Don't look now, but deposed Meet the Press host Chuck Todd has unleashed another grand political analysis. Last month, Chuck was having deep thoughts about Trump while touring a Nazi museum in Germany. Now he's absolutely certain that third parties just won't matter in the 2024 presidential race, because of....abortion. The headline?
Chuck Todd: Why the third party window may have closed for 2024
Chuck acknowledges that a chunk of voters in both parties aren't happy with their nominee, even if both think the Other Party's candidate is beatable.
If abortion is the issue for a large chunk of swing voters, then they aren’t going to be interested in a third party’s compromise position, no matter what that position is. If abortion is a voting issue for someone, they’ll have a definitive position on which party they want making reproductive health laws and appointing judges.
This is a roundabout way of saying: The case for a third-party alternative for this election cycle is over — there’s just not a market for it given the current issue terrain.
He underlines that it's difficult for third parties to gain access to ballots in many states -- without mentioning the Democrats aggressively put up ballot barriers -- no Democrat challengers to Biden and no third-party challengers to Biden. Then they insist Donald Trump is unfit for the ballot. And forget your No Labels threat:
As far as No Labels goes, it’s just hard to see how any candidate the group finds can truly create some middle-ground majority with the issue of abortion so front and center in this year’s politics. If abortion were considered politically resolved — like same-sex marriage, for the vast majority of the public — then maybe there would be some potential for traction, but not while abortion is a live issue.
Chuck thinks there's no way the Republicans will move away from Trump despite the legal woes, and that Biden isn't going anywhere unless he really messes up the State of the Union reading of the Teleprompter:
But Biden has stepped up before, including at the last State of the Union. And a State of the Union presentation that is both energetic and tight in its framing of a second Biden term would go a long way to quieting, say, the party’s Obama-era backseat drivers.
Naturally, Chuck thinks any development on the abortion front may seal defeat for the GOP:
Think something like the recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling affecting in vitro fertilization, but this time in October. Of course, I’m of the view that abortion could end up being the issue that moves the most swing voters — and therefore becomes the reason the GOP comes up short, regardless of whether there’s a specific incident or court ruling dominating the narrative.
This is why liberal journalists adored the Alabama IVF story so much. It has almost nothing to do with abortion, but it can be used to paint Republicans as benighted Christian nationalists who think an embryo is a child. Chuck and his friends would never paint Democrats as callous secular extremists who don't think a baby at nine months gestation is a "choice" and not a child (and won't define what a woman is when "pregnant person" is a safer term).
