ALL ANTI-TRUMPERS ASK OF YOU IS ONE THING THAT YOU'LL NEVER DO

If Chris Christie really wants to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president again, he should, obviously, endorse the other major-party candidate, President Joe Biden.

I understand why he didn't do that in the speech he delivered yesterday announcing his withdrawal from the Republican primaries -- it's still possible, at least theoretically, for someone other than Trump to win the nomination, and Christie, being a Republican, would understandably prefer Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis to Biden. People who claim to be savvy think Haley really has a shot now -- if most of Christie's vote in New Hampshire goes to Haley, and if the polls showing Haley within single digits of Trump in New Hampshire are accurate (rather than the ones showing Trump up by 15 points or so), she might beat him there and gain momentum going into the primary in her home state of South Carolina, and so on and so on. But Trump isn't Jeb Bush in mid-2015, a candidate who's the front-runner because poll respondents kinda-sorta think he's okay, even though they haven't really focused on him or the race. Large percentages of Republican voters love Trump more than they love their own mothers. Also, there are probably quite a few people who absolutely will vote for Trump in the primaries but won't respond to a CNN or USA Today poll because they think responding will put them on a George Soros target list and subject them to a SWAT arrest by the FBI. So even polls that show Trump with a massive lead are probably underestimating his strength.

Nevertheless, a guy can dream (although Christie's decision to do a solid for Haley is undercut by his hot-mic prediction, leaked just prior to his speech, that she's about to "get smoked").

Christie's Biden endorsement can wait -- except that it probably will never happen. Many people blame Trump for everything that's extreme or polarizing in the Republican Party, but the pre-Trump party in which Christie was once a rising star believes that one must never speak a positive word about a Democrat in good standing. So it would go against Christie's Republican principles to praise Biden, ever. It's fine, however, to praise a Democrat who regularly fights with other Democrats, and so this happened last week:

At the end of tonight’s town hall, Chris Christie raised the possibility of voting for a third-party candidate in the general election if it’s Trump vs. Biden. He said he was intrigued by the No Labels movement: “Let me tell you, Joe Manchin would be a really good president.”

— Neil Vigdor (@gettinviggy) January 6, 2024

The full quote:

“Let me tell you, Joe Manchin would be a really good president. And, you know, I liked him a lot. And first of all, I don’t agree with him on everything. And he wouldn’t be my first choice. But if it were between those three to vote for it would be a lot easier,” Christie said last week, per NBC’s Emma Barnett.

Smart people think Christie won't actually endorse the No Labels presidential nominee, whether it's Manchin or someone else. Christie was critical of No Labels in July:

Christie on "This Week" also explained why he has said he won't get involved in the group No Labels' push for a "unity" campaign in the 2024 race that would include Republicans and Democrats.

"It's a fool's errand. ... I'm not in this for show time. I'm not in this, you know, for making a point," Christie said.

"There are only two people who will get elected president of the United States in November of '24: the Republican nominee for president and the Democratic nominee for president," he said, "and I don't want to participate in something, which by the way, is also a scattergun approach to this."

"They want to hurt Donald Trump if he's the nominee," Christie continued. "But you know, when you get into a third-party campaign ... you never quite know who you're going to hurt in that process."

And again in September:

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told Hugh Hewitt that he’s not a fan of No Labels, even though Hewitt said the group would likely help elect a Republican president in 2024.

Said Christie: “I think it’s a fool’s errand. I really do. And I think that they shoot with a shotgun. They don’t know who they’re going to hurt, and depending on who they nominate, and not something that I would ever care to be involved in.”

Yet he did speak at the 2015 No Labels convention, and subsequently participated in a No Labels video chat.

Christie during a No Labels talk. pic.twitter.com/qgi6WyfeQY

— Andrew Rudick (@andrew_rudick) September 7, 2023

Puck's Tara Palmeri now reports:

I’ve heard that Christie’s political advisers and top donors have spoken to No Labels leadership, although Christie, himself, has not spoken to the third-party group.

So I don't think the endorsement door is closed. Palmeri says it would be difficult for Christie to run on the No Labels ticket himself:

“Sore loser” laws might prevent him from coming back and running under a different banner, anyway.

A paper published last spring in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy Per Curiam concluded that "sore-loser laws in 28 states do indeed apply to presidential candidates and that if a candidate fails to win the Republican nomination, sore-loser laws will prevent access to the general election ballot in those states." It's not clear how many of those laws apply to someone who filed as a candidate but dropped out before the state primary or caucuses, but it's likely that some do. Also, some states have "disaffiliation" laws that block ballot access to recent party-switchers.

Palmieri, incidentally, suggests that Manchin won't be the No Labels nominee:

The 501(c)4 is still divided over whether a Democrat or a Republican should lead their unity ticket, but they seem to believe they need a Republican to stop Trump. (The names Jon Huntsman, Larry Hogan, and Mitt Romney have been floated for the top of the ticket; before that, there was an open infatuation with Joe Manchin.)

Endorsing one of those disaffected Republicans would be easy for Christie -- or it's possible that he'll return to his former gig as a TV pundit and feel he can't endorse anyone. But I'm predicting that he won't endorse Biden, even though it's the most effective thing he could do in order to accomplish his stated goal of defeating Trump.

And no, I don't think he'll endorse Trump -- he's spent too much time building his Last Principled Republican brand to do that.