Opinion by Hal Brown, MSW, With a little Trump psychology thrown in
I have a two cautionary messages for all the candidates hoping to run in 2022 based on their unwavering support for Donald Trump.
- Don’t count on him to be there for you when you need his enthusiastic endorsement and...
- if he is willing to be there for you what you get may not be what you want.
Remember this story ironically published on Jan.5th: “Democrats, Republicans race to finish in Ga. as Trump casts shadow over Senate runoffs” Washington Post:
Here’s an excerpt about the rally Trump attended for the Republican candidates. I emphasized part of the first paragraph because I think it is the most important part of the article
“It is a white-knuckle moment for Republicans all over the place,” said one strategist who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be frank….
“He wants attention more than he wants the win, and that could really screw us...
So much of these elections are about momentum.”
Trump ultimately gave both Republican candidates in the Georgia runoffs, Sen. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, ringing endorsements during a rally in Dalton, Ga., calling them the “last line of defense” against Democratic control of the Senate.
“Tomorrow, each of you is going to vote in one of the most important runoff elections,” he told the crowd, before embracing both without reservation. “Kelly fights for me, David fights for me — that I can tell you.”
But Trump also doubled down on his unfounded claims of fraud in the presidential election. He pressured Pence to push to overturn the election results on Wednesday and promised to campaign against Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, whom he previously supported, and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
What this demonstrates to me is that unless it’s all about “Himself” Trump doesn’t care about anyone else even in a case when the control of the Senate was on the line. Off course this was before he knew he would be impeached and needed the Senate to be controlled by the Republicans.
When campaigning starts in earnest for 2022 it won’t matter whether Lara Trump, the wife or Eric the dumbest son and the mother of two of his grandchildren is running for Senate in North Carolina or Sarah Palin decides to primary Lisa Murkowski. No candidate can count on Trump helping to make them the stars of their own campaigns.
Trump will use his endorsements as reward for loyalty but candidates are going to want more than a mere endorsement. He can't even tweet his praise of them and excoriate their opponents on Twitter. In other words, he will actually have to do something that isn’t, again, all about him.
We know how rallies where his fans cheer him are his lifeblood. They feed his hunger for affirmation. Forget the clinical explanations for now, you’ve all read them. Put in everyday terms he gets off on them, he gets a rush out of them. They go to his head producing the kind of euphoria associated with cocaine. In a sense he’s become addicted to this experience.
Sticking with the psychological addiction analogy, not getting into whether it may have an actually neurological component involved changing the brain the way cocaine does, Trump should be going though withdrawal right about now.
This withdrawal from getting his fix of adoration and acclaim from his supporters may last much longer than he’d prefer if he is embroiled in serous lawsuit that could jeopardize his finances if not his freedom. It would be likely that his lawyers would admonish him to clear any public statements with them. We’ll see how long he can go without having a rally (take the poll).
Those seeking to carry the Trump banner to victory in 2022 are deluding themselves if they think the man himself is going to go out of his way to help them in any significant way unless there something really big in it for himself.
Trump is basically lazy when it comes to actually doing any work. He’s probably been the laziest president in history. He is like a toddler in that he wants instant gratification. I do not think that Trump has it in him to play what Mitch McConnell called the long game (the title of his 2016 book).
If Trump wanted to be a viable candidate for 2024 he would need to stay in the public eye. Once way to do this would be to perform his act at as many rallies as possible. Of course he can hold them himself, sans landing in Air Force One and without the huge folderol of a presidential Secret Service motorcade. I doubt little displays like this will scratch his itch for Idolization:
About the Mar a Lago event: Latest conspiracy theory is that Mar-a-Lago rally proves 'Trump won in a landslide'
Aside from having rallies organized for the sole purpose of worshiping Himself, another way to put on the Trump show would be to take top billing at rallies for other candidates. The questions these candidates may want to consider is whether it is worth it to be playing second fiddle to Trump when he will mostly air his grievances and possibly come across as unhinged. They have to look carefully at their voters and decided whether he has become more of a liability than an advantage.
How much of a liability he is depends on what happens to his reputation over the next year. If he is embroiled in what CNN calls his heaping list of lawsuits, the stress on him will increase exponentially the more likely it becomes that he may lose some cases. Even if he wins a case, what comes out about what he did may be decidedly unflattering. GOP candidates and their constituents may ask whether he has he gone further and further off the rails in his insistence that he was cheated out of his landslide victory? They want to see if he embraces various outlandish and downright paranoid QAnon conspiracy theories?
Candidates running in close elections may see Trump as a toxic drug, and reminiscent of Nancy Reagan’s anti-drug campaign slogan, decide to just say “no” even if Trump calls and offers to “help” them.
Consider my first few comments as an addendum to this story.