If President Trump Is Impeached Can He Run for a Second Term

Leaving Washington, D.C., behind, the Trumps lath Air Force One at Articulation Base of operations Andrews in Maryland on Jan. 20, hours earlier President Biden's inauguration. Pete Marovich/Pool/Getty Images hide caption

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Leaving Washington, D.C., behind, the Trumps board Air Strength One at Joint Base of operations Andrews in Maryland on Jan. xx, hours earlier President Biden's inauguration.

Pete Marovich/Pool/Getty Images

The Senate had a test vote this calendar week that cast deep dubiety on the prospects for convicting former President Donald Trump on the impeachment charge now pending against him. Without a two-thirds majority for conviction, at that place will not be a 2d vote in the Senate to bar him from future federal function.

Besides this calendar week, Politico released a Morn Consult poll that establish 56% of Republicans saying that Trump should run once more in 2024. As he left Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20, he said he expected to exist "back in some form."

So will he seek a comeback? And if he does, what are his chances of returning to the White House?

History provides little guidance on these questions. There is niggling precedent for a former president running once more, let alone winning. Merely since when has the lack of precedent bothered Donald Trump?

Only 1 president who was defeated for reelection has come back to win again. That was Grover Cleveland, first elected in 1884, narrowly defeated in 1888 and elected over again in 1892.

Another, far better-known president, Theodore Roosevelt, left part voluntarily in 1908, believing his hand-picked successor, William Howard Taft, would continue his policies. When Taft did not, Roosevelt came back to run against him four years afterwards.

The Republican Party establishment of that fourth dimension stood by Taft, the incumbent, so Roosevelt ran every bit a 3rd-party candidate. That split the Republican vote and handed the presidency to Democrat Woodrow Wilson.

And that's information technology. Aside from those two men, no defeated White Firm occupant has come up back to claim votes in the Balloter College. Democratic President Martin Van Buren, defeated for reelection in 1840, sought his party's nomination in 1844 and 1848 simply was denied it both times. The latter fourth dimension he helped found the anti-slavery Gratuitous Soil Party and ran equally its nominee, getting ten% of the popular vote but winning no states.

More than a few one-time presidents may have been prepare to go out public life past the stop of their time at the peak. Others surely would have liked to stay longer, but they were sent packing, either past voters in November or by the nominating apparatus of their parties.

There take also been 8 presidents who have died in office. Four in the 1800s (William Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Abraham Lincoln and James Garfield) were succeeded by lackluster vice presidents who were non nominated for a term on their own. Four in the 1900s (William McKinley, Warren Harding, Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy) were succeeded by vice presidents whose parties did nominate them for a term in their own correct (Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson).

Each of these four went on to win a term on his ain, and each so left office voluntarily. As noted above, Theodore Roosevelt later changed his mind, and Johnson began the 1968 chief flavour every bit an incumbent and a candidate merely ended his run at the end of March.

The Jackson model

A statue of President Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Foursquare near the White House in June. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

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A statue of President Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square near the White House in June.

Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

I model that might exist meaningful for Trump at this stage is that of President Andrew Jackson, who ran for president three times and arguably won each time. His offset campaign, in 1824, was a four-manner contest in which he clearly led in both the popular vote and the Electoral College merely lacked the needed majority in the latter.

That sent the issue to the House of Representatives, where each country had one vote. A protracted and dubious negotiation involving candidates and congressional power brokers afterwards denied Jackson the prize. He immediately denounced that consequence as a "decadent deal," laying the groundwork for another bid. In 1828, Jackson was swept into office, ousting the incumbent on a wave of populist fervor.

It is not an accident that Trump, following the advice of one-time adviser Steve Bannon, spoke approvingly of Jackson in 2016. When he entered the White House, Trump hung Jackson'southward presidential portrait in the Oval Function overlooking the Resolute Desk.

It is not hard to imagine Trump invoking the spirit of Jackson'due south 1828 campaign against the "corrupt bargain," if he runs in 2024 against "the steal" (his shorthand for the outcome of the 2022 election, which he falsely claims was illegitimate).

Jackson, the ultimate outsider in his own time, makes a far better template for Trump than either Cleveland or Teddy Roosevelt — fifty-fifty though the latter ii were New Yorkers like Trump.

2 New York governors, two decades apart

For now, Cleveland remains the but two-term president who had a time out betwixt terms. When he first won in 1884, he was the starting time Democratic president elected in 28 years, and he won past the micro-margin of just 25,000 votes nationwide. He won considering he carried New York, where he was governor at the time, calculation its balloter votes to those of Democratic-leaning states in the Due south – which preferred a Democratic Yankee to a Republican Yankee.

The latter, James Blaine of Maine, was widely known as "Slippery Jim," and his reputation fabricated him repugnant to the more reform-minded members of his own party. Blaine was also faulted in that campaign for declining to renounce a zealous supporter who had called Democrats the party of "rum, Romanism and rebellion." That phrase, which has lived on in infamy, was a derogatory reference to Democrats' "wet" sentiments on the issue of alcohol besides equally to the Roman Catholics and former secessionists to be constitute in the party tent.

