Independent Kasich campaign?

[Mr. Morden]

If Kasich runs in 2020, I think an independent campaign is probably his most likely route. It's nearly impossible to defeat an incumbent president in the primaries, and if he had good infrastructure and decent connections, he could all but guarantee ballot placement in every state.

It's nearly impossible to win as an Indy too.  In any case, many people run for president despite having no realistic chance of winning.  It happens all the time.  And there's an argument to be made for running for the GOP nomination rather than running 3rd party: It takes the "spoiler" argument off the table.  If you're running 3rd party, and are a distant 3rd place in the polls, then many will dismiss you out of hand because what's the point of "throwing your vote away" when the real contest is between the Dem. and GOP nominees?  Whereas if you challenge Trump in the primary and you're his only main opponent for the nomination, then that's a moot point.

I would not rule out either Kasich or some other "mainstream" GOP politico (most likely someone who, like Kasich as of 2020, no longer holds political office and has nothing to lose) challenging Trump in the primary.  Of course, they're not going to win, just like Buchanan was never going to beat Bush in the 1992 primary.  The point wouldn't be to win.  It'd be to lay down a marker as a sort of act of protest against the Trump-ified version of the GOP.  There's a reasonable chance that some kind of challenge like that will come from either the "center" (in the form of Kasich or someone Kasich-like), or from the libertarian wing of the party (most likely Amash or Paul).  Of course, the challenge won't succeed, but a Buchanan-like showing of more than 20% of the national popular vote in the primaries isn't out of the question.

[Mr. Morden]

1) Maine can't split its EC votes 3 ways like that. Can it? You've got what I presume to be ME-01 voting by a plurality for Sanders/Gabbard, ME-02 voting by a plurality for Trump/Pence, but ME-AL voting by a plurality for Kasich/Hickenlooper? That does not make sense.

It's mathematically possible, albeit very unlikely.  Imagine this scenario, for example:

CD1:
Sanders 36%
Kasich 34%
Trump 30%

CD2:
Trump 36%
Kasich 34%
Sanders 30%

You can then average the two CDs to get a rough estimate of the statewide totals, which would be:
Kasich 34%
Sanders 33%
Trump 33%

So Kasich wins statewide, despite coming in second in both CDs.

[Mr. Morden]

*bump*

Here's what Kasich said this morning:

https://twitter.com/TeddyDavisCNN/status/914485128835026944

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[Mr. Morden]

Perhaps, but all of this is just conjecture. We have literally no way of knowing what these voters would have voted (or if they would have even voted at all) if Gary Johnson was not on the ballot.

There was an exit poll question on this (How would you have voted if it was a binary choice between Clinton and Trump?), but the results were given as what %age of Clinton 2-way voters voted 3rd party in real life and what %age of Trump 2-way voters voted 3rd party in real life.  But you can do algebra to get at the reverse question: What %age of 3rd party voters would have voted for Clinton or Trump in a hypothetical 2-way race?

The result is that ~63% of people who voted 3rd party claim that they would have stayed home in a 2-way race, while the remaining 37% were evenly split between Clinton and Trump.  There's no breakdown between Johnson and Stein voters though.  All 3rd party voters were lumped together.  My guess is that Stein voters were more likely to say Clinton while Johnson voters were a little more likely to say Trump.  But that assumes that people were honestly stating their intentions in this hypothetical world where their favored candidate wasn't an option.  It's possible that many of the 63% who said they would have stayed home wouldn't have actually stayed home, for example.

[Mr. Morden]

I can't see the underlying premise of an Independent Kasich campaign.

I can see the underlying premise of a Kasich challenge to Trump.  Kasich has always been a Republican; he was part of the House Republican Leadership when they moved into the majority in 1994, and was a viable Presidential candidate in 2000, after which he became a part of the FOX News stable with his show "Heartland".

I agree that it makes more sense for Kasich to challenge Trump in the primary than to run as an independent.  My hunch, though, is that his teasing the possibility of leaving the party is actually a precursor to him ditching the party once Trump is renominated: Kasich runs in the 2020 GOP primary, but loses to Trump.  And then once he loses, he once again refuses to endorse Trump in the general election, but this time says that he's leaving the GOP altogether, because there's no place for him in a Trump-ified GOP.  He'll no longer be governor of Ohio at this point, so he'll be free to just follow his conscience, wherever it takes him.

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I think the right Republican primary challenger to Trump could get a decent amount of support from certain right-of-center pundits (like Bill Kristol and Erick Erickson), as well as now-retired Republican politicians like Mitt Romney (if he doesn't run for Senate) and Jeb Bush.  But I would be very surprised if very many *current* Republican politicians end up endorsing Kasich or any other potential primary challenger.  I guess it might happen, but endorsing a primary challenge to your party's incumbent president?  That seems like a big line to cross, and my gut says few will want to do it.  Much more common will be Republican politicians who remain neutral in the primaries, but then endorse the nominee in the general election.

As far as a primary challenger who is actually able to get a decent amount of support among regular Republican primary voters as opposed to elites....I'm not sure how much difference it makes who it is, as people might just see it as an anti-Trump protest vote, and they'll vote for the person or not depending on their opinion of Trump.  But to the extent that it does matter, I actually think Kasich would probably be a dud.  He seems determined to attack Trump from Trump's left on everything, and there just aren't that many "moderates" in the party today.  I think an Amash or a Paul might have a higher ceiling in a primary challenge to Trump, because they can attack Trump for the right and the center at the same time.

[Mr. Morden]

Even Ted Cruz admits that moderate Republicans are not an endangered species amongst the voters.

It depends on what you mean by "moderate Republicans".  My point is simply that the bulk of the people who actually vote in Republican primaries think of themselves as "conservative", even if they don't all agree on what conservative means.

And so, in the event that enough Republicans sour on Trump to create an opening for a primary challenger to get even ~25% or more of the vote, some of those people who might otherwise be open to voting for a Trump challenger will probably be turned off if the challenger is spending all his time talking about things like Medicaid expansion, which sounds too much like the kind of Trump critique you get from Democrats.  They might be open to some attacks on Trump from the center, but only if it's paired with other attacks on Trump from the right, with arguments about how he's "betrayed conservatism".  Kasich's critiques of Trump so far sound too much like Democratic critiques for him to get enough traction in a Republican primary, IMHO.