No. of Recommendations: 5
I think there is too much lining up against trump for him to succeed this time. The Koch Brothers have announced they will be funding a candidate that is NOT trump. The rest of the candidates I have heard mention the importance of dropping out early to whoever is leading in the polls when we get close to the primary elections. I have no idea who will get the nomination, and I think anybody who does is just guessing. I have heard that past poll leaders this early in the game almost never end up being the nominee.
Trump has the one thing that all the Koch money in the world can't buy: adoration of a significant segment who will not consider another candidate.
Recall that the primary contests, as now structured, run to the extremes, and Trump owns that part of the spectrum. Even someone more extreme (DeSantis, for example) can't outmaneuver the strong lock hold that Trump has on his acolytes. A centrist can't win because of the structure of the primaries. Someone even more radical can't win because they can't peel off enough Trump votes to be meaningful.
So long as this is a contest of more than a couple candidates (there are already two, with DeSantis sure to announce, and perhaps Kari Lake in a bid to run for Vice President) Trump wins with a plurality. Yes, sometimes elections do funny things and this prediction could fail, but absent swarms of black swans, I expect Trump to be the nominee. Again. And hopefully, for the last time.
