Tara Palmeri reports the former President thinks he needs more than one ticket in the endorsement game:
THE DOUBLE DIPPER — DONALD TRUMP has floated the idea of doling out dual endorsements in some of the key midterm races as he becomes increasingly suspicious of his advisers who are pushing competing candidates.
The GOP kingmaker-in-chief has grown so distrustful of all the advice he’s getting from various aides — and so wary of being lured into picking the wrong horse — that he’s floated an idea that would essentially dilute his endorsement.
“He feels like he’s being penned in,” said a person close to the former president, explaining that Trump’s logic is that dual endorsements would mean, “I get two chances to win.”
Another source of Trump’s endorsement apprehension: He isn’t clear about which advisers have significant personal or financial ties to the candidates they’re bending his ear about.
“He’s at times suspicious of the recommendations that people give him when he knows they’re being paid,” an adviser to the former president added. “He’s been asking who is paying who.” [Politico]
“I get two chances to win”? While I’m no statistician – one class in college, thanks for the ‘C’, professor – I do recall that only works with independent outcomes. A primary is not filled with independent outcomes. Because there are a limited number of votes available, the performance of each outcome, i.e., candidate, is inversely related to the performance of the others in aggregate in “first past the post” elections[1].
Which means, as many have already pointed out, that there is a chance, a good chance, that the MAGA vote will split if Trump chooses to endorse multiple candidates. If this happens, then the winner may be damaged goods, not because of their far-right credentials, but because the factionalism in Republican politics has, so far, been quite bitter. MAGA voters decide that if their personal favorite candidate didn’t win the primary, well, they’re not going out to vote.
They may even think the vote was rigged.
Not that this is going to happen. The fallaciousness of Trump’s claim to have two tickets to the lottery, rather than one, is obvious, and I’m sure someone will inform him quickly as to how this all works.
But it’s a consequence of the rank amateurism inherent in Trump and MAGA. He doesn’t get it. That very amateurism may end up blunting the entire movement, disappointing them and driving the base away. It all becomes self-reinforcing. Ironically, he does understand that he’s at the center of corruption, because he wonders who is getting paid off. This is evidence of the way he views the world – it’s all about the money.
Think of it this way, Donald. Your influence is sharply limited. Diluting it just makes it that much less effective.
1 The equivalent statement in ranked choice voting scenarios is considerably more involved, and I won’t take a stab at it.
