Covering a GOP primary with many twists and turns, but no major change: Reporter's notebook
"I mean, we haven't got much of a choice," one voter said.
Since former President Donald Trump launched his third presidential campaign shortly after the 2022 midterms, I've covered the 2024 presidential race for ABC News Digital. And what a race it's been so far.
Ninety-one criminal charges, a handful of rhetorical flourishes that mirrored language used by Adolf Hitler, one (possibly temporary) removal from Colorado's primary ballot and countless insults later, Trump remains the prohibitive favorite to win the GOP presidential nomination for the third time in a row.
And amid handwringing over President Joe Biden's age (he's 81 years old) and mushrooming frustration over how to handle the Israel-Hamas war, the president is expected to handily dispatch with a small, motley crew of primary foes.
As the two frontrunners plod along, there's been a lot of action trying to supplant them. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie are battling each other to emerge as the GOP primary's main Trump alternative, and Rep. Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson are waging quixotic bids to wrest the Democratic nomination from Biden.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Cornel West and No Labels are also looming as potential wild cards.
But in the end, strategists and voters have sounded resigned to a Trump-Biden rematch.
"I mean, we haven't got much of a choice," Vince Rottinghaus, a Democrat, told ABC News in Charles City, Iowa, in early December.
Strategists and voters aren't the only ones looking for meaning in a cycle that's so far been both historic and stagnant.
I and other journalists have been downright befuddled by the 2024 cycle, which remains largely in a place of stasis.
Reporters scrambled to search for any fallout from Trump's first indictment in March, over hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in 2016. None immediately emerged. Trump denied all wrongdoing.
Then he was indicted again. And again. And again, all followed by Trump's denials of illegality and lack of electoral consequences.
All the while, Republicans waited for the sky to fall on Trump, and journalists waited for the once-quaint conventional wisdom of criminal indictments being bad for presidential campaigns to kick in.
It never did, and Trump, who accused the prosecutors of perpetrating a "political witch hunt" despite their denials of political motivation, is now ahead of his primary rivals by about 50 points in 538's national polling average.
"[E]very time they give me a fake indictment, I go up in the polls, and that has never happened before," Trump crowed to reporters in October (while Trump's numbers have fluctuated, his overall performance in polls has increased as his legal exposure expanded).
That's left reporters bouncing from rally to rally, debate to debate, looking for meaning in the kinds of campaign mechanics that historically moved the needle.
Trump's opponents have maintained a more active travel schedule than him, particularly in the early primary states. They've also attended all of the debates they've qualified for, including by meeting the Republican National Committee's demand that they vow to support the GOP's ultimate nominee.
Trump has not made that vow -- and kept himself away from debates, once seen as must-see moments in presidential campaign cycles.
In his absence, reporters have gone through the motions of picking apart each tete-a-tete as part of a rapid-fire and never-ending news cycle, with the recognition that in the end, the primary would likely remain unchanged.
"The debate featured fireworks and more in-depth policy discussions than the two previous face-offs. But it remains to be seen whether it will change the fundamental primary dynamic: Polls all show it's Trump's to lose," I wrote in November after one debate.
That's not to say the debates or traditional campaign dynamics haven't made any difference at all.
Haley's rise in the polls, especially in early primary states, has largely been attributed to a spree of strong debate performances, along with a subsequent fundraising boost and endorsements from Republicans like New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, and she now is neck-and-neck with or leapfrogging DeSantis for second place in the crucial states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. And DeSantis has seen his footing wobble amid increasingly public infighting between his campaign and supportive outside groups -- the kind of traditional campaign drama that campaigns of yesteryear fought hard to avoid.
That jostling has set off media speculation over Haley as polls show her on the upswing.
"Nikki Haley rises in New Hampshire," read one headline in The Hill earlier this month.
"Haley Rolls Out New NH Endorsements as Polls Show Closing Gap With Trump," the New Hampshire Journal wrote.
A CBS News poll released days earlier showed her in her strongest position yet in the state -- 15 points behind Trump. Another poll released days later to similar fanfare had Trump ahead by 14 points.
In the end, what's become abundantly clear through all of the former president's defiance of political gravity is that it's still Trump's party.
Many Republicans like him with an admiration rarely seen among political leaders, leaving journalists to tell readers and viewers that every key moment amounts to a tree falling, only to land silently on the forest floor.
"I don't think anybody knows the answer to that," one GOP consultant working for one of Trump's rivals, who asked to not be named to discuss the race, told me earlier this month when I asked what an effective message against the former president could be. "What are we, four weeks out from Iowa? Trump's image is, essentially, in the same place today as it was in April or May or March of last year and has really not changed at all."
It's not much different on the Democratic side.
To be certain, Biden, despite unproven claims that he benefited from his family's business dealings during and after his time as vice president, does not face nearly the same kind of legal exposure as Trump does. But he does face nail-biting over his age and fitness -- anxiety that constantly is featured in print and cable media.
Still, the president is on a glide path to the nomination. He has the full backing of the Democratic National Committee, most lawmakers and way more voters than Phillips or Williamson. It remains to be seen how significantly worries over his age will play in the general, but they are doomed to fail to make any dent in his primary chances.
Even in the overwhelmingly likely scenario of a Trump-Biden rematch, it's unclear whether any policy rollouts, criminal convictions or impeachment could move the needle as two candidates with universal name recognition face off against each other.
"I think it's all vibes," David Kochel, a veteran Iowa GOP strategist, said earlier this month.
"There are very, very few persuadable people, and policy is not what they're looking for. Maybe the 2% of persuadable people are looking for that, but they're not going to get it out of this campaign," he said. "They're going to get a lot of name-calling. They're gonna get a lot of rhetoric. They're gonna get a lot of negative partisanship, 'democracy's on the line' and 'Biden's crime family.' It has nothing to do with policy."
That may not necessarily be the case: Abortion, which has roiled elections since Roe v. Wade was overturned last year, could alter the presidential race; a criminal conviction could derail Trump; worries over Biden's age could spike as the race nears; further economic improvements could ameliorate Americans' sour views on the economy.
But if Kochel is right, that'll leave journalists watching a movie that's all buildup and no climax -- sifting through genuinely historic developments that make barely a ripple in the world's most important horse race.
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