Conservative pundit and former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy is warning Republicans that nominating Donald Trump could backfire in a big way in 2024.
“Trump doesn’t have a prayer of being elected president again,” McCarthy wrote in The National Review in a column posted online before the former president was hit with new indictments connected to the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.
McCarthy, who also appears on Fox News, said Trump cost his party the House in 2018 and the Senate in 2020, and his involvement in the 2022 midterm elections caused a projected “red wave” election to fall short.
Despite that, polls show Trump running neck-and-neck with US President Joe Biden.
McCarthy said Democrats hope those polls lure Republican voters into nominating Trump.
But he warned that Trump would face some difficult math next year, estimating that about a quarter of Republican voters won’t support him no matter what.
McCarthy wrote:
“To have a chance in the general election, Trump has to make up that support. But from where? Polls consistently show that Democratic opposition to Trump is nearly universal. They also consistently show that his unfavourability with the general public hovers around 60 percent. There is no reason to believe this will change.”
McCarthy noted that Trump’s various trials next year will lead to “dramatic testimony” right in the middle of the campaign, playing out before an electorate in which the former president is already “deeply unpopular.”
“The country has already made up its mind about him,” he concluded. “From here, there’s no up, only down. If we nominate him, he’s going to get drubbed.”