Loser Trump will gift Democrats the White House in 2024

America, on the whole, is tired of Trump and Trumpism – just as once it eventually rejected the paranoid madness of McCarthyism

It may just be dawning on Democrats and democrats everywhere that the best person to defeat Trumpism is Trump himself. Or "Loser Trump", to coin a Trump-style nickname. Sad!

For progressives the world over, it is actually thrilling news that Donald Trump is going to mess up yet another set of elections for the Republicans. They’ll fail to win the White House with Loser Trump, because – presumably – Republican candidates for the House and Senate running in 2024 will all have to offer some loyalty to Trump, and his bragging, election-denying, bullying lunacies. They will thus all be Trumpites, whether they like it or not, and pay the price.

Turnout will be even higher at the 2024 general election, which tends to help the Democrats too. So Joe Biden, who’s also announced his willingness to serve a second term, may be gifted the White House plus the bonuses of a stronger hold on the Senate and regaining the House of Representatives next time around. With the Congress on side for his second term, the best days of President Biden are yet to come, and it will be mostly thanks to… Donald J Trump.

Given his senior moments and a coming recession, Biden will be especially fortunate to have his old opponent back again for a presidential rematch – the first such since the 1950s when Adlai Stevenson failed to defeat Dwight Eisenhower twice in a row. Biden saw off Trump before and he can beat him again, now that Trump is such a proven, serial, loser.

But Biden would have much more difficulty if challenged by a younger, saner, figure who wouldn’t threaten to put America through another Trumpian trauma, climaxing in another January 6-style insurrection. It’s the Republicans own fault if they put forward just about the only candidate Biden can beat next time around.

Will they? It’s certainly possible that Trump’s still-firm hold on the fanatical base will lumber the Republicans with the person least likely to win in 2024. His rivals will be more formidable than they were in 2016 – Ron DeSantis, the Republican anti-Trump building up a reputation as the man most likely to save his party from further humiliation is the most potent threat.

Also already laying into the old fantasist will be his own former vice president, Mike Pence, and the likes of Ted Cruz will also no doubt be having in their say. However, the loyalty of the base is personal not partisan – only a Trump will do.

In contrast to the Dems, where this time there’ll be a coronation for Biden’s candidacy (though more focus on his running mate this time for, ahem, actuarial reasons), the GOP nomination will be a nasty, ugly scrap, a classic circular firing squad. It will do none of the contenders much good, and Trump would still likely win the nomination, even now.

Very likely too, he’d choose the kind of ultra-loyal, election-denying, abortion-extremist vice presidential candidate who’d terrify middle America far more than Pence ever did.

From his own point of view, and borrowing a favourite word of his, Trump was “smart” to declare his candidacy now. If he stalled again he’d start to look cowardly – not on brand at all. He badly needs to regain the momentum recently lost, re-affirm his grip on the grassroots MAGA movement, and thus intimidate any potential rivals – particularly DeSantis. He can’t afford to fall further behind in his ambition.

He seems serious too – he notably dropped the corrosive and counter-productive claim that the 2020 election was rigged. (We now know, because of the Congressional investigation, that Trump never believed it in the first place and just used it as a desperate way to, well, steal the election.)

You could tell Trump was rattled by the potential of the governor of Florida even before election day because he started calling him names – "Ron DeSanctimonious" (not one of his best soubriquets). After the electoral setbacks, Trump issued a characteristically rambling and vain attack on deSantis as an "average Republican governor with great public relations".

For Trump, it’s like 2016 all over again, or at least he’d love it to be. “This is just like 2015 and 2016, a Media Assault (Collusion!), when Fox News fought me to the end until I won, and then they couldn’t have been nicer or more supportive... The Wall Street Journal loved Low Energy Jeb Bush, and a succession of other people as they rapidly disappeared from sight, finally falling in line with me after I easily knocked them out, one by one."

To keep up to speed with all the latest opinions and comment, sign up to our free weekly Voices Dispatches newsletter by clicking here

Trump may do all this again, but not so easily, and this time with the Murdoch media – including the unhinged Fox News – much more hostile than before. If Trump does win the nomination, he’ll take the Republicans down to a quite historic defeat, in a presidential contest that should be theirs for the winning. If he’s doesn’t win the nomination, he and his base will do their spiteful best to stop DeSantis or anyone else from winning the election.

Trump is not known for magnanimity in defeat. Either way, the Dems win.

America, on the whole, is tired of Trump and Trumpism. Just as once it eventually rejected the paranoid madness of McCarthyism in favour of a quieter life, it has shown a weariness towards the Trump insurgency and its constant assaults on the Constitution and civil rights – especially those of women.

For many, the tangerine nightmare needs to be over and put firmly behind them. The best thing that can be said of a Trump run in 2024, and a second defeat on the trot, is that it might just finally purge the Republican Party and the American body politic of the virus of violent populist nationalism, that makes the country far weaker in the face of real threats and challenges – at home and abroad.

Given the chance, Trump will end up destroying his own MAGA movement. Bigly.