When Jeb Bush launched his presidential campaign on June 15, I was ready with a prediction: Bush would win the Republican primary and the general election. Oops.
On Saturday, Bush announced he was ending his campaign. He never placed better than fourth in a primary or caucus. Rather than try to sweep my early prediction under the proverbial rug, I’d like to hold myself accountable and try to figure out what happened.
It didn’t seem like too bold of a prediction at the time. Bush had led plenty of national polls over the previous six months and led polls in New Hampshire. He had already raised millions of dollars to support his bid. He had 17 endorsements from members of the House of Representatives, including 11 of Florida’s 17 GOP members. I thought that showed Bush would get more establishment support than other candidates in contention, like Marco Rubio.
Clearly, that wasn’t enough to push Bush to victory. I also might have been a little biased, personally. Bush wasn’t my favorite candidate for most of the campaign, but I did view him quite favorably.
Here are four reasons my Bush prediction was wrong:
The Trump Factor
The day after Bush announced his campaign, Donald Trump surprised everyone by launching his own. Sure, Trump had flirted with presidential campaigns in the past, but few thought the billionaire reality TV star would actually go through with it.
If there’s one thing Trump is good at, it’s winning the news cycle and keeping all eyes on him. Long before most voters decide who they will cast their ballots for, they generally tell pollsters they support someone who they’ve been noticing get a lot of media coverage. There’s no doubt Trump dominated news coverage, which is why his early poll support was so large. Without Trump, Bush probably would have gotten more news coverage and higher poll numbers, in a self-reinforcing cycle. That probably would have led to more endorsements for Bush. Instead, major endorsers stayed on the sidelines, loathe to endorse Trump but not wanting to endorse anyone who couldn’t win.
Hispanics
Back in June, the first reason I said Bush would win the primary is that he would bring more people into the Republican Party. He had a moderate stance on immigration (calling for “a path to legal status, not to citizenship” and claiming that most immigrants come not to exploit the system but as “an act of love”), and he angled his talking points toward Hispanic and minority voters.
For example, when he talked up his education record, Bush focused on the gains made in Florida’s Hispanic, black and low-income student populations. With that focus, I thought Bush would be able to catch the ear of moderates and turn them into primary supporters. Perhaps Bush could have turned them into GOP voters in the general election, but we’ll never know.
Again, Trump was a huge factor in Bush’s inability to bring in Hispanic supporters. As Trump alienated immigrants and Hispanics, most of the GOP candidates followed behind. Rather than making Bush look like the sane one in the party, the extreme rhetoric on immigration made the party as a whole seem anti-Hispanic. Trump has managed to grow the GOP in some ways, but he’s done so by mobilizing non-traditional Republicans who have more in common with liberals than most Republicans.
Unelectable Democrats
Between Hillary Clinton’s ongoing scandals and Bernie Sanders’ socialist platform, one could forgive Republicans for thinking they have the 2016 election in the bag. Many Republicans feel that means they could nominate someone more conservative than they otherwise would and still manage to win the presidency.
Last spring, as other Republicans shifted to the right, there seemed to be a void in the political center that Bush could fill and ride to the nomination. Conventional wisdom says that the harder a general election is expected to be, and the longer a party is out of the White House, the more likely it will nominate a moderate. It’s supposed to be easier for such candidates to win a general election. Instead, the perception that Clinton or Sanders would be easy to beat could be why non-establishment Republicans are doing so well.
Debate Performance
Let’s be honest: Bush’s early debate performances were not great. It’s hard to argue with Trump’s accusation that Bush seemed “low energy.” In two debates, in September and October, it was cringe-worthy when Bush tried to attack Trump and Rubio. Bush improved over time, but never did so well that he clearly won any debate. When he excelled in recent debates, he still sometimes stumbled over his words.
Perhaps it’s because Bush wasn’t able to speak out on two of his wheelhouse issues: education and immigration. Education hasn’t been much of a national issue during the campaign, only rarely coming up in debates. School choice, one of the best parts of Bush’s gubernatorial legacy, is mostly a state and local issue. On immigration, Bush’s attempt to make the party more open to reform has been overwhelmed by Trump’s rhetoric.
I don’t regret my prediction. Given all the reasons mentioned above, it seemed like a fairly sound prediction at the time. I would have looked like a genius, at least as far as political pundits go, if I had predicted it so early in the primary and been right. I expected the campaign would progress like so many primaries have in the past. Outsider candidates have their month in the limelight before establishment candidates take back the narrative — think of Mitt Romney, John McCain, George W. Bush, Bob Dole, etc. But if there’s one thing we’ve learned this campaign cycle, it’s that politics is even more unpredictable than we think.
Even today, polls do a fairly good job of predicting what will happen in a state primary or caucus that’s less than two weeks away. But beyond that, who really knows who will win their party’s nominations or the White House? I have my own guesses, but the first one didn’t work out so well.
Jason Russell is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
