Over Muddied Waters

Last week, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon - who remains a vocal supporter - claimed there was a "plan" to secure a third term for Trump.

"Trump is going to be president in '28, and people ought to just get accommodated with that," Bannon told The Economist. "At the appropriate time, we'll lay out what the plan is."
Trump does not rule out seeking third term - but says he will not use VP loophole

Part of the problem with the Democrats still not having their act together in terms of advancing strong contenders for the Presidency in 2028 is that it leaves room for garbage like this. While it's possible that the "plan" could simply be whining to the Supreme Court that President Trump is entitled to a do-over of some sort, and hoping that the Republican-appointed justices are partisan enough to pretend whatever arguments put forth should matter to anyone, the most likely way that Donald Trump remains President is that the administration declares some sort of bogus "emergency," Congressional Republicans still feel beholden enough to him to go along with it, and they count on the fact that the Judiciary has no way of enforcing whatever adverse rulings it hands down.

But Joe Biden made his disingenuous "bridge President" statements years ago, and the Democratic Party still doesn't seem to have started the work of coming up with who their next candidate is going to be. California Governor Gavin Newsom seems to be looking at the job, but that's really about it. And sure, this upcoming Presidential election cycle wouldn't be the first one where someone previously unknown jumps out of the field to run away with the primary election, but there isn't a field at this point. Absolutely no one seems interested in getting the first mover advantage here. So I'm curious what everyone is waiting for. (It's possible that people are still convinced that if they simply stay out of the way, the Republicans will self-destruct, but one would think that this tactic has been demonstrated to be a bad one by this point.)

The thing is, this doesn't strike me as the sort of situation in which anyone who puts their head above the parapet risks being sniped. Sure, the Trump Administration is going to go after anyone they think might be gaining some level of name recognition, but in an environment as partisan as the current one, that seems more like an advantage than a problem.

It's possible the issue is that the Centrist vs. Progressive divide is hard at work, and some number of people are waiting (hoping) for the midterms to choose a (temporary) victor in that conflict before they make a move. It makes an amount of sense to me, but I'm not a political scientist... when I found out that there were going to be five papers due in the first semester of PolySci 101, I promptly changed majors. So I suspect that my guess isn't any better than the bottom 15th percentile. But it's clear that something's going on. I think that the Democrats need resolve it prior to Steve Bannon telling a media outlet that, at the appropriate time, they'll lay out their plan to have Donald Trump anointed the messiah. Even if only to see who he can get a rise out of.

P.S.: By the way, I don't buy for a moment that President Trump would be above running for Vice President, with the expectation being that whomever was supposedly running to be President resigning as soon as the election results are in. If he actually thinks it will work (a.k.a., that SCOTUS would play along), it's absolutely on the table.