were “as boring and inconsequential as the first debate” and declaring that “nothing that was said will change the dynamics of the primary contest being dominated by President Trump.”
The campaign then cited Trump’s most favorable polls, and it urged the Republican National Committee to “immediately put an end to any further primary debates” to focus on beating President Biden.
Translation: We want a coronation for Trump. In September. Of the year before the election.
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Trump doesn’t technically call for ending the contest altogether by, say, canceling the actual primaries along with the debates months before any votes are cast. But that’s the logical extension of his sentiments — which certainly align with his various other undemocratic moves and impulses.
This is a man, after all, who tried to overturn the 2020 election on bogus grounds and who has signaled that he is gearing up to consolidate power should he retake it. Trump has repeatedly and suggestively praised autocrats in ways that his supporters laugh off but that cause advocates for democracy to worry. He made a habit during his presidency of bulldozing long-standing democratic norms.
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But are Republican primary voters there yet? It doesn’t appear that the vast majority of them are. The data suggest that a coronation is premature.
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There is no question that Trump is the runaway front-runner. His 40-point lead in the FiveThirtyEight average is bigger than any lead that’s ever been overcome.
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Yet we’re talking about a relatively small sample size, given that the parties moved toward letting the voters decide their nominees in primaries in the 1970s. And we have seen deficits of nearly 30 points overcome, including this late in the contest, to determine the 2008 Democratic presidential nominee.
Trump’s being overtaken may be unlikely. But it is hardly outside the realm of possibility. Barack Obama turned a 28-point deficit in October 2007 into a double-digit lead by April 2008 — a nearly 40-point shift on the margins.
The question of whether Republicans are willing to at least entertain the possibility of ditching Trump is also in play. It appears that some are.
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CBS News/YouGov polling this week showed Trump dominating the early contests in Iowa and New Hampshire by 30 and 37 points, respectively. About half of potential voters in the Republican contest in each state support Trump.
But in each case, fewer than half of those Trump supporters — and fewer than one-fourth of potential Republican primary voters overall — said they were locked in. Of potential voters in the Republican contest, just 20 percent in Iowa and 23 percent in New Hampshire said they were considering only Trump. (In both cases, that was actually less than the number who said they were not considering Trump.)
Trump may believe there is no need for further debates, but a plurality of Republicans continue to say not only that there should be debates, but also that Trump should participate in them. Another YouGov poll this week showed decreasing interest in Trump’s debating, but GOP voters still said he should participate, 39 percent to 31 percent.
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Candidates have been known to call for races to conclude early in the service of focusing on the general election when it looks as though they have a nomination wrapped up. It is not common, however, to take this posture before any voters actually vote. And it should not be lost on anybody that Trump is issuing this demand before we get anything amounting to a resolution to his various legal issues.
While we could dismiss Trump’s call as mere provocation, it puts his party in a decidedly inconvenient position: The guy it badly feels the need to cater to — for fear of his burning the house down — is now pressuring it to deprive his opponents of their most significant forum.
It seems unlikely the GOP will do what he asks yet, but consider it Trump’s opening bid in his latest attempt to cast aside the will of the voters in the service of empowering himself.
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