The Trump 2024 tests

To the exclusion of almost every other issue, Donald Trump focuses his speeches and publications on the discredited claim that he won the 2020 election and then had it stolen by massive fraud involving hundreds of thousands of votes. This continues despite the Trump team’s failure to provide convincing evidence of their fraud allegations. Willingness to join Mr. Trump in condemning the 2020 results — or at least raising doubts about the results — often seems like a prerequisite for his approval. That appears to be especially true in races for secretary of state — the officer who, in most states, oversees part or all of the electoral process. As a result, some Republican primaries will serve as preliminary tests of how that message might play out in battleground states in 2024.

A notable example was the race to be the GOP nominee for Secretary of State in Nevada, a state Joe Biden won by 33,596 votes (2.4% of the total vote). The winning candidate, Jim Marchant, made 2020 voter fraud allegations the centerpiece of his primary. « My work exposing it, » he said, « has a lot of very nervous people. The Communist/Socialist/RINO cabal is coming after me hard. Mr. Marchant organized the America First Secretary of State Coalition, or AFSOSC , to support like-minded candidates.He is more radical on this very point than Mr. Trump, arguing that « your vote hasn’t counted for decades, you haven’t elected anyone ».The president tends to stick to mourn his own loss.