Declaring one’s candidacy for the presidency two years before the election, as Donald Trump did Tuesday night in a lethargic speech long on fabulism and short on memorable phrases, is a sign of weakness. Candidates launch their bids for the presidency early when they know they have a lot of ground to make up. Does that mean the Republican nomination is beyond Trump’s grasp? Hardly. Even with prominent Republicans turning against the former president, he still possesses one of the most powerful weapons in politics: the ability to attract audiences to conservative news media.
The conventional wisdom about presidential campaigns has long been that candidates who are first in for contested nominations typically lose. President Joe Biden waited until late April of 2019 to announce he was running for 2020. Hillary Clinton waited until mid-April 2015 to make her 2016 run official. Contrast that with former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, who by the time Clinton announced her campaign was already two years into an exploratory campaign.
Knowing that history, why would someone like Trump launch his bid so soon? One reason is that we’re in the “invisible primary” stage of the process, in which candidates vie to capture the support of influential party figures, including partisan media. Longshot candidates need to find some way to convince those party influencers to take them seriously, and one way is to stay in the news.
