Analysis: Forget this election. Let’s talk 2024
Logic might suggest that potential Republican candidates would snub a President who is 9 points down in the polls, and who is viewed as an agent of chaos by more than half the country.
In a convention speech later seen as the launchpad for his own 1968 campaign, Nixon urged party unity. He understood that the delegates who lifted Goldwater would decide the following nomination — which he would win on the way to the White House.
The same is true today. Jokes about third or fourth terms aside, Trump will not be on the ballot in 2024. But his supporters aren’t going anywhere.
It’s a balancing act for these Republican rising stars. Trump will rage at any sign he’s on his way out and hates sharing the limelight. But even he can’t deny the inexorable march of the US presidential election calendar.
In a video statement to the RNC from Jerusalem on Tuesday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo praised Trump’s foreign policy initiatives — even describing the President’s fruitless courting of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as a victory.
Postcard from the Big Easy
As the educators, politicians and parents debate over reopening schools around the world, Meanwhile producer Shelby Rose has forged ahead to grad school in New Orleans. We asked her what the famously hellish first year of law school is like in the age of Covid-19. She writes:
On the balmy New Orleans campus, Tulane students walk single file on separated paths, sit one or two seats apart, and shout answers to professors behind the nearly soundproof plexiglass shields. And that’s just in school. Outside, face masks in Tulane’s green and gold are the new obligatory fashion item. Fraternity parties have been replaced with sitting six feet apart.
Though many of us have traveled hundreds of miles to be here, law students have been restricted to interactions on social media and messaging portals. Instead of briefing cases together in the library or exchanging outlines, we talk online for solidarity and assistance. But discussion of torts and contracts has quickly become a medium to vent as the election draws close and the coronavirus continues to spread.
Unable to build personal relationships during this unprecedented year, we’re not just living the life of the mind, we’re confined to it — and the stress is showing.
‘Chuan Jianguo’
