TAICHUNG (Taiwan News) — The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has a strong presidential candidate in Vice President Lai Ching-te (賴清德). However, Lai faces strong opposition, and of the three main candidates running for president, he faces the most constraints.
Lai has the strongest resume of the candidates. Born of humble beginnings, he went on to graduate from Harvard with a Master's in Public Health and became an expert in spinal cord injuries before turning to politics.
He served for 11 years as a lawmaker, followed by two terms as Tainan mayor, adding both legislative and executive experience to his resume.
As mayor of Tainan, he successfully fought corruption in the city council and gained national prominence as a result. He became so popular at the time that he gained the nickname “the god lai” (賴神).
Under President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), Lai served for one and a half years as premier. However, after the DPP suffered serious losses in the 2018 local elections, he resigned and challenged Tsai in the 2019 presidential primary, in spite of previously promising he would not.
It was a nasty primary. Lai had not only broken his promise but launched his bid at the last minute, leaving Tsai virtually no time to campaign.
Tsai’s supporters struck back by changing the primary date multiple times. Tsai’s supporters were furious with Lai for the broken promise and his “sneak attack,” while Lai’s supporters accused the Tsai team of cheating by changing the rules.
Unity restored
The party was badly split at the time, but in the end, Tsai was victorious. To facilitate party unity, then Vice President (and now premier) Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) stepped aside so Lai could be appointed as the vice presidential candidate.
It took some time, but eventually, Tsai was convinced that it was necessary to bring the party back together, though the tension between her and Lai was evident. After winning the election, Lai was essentially tasked with being a ribbon cutter for the first couple of years. Lai did his best to keep his head down and show loyalty, and in time Tsai relented and gave him some higher-profile duties and diplomatic missions.
Though the whole primary tussle lost him some supporters, he has consistently remained high on the list of the nation’s most popular politicians. He is an experienced politician and has never lost a public election, only the DPP primary.
Fortunately for Lai, this time around no one challenged him in the primary. The DPP is entering this election cycle unified.
Curiously, among the people I know who have met Lai or descriptions of others who have, they are either wowed by his charisma and rave about what a great person he is, or they find him aloof or even a bit haughty and are left feeling cold. I have no good explanation for these two polar responses.
It does not appear to be due to the political leanings