IF THE "TRUMP'S IN TROUBLE" ARTICLE YOU'RE READING DOESN'T MENTION NO LABELS AND RFK JR., IT'S WORTHLESS

Donald Trump won the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, and he's leading in the polls by a large margin in his one remaining GOP rival's home state, so it's clear that he's going to be the Republican presidential nominee. The new hotness in the media is arguing that Trump's recent double-digit wins are actually a sign of general-election weakness. Here's Amanda Marcotte at Salon:

Despite the headlines about Republicans lining up behind Trump, there's significant evidence that, in fact, his leadership is causing the party to fracture and go to war with itself. Which is not where Republicans want to be going into a presidential election....

NBC exit polls showed only 50% of voters in the New Hampshire GOP race self-identified as Republicans and 44% were independents. While proud Republicans broke heavily for Trump, Haley got 58% of independents, most of whom said they were "moderate" or "conservative." These numbers suggest a large number of people who would have called themselves Republicans in the past have left the party and turned out to vote against Trump.

And here's part of an analysis by Michael Bender and Lisa Lerer of The New York Times:

Outside the soft bubble of Republican primaries, Mr. Trump’s campaign is confronting enduring vulnerabilities that make his nomination a considerable risk for his party. Those weaknesses were laid bare in New Hampshire on Tuesday, where independents, college-educated voters and Republicans unwilling to dismiss his legal jeopardy voted in large numbers for his rival, Nikki Haley....

“The general election really starts now, and you’ve got the two most unpopular political leaders going who are going to be facing off against each other,” Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster, said. “It’s a lesser-of-two-evils election.”

But in all likelihood, it won't be "a lesser-of-two-evils election," because rich tech and entertainment donors are chipping in to help get Robert Kennedy Jr. on state ballots, while Republican billionaires pony up to do the same for No Labels. Neither Marcotte's column nor the Times analysis ever mentions RFK Jr. or No Labels. Both pieces imply that Trump's base is shrinking when it needs to expand if he wants to do better against Joe Biden than he did in 2020. They're missing the point that Trump doesn't need to win more votes than he did four years ago in order to win. Because he almost won the Electoral College in 2020, Trump just needs to lose fewer voters to minor-party candidates than Biden does.

It's not shocking that the electorate in the New Hampshire Republican primary was only half Republican this year -- in 2012, the last time the Democrats had an uncompetitive primary featuring an incumbent president, only 49% of voters in the GOP primary were Republican. In both years, many Democrats and independents skipped the Democratic primary and voted in the Republican primary.

This year, these voters voted against Trump. But that doesn't mean they'll vote for Biden in November. Here are results from a Marist general-election poll of New Hampshire released last week:

Biden (52%) leads Trump (45%) in a hypothetical general election contest among New Hampshire registered voters....

In a three-way contest including Biden, Trump, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the race is more competitive. Biden receives 44% of the New Hampshire electorate to 41% for Trump and 12% for Kennedy. Kennedy cuts mostly into Biden’s support, especially among independents.

This poll didn't include a No Labels candidate. It also didn't include Jill Stein of the Green Party, who I suspect will leverage the war in Gaza to pick off progressive votes. (It doesn't mention Cornel West, but I doubt he'll get on any ballots, given his financial woes and understaffed campaign.)

I'm not saying that Kennedy will hurt Biden more than Trump in every state -- the opposite seems to be the case in polling of some other states. And we don't know who the No Labels candidate will be. But if your analysis is that many would-be Republican voters have soured on Trump, and therefore Biden will automatically benefit, you're missing a key fact about the election.

I think 2024 will look more like 1860 than 2020. Remember, Abraham Lincoln won in 1860 with only 39.8% of the vote; three other candidates had double-digit vote percentages. I don't believe Kennedy or No Labels will actually win a state, but there's a strong potential for a fragmented vote. Biden needs to win like Harry Truman in 1948, who beat not only a Republican, Thomas Dewey, but also a disaffected Democrat running as a segregationist, Strom Thurmond, and the progressive Henry Wallace, who'd been vice president under FDR for one term. Can Biden win under similar conditions? We don't know. But we need to remember that voters disgusted with Trump will have choices other than Biden.