Project 25
The 2024 Republican Party presidential primary race is boring. None of the candidates have been able to gain any traction, and as the self-proclaimed de facto nominee, Trump has sat out the debates. There’s still a chance Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin could infuse the primary with some energy. But according to Daily Beast, “Late entrants always bust.” What’s not boring is the new round of Republican Party efforts to destroy our democracy and the Democratic Party efforts to thwart them.
There are examples of presidential candidates being rejected from state ballots. In New Jersey, presidential and vice-presidential candidates violated the 12th Amendment that prohibits electors from voting for both candidates from the same state. In Illinois, a presidential candidate was rejected for being under 35 years old, in violation of Article II of the Constitution. Colorado rejected a presidential candidate for failing to meet the Constitutional requirement of being a natural-born U. S. citizen. The then-10th Circuit court Judge Neil Gorsuch affirmed the ruling under appeal, which might explain the Republican promulgation of the Obama birther lie.
In 2019, California passed a law requiring presidential candidates to reveal their tax returns to exclude Trump from the state ballot. But that attempt was rejected by the state supreme court as unconstitutional. So, unless Trump is convicted of attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election and all appeals run their course before the November 5, 2024, elections, it’s unlikely Trump will be excluded from any state ballots in violation of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
Meanwhile, there are ongoing attempts by the right to interfere with the 2024 elections. No Labels, the party started by a Democratic fundraiser to pass bipartisan policies, which it has successfully done in the past, appears to have been hijacked by the Right. No Labels is increasingly funded by mega-donors of Republican causes. Also No Labels, which has never declared a specific platform, has promised to release a one this fall declaring positions on abortion, taxes, health care, immigration, and Ukraine.
In 2016, the 46 electoral votes from just 79,646 votes cast in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, gave Trump the win. On their own website, No Labels declares the battleground states are Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, North Carolina, Nevada, Florida, and Georgia. So far, No Labels is on the ballot in 11 states, including Arizona, North Carolina, Nevada, and Florida. They plan to get on the ballot in all 50 states plus DC. No Labels will declare an independent candidate in April 2024.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. just changed parties from Democrat to Independent. No Independent could win the presidential election. So, the whole No Labels movement looks like another [Russian] election interference operation. The RNC ran on no platform in 2020 and 2022. For 2024, the only Republican platform is Project 2025, which has a goal of weakening Democratic Party votes, through disenfranchisement and the No Labels movement.
The good news is, FiveThirtyEight, and RFK Jr. himself, believe he would take more votes from Trump and DeSantis, than from Biden. RFK Jr. attracts votes from anti-vaxers and conspiracy theorists, appealing to the “Trump crazies” and the DeSantis anti-Ukraine voters.
Democrats are more united than ever, and we’re wise to Republican shenanigans, giving a whole new meaning to “woke.” Republicans on the other hand, are asleep at the wheel, and on a crash course to their own demise.
Chicago native Lorraine Evanoff earned her degree in French from DePaul University then became a Certified Financial Manager. She worked as a finance exec in film production for seven years in Paris, then in Silicon Valley during the dot-com era, and later for various Hollywood production companies, notably as CFO of National Lampoon. She is currently living in Los Angeles with her husband.