Strong every bit it was, that language backfired past alienating enough Catholics in New York to elect Cleveland, himself a Protestant. His margin in his abode state was a mere 1000 votes, merely it was plenty to evangelize a majority in the Electoral College.

After Cleveland'south showtime term, the election was excruciatingly close once more. The salient issue of 1888 was the tariff on goods from foreign countries. Republicans were for it, making an argument not unlike Trump's own America Commencement rhetoric of 2016. Cleveland, on the other hand, said the tariff enriched big business simply hurt consumers. He won the national popular vote simply non the Electoral Higher, having fallen 15,000 votes curt in his home state of New York.

Simply Cleveland scarcely broke stride. He continued to campaign over the ensuing years and easily won the Autonomous nomination for the 3rd consecutive time in 1892. He then dismissed the one-term incumbent to whom he had lost in 1888, Benjamin Harrison, who received less than a 3rd of the Balloter College vote.

A statue of Theodore Roosevelt in New York City. Later on leaving office, Roosevelt tried unsuccessfully to render to the White Business firm. David Dee Delgado/Getty Images hide caption

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A statue of Theodore Roosevelt in New York City. After leaving office, Roosevelt tried unsuccessfully to return to the White Firm.

David Dee Delgado/Getty Images

Cleveland stepped downwards later his second term, as other reelected presidents had seen fit to do in emulation of George Washington. The Republicans reclaimed the presidency with William McKinley in 1896 and four years later renominated him with a new running mate who brought youth and vigor to the ticket. Just 41 at the time, Theodore Roosevelt had all the same been a police commissioner, a "Crude Passenger" cavalry officer in the Castilian-American State of war and governor of New York.

Less than a year into that term, McKinley was fatally shot, making Roosevelt president at age 42 (still the record for youngest master executive). He won a term of his own in 1904 and promptly pledged not to run again. Truthful to his word, in 1908 he handed off to his hand-picked successor, Taft.

Roosevelt did and then believing Taft would continue his policies. But if Roosevelt had managed to find appeal as both a populist figure and a progressive, Taft more ofttimes stood with the political party's business organisation-oriented regulars. So "T.R." decided to challenge Taft for the Republican nomination in 1912.

He did well in the nascent "primary elections" held that year, but Taft had the party mechanism and controlled the convention. Roosevelt led his delegates out of the convention and organized a third party, the Progressive Party (known colloquially as the "Bull Moose" party).

That fall, Roosevelt had his revenge on Taft and the GOP. The incumbent Taft finished a poor third with just viii votes in the Electoral College. Only Roosevelt was not the main beneficiary, finishing a distant second to Wilson, the Democrat, who had 435 electoral votes to Roosevelt's 88. Although the 2 Republican rivals' combined pop vote would have easily bested Wilson, dividing the party left them both in his wake.

A warning to the GOP?

That is the model some Republicans may fear seeing played out in 2024. If nominated, Trump would need to replicate Cleveland's unique feat from the 1890s, and he would demand to overcome the demographics and voter trends that have enabled Democrats to win the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential cycles.

And if he is not nominated, Trump running as an independent or equally the nominee of a third political party would surely split the Republican vote and make a repeat of 1912 highly likely.

Nonetheless, the grip Trump has on half or more of the GOP voter base of operations makes him non only formidable simply unavoidable equally the party plans for the midterm elections in 2022 and the ultimate question of a nominee in 2024.

To be clear, Trump has not said he volition run again in 2024. On the day he left Washington he spoke of a render "in some form" but was vague about how that might happen. He has sent aides to discourage talk of his forming a tertiary party.

For the fourth dimension being, at least, Trump seems intent on wielding influence in the Republican Party he has dominated for the by 5 years — making it clear he will be involved in primaries in 2022 against Republicans who did not back up his entrada to overturn the election results.

That is no idle threat. Nigh Trump supporters have shown remarkable loyalty throughout the mail service-election traumas, even after the riot in the U.Due south. Capitol. The fierceness of that attachment has sobered those in the GOP who had idea Trump's era would wane after he was defeated. But Trump has been able to concord the popular imagination within his party, largely past disarming many that he was non defeated.

The results of the ballot have been certified in all 50 states by governors and state officials of both parties, and there is no testify for whatsoever of the conspiracy theories questioning their validity. Yet, multiple polls have shown Trump supporters go along to believe he was unjustly removed from office.

Assuming Trump is not bedevilled on his impeachment charge of inciting an coup before the Jan. 6 invasion of the Capitol, he will not confront a ban on future campaigns.

Some believe Trump might notwithstanding be kept out of federal office by an invocation of the 14th Amendment. That part of the Constitution, added after the Civil War with former Confederate officers in mind, banned any who had "engaged in insurrection" against the government.

But that wording could well be read to require activity against the government, non just incitement of others to action by incendiary voice communication. It could too require lengthy litigation in federal courts and a balancing of the 14th Amendment with the free spoken language protections of the First Amendment.

All that can be said at this signal is that the former president volition settle into a post-presidential routine far from his previous homes in Washington and New York City. And the greatest obstacle to his render to ability would seem to be the pattern of history regarding the post-presidential careers of his predecessors.

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Source: https://www.npr.org/2021/01/30/961919674/could-trump-make-a-comeback-in-2024

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