A Narrowing Field
Hello, I hope all is great with you and that your summer has weeks to go! New Forward Party members are up to nearly 40,000 since our announcement and growing every day. We also welcomed former Admiral and PA Democratic Congressman Joe Sestak to Forward, which I am thrilled about.
Last week I wrote about Peter Meijer losing his primary to Joe Gibbs in Michigan because Peter had voted to impeach Trump and Dems backed his extremist opponent. Well, another member on the edge – Jaime Beutler – lost her primary as well. If Liz Cheney loses her primary this week, the number of House Republicans who voted for impeachment who survive will be down to 2 out of 10.
I spoke to Peter and he’s doing great – he remains fired up to do positive things in Michigan and beyond. Congress lost a good one. Peter will be back.
Trump’s hold on the Republican Party has grown ever stronger. I have been in the room with several moderate Republicans who were looking to challenge Trump. Their prospects just got a lot tougher. Trump could declare any day now, in part to respond to the rising legal actions against him. The Republican primary could easily become a formality.
“If Trump wants it at this point, I don’t see how it’s not his . . . it’ll be a coronation at this point, not a primary,” said one source within the party. Polls this week told the same story. Movements and campaigns flourish when there’s a clear us vs. them, and the overwhelming narrative is the White House and the government vs. Donald Trump.
On the Democratic side, the odds of Joe Biden running also have gone up, in large part because Joe sees it as his God-given duty to defeat Trump. He also believes he’s the only person who can do it, which, frankly, was borne out in 2020.
If Biden doesn’t run, then you would see a flood of Democratic candidates as there is no one who can clear the field – it might even exceed the 24 Dem candidates in the last cycle, in which Joe Sestak and I participated. This is one reason why I expect Biden to run again, as no one relishes the idea of such a fractious primary with Trump on the other side.
If Biden does run, would there be a challenge anyway? This week on the podcast I interview Lucy Caldwell, a seasoned political strategist and advisor to the Forward Party who managed Joe Walsh’s campaign against Trump in 2020. Lucy did so because she wanted to combat Trump. In that cycle, “They canceled primaries so there stopped being a path,” she said of the Republicans, who had little patience for the likes of William Weld or Joe Walsh challenging the incumbent. I would guess that the Democrats would do something similar to block out challenges from the likes of Marianne Williamson or Nina Turner, and no one in the establishment would enter the field. The press would ignore any shortcircuiting of the Democratic primary as the right thing to do to strengthen Joe’s hand and consolidate against Trump.
The Forward Party exists to present more choices and dynamism in thousands of local and Congressional races in a country driven apart by an increasingly dysfunctional two-party system. That dysfunction may be all too evident for the world to see in 2024. We have no time to waste.
The Forward Tour launches on September 24th in Houston. For the interview with Lucy click here and to sign up for the Forward Party click here. Let’s build the Party America has been waiting for. Together.
