The 2024 Presidential Campaign Has Begun

Politico: “Presidential campaigns do not start in any definitive way. The 2024 race had ‘already begun’ last June, or was it March, or even before the last election, back in the fall of 2020. Turn up at a Lincoln Day dinner in Portsmouth or Des Moines, and you’ll feast on a smorgasbord of ‘flirts with,’ ‘teases,’ ‘kicks the tires’ and other ‘unofficial starts’ to a presidential campaign.”

“But every four years, there is a moment when the two political parties and the news media decide to stop daydreaming about the next one and jump right in. And sometime during this week’s pundit wish-casting about the Democratic 2024 ticket and the GOP’s threatened debate boycott, between the deconstruction of Mike Pompeo’s weight loss and the run-up to Donald Trump’s first rally of the year, on Saturday, it happened.”

“Ten months before the 2022 midterm elections, Washington’s head is firmly in 2024. The proximate cause of the shift in perspective, as so often happens, is Trump.”