Is it Too Late to Dump Trump and Harris?

There exists a narrow path to ensure neither candidate makes it to the White House.

Half of America’s long national nightmare is over, but only half. President Joe Biden is no longer part of a depressing Biden vs. Donald Trump choice, which the Democrats and Republicans attempted to foist on the U.S. electorate earlier this year.

Biden’s disastrous performance in his June debate with Trump finally motivated Democrats to dissuade the president from continuing his quest for a second term. Trump’s feckless debate appearance against Vice President Kamala Harris set the stage for a similar Trump withdrawal, and his bizarre behavior since then has cast new doubts as to the seventy-eight-year-old’s mental fitness for office. 

But that would require Republicans to muster the courage and enlightened self-interest to press Trump to step aside for the sake of the country and the Republican Party. A defeat at the presidential level will seriously damage Republican campaigns for both Houses of Congress, governors, and state legislatures. 

If the GOP cannot engineer a graceful exit for Trump, it has another course of action available: a national write-in campaign for Nikki Haley, the last Republican who stood in opposition to his nomination.

Every day, residents of the District of Columbia remind other Americans that they do not have voting representation in Congress. DC license plates read “Taxation without Representation.”

However, district residents do get to vote for president. DC’s three electoral votes could play an outsized role in the close 2024 election if Haley wins, potentially preventing either of the two major party candidates from reaching the needed 270. The newly elected House of Representatives would then choose the president from the top three electoral vote-getters, which would then include Haley, and the newly elected Senate would choose the vice president from the top two recipients of electoral votes—for now, either Republican Senator JD Vance or Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. 

District voters unhappy with the choice of either Trump or Vice President Harris as the next president can write in the name of another candidate. The most plausible choice is Haley, the former South Carolina Governor and Ambassador to the United Nations. She won the Republican primaries in DC and in Vermont, which also has three electoral votes. She continued to garner significant votes even after she suspended her campaign.

Haley represents mainstream Republicans who may have welcomed Trump’s handling of the economy or his tough stance against China but are not enamored of his style, his values, and, especially, his disregard for constitutional norms. As Haley often said in her campaign speeches, “We have a country to save,” back when the election looked like a Biden vs. Trump showdown. Of course, a major argument against a Biden second term was that his age and infirmity would preclude his serving, and the nation would be left with the untested Kamala Harris. Well, thanks to Democratic manipulation of their nomination process, we may have her anyway despite several better-known and better-qualified Democrats.

Disaffected Republicans could be joined by independents and by Democrats who objected, after President Biden withdrew under pressure, to the way Harris was anointed as his successor nominee without their input. Her 2020 campaign was a failure and she was the first one to exit the race. The party elite decided that this time she would face no Democratic competition in the goal of defeating Trump. 

Her avoidance of serious one-on-one interviews, press conferences, and other interactions with journalists has raised fresh doubts about her sustained viability as a candidate and her competence as the prospective commander-in-chief. 

Despite Trump’s significantly worse performance in their debate, the moderator allowed her to ignore her remarkable reversals of previously stated positions. Co-moderator Linsey Davis asked her: “In your last presidential run, you said you wanted to ban fracking. Now you don’t. You wanted mandatory government buyback programs for assault weapons. Now your campaign says you don’t. You supported decriminalizing border crossings. Now you're taking a harder line. I know you say that your values have not changed. So then, why have so many of your policy positions changed?”

Harris repeated, “So my values have not changed,” and explained her changed position on fracking.

Yet, if a candidate’s values inform his or her policies and if policies reflect his or her values, Harris is fundamentally dishonest with the voters in one of two ways. Either her values have changed, and she no longer believes, e.g., that global warming is an existential threat to humanity and that fossil fuels exacerbate the problem. Her present positions are mere campaign posturing designed to mollify—i.e., deceive—moderate voters for purposes of winning the election and, once in office, return to her progressive values.

Her greatest advantage seems to be that she is not Biden or Trump, the two oldest presidential candidates in U.S. history. As she brusquely reminded Trump, “You're running against me, not Joe Biden.” 

DC law provides an option for voters who are unhappy with the choices presented by the two major parties. Voters can simply write in their preferred alternative. If a plurality of voters does so for Haley, she could be awarded DC’s three electoral votes as long as she files the required certificate within seven days of the November 5 election. If Vermont voters also write in Haley’s name and she wins a plurality there, she would be awarded Vermont’s three electoral votes without the need to file anything. 

Even if no other state delivers a write-in plurality for Haley, those six electoral votes could well prevent either Trump or Harris from reaching the 270 goal, and they would also place Haley among the top three electoral vote-getters from which the House of Representatives would choose the president.

Both Trump and Harris will oppose a Haley write-in scenario, arguing that she would draw votes from one or both of them and serve as a spoiler. However, both major parties had already spoiled the 2024 election when they rigged their respective nominating processes, preventing fair and honest competition and ensuring the retention of their aged legacy leaders for almost the entire nominating period.

The second assassination attempt on Trump reflects the turbulent and potentially violent state of American society and politics today. A saner, calmer voice, whether she wins or loses, would heal a troubled and divided nation.

Joseph Bosco served as China Country Desk Officer in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, a nonresident senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council of the United States. He is presently a member of the advisory board of the Global Taiwan Institute and a fellow of the Institute for Corean-American Studies (ICAS).

Image: prashantrajsingh / Shutterstock.com.