Strategies for Blue-State Conservatives
The Colorado Supreme Court wants to prevent former President Donald Trump from appearing on presidential ballots in the state next year.
Higher courts will overturn this lousy decision, it will energize Trump’s base and further delegitimize elections for millions of Americans. But maybe if Trump’s the nominee, not appearing on the Colorado ballot (voluntarily) is a good move. For the sake of argument, let’s say Trump winning the GOP nomination is a foregone conclusion. Trump will likely win every state in the primary, even with Chris Sununu and the legacy media pumping up Boeing’s puppet.
It sounds crazy, but in an electoral college system where his Democratic opponent currently has a 39 percent approval rating, why should Trump bother running for president in the bluest states? Maybe someone else could beat the sitting president in some of these blue states. In a traditional presidential election, the Republican nominee will win states like Wyoming and Utah, while the Democrat will take Massachusetts and California. People in these states are unlikely to elect a member of the minority party to federal office in a presidential year. Even Mitt Romney and Scott Brown lost Massachusetts statewide in 2012—and the state is more Democratic now than 11 years ago.
Massachusetts is so bad electorally for Republicans that, even though I want a Republican to beat Joe Biden in the 2024 presidential election, I’ll vote for the American Solidarity Party. What’s the point of voting for Trump again if I know he’ll lose by a two-to-one margin? I might as well pick someone who more closely resembles what I believe, even if they’ll receive under one percent of the vote. I’ll still show up because I like voting on referenda, but my presidential vote and write-in votes in uncontested down-ballot races have little meaning.
What if instead of Trump vs. Biden in these uncompetitive blue states, the two major candidates were Biden and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or some anti-Biden Democrat or moderate? What if someone courted Republicans, un-enrolleds, and anti-Biden Democrats on a platform of not being Biden? Most people in various blue states will never vote for Trump. He’s been in politics since 2015—and longer if you count his birther social media posts as political involvement—so how many people who never voted for him before can he win over? Not many.
This idea somewhat resembles how mayoral races work in some big cities. Boston holds a nonpartisan primary, and the top two vote-getters advance to the November general election. Since Boston’s a Democratic city, a typical November mayoral election has two Democrats running against one another for mayor. In 2021, Michelle Wu, best known for hating white people, beat fellow Democratic city councilor Annissa Essabi George 64-36 percent. I disliked both—and would never support either because they backed 12 weeks of paid abortion leave for both women and men—but George was a marginally better candidate than Wu.
I’m no fan of RFK Jr. or George, but if voting strategically to stop another Biden presidency, who cares what the individual politician believes? If RFK Jr. believes vaccines cause autism, but voting for him helps prevent Biden from getting 270 electoral votes, then I’m a Kennedy Democrat. The anti-Biden side could run Dylan Mulvaney on a platform of putting the TikToker’s face on every beer can in America for all I care. If it helped stop Biden, then I’m team Mulvaney.
The downside here is that it may hinder down-ballot Republican performance. Some who support Trump may not show up to vote a straight R ticket without him on the ballot. In some states, the GOP has little to lose, and candidates avoid association with Trump. There’s no chance this strategy will happen in 2024, but we’re seeing members of Congress expelled, and candidates kicked off ballots. If the other side wants to play like that, why not use their biggest weakness, Biden, against them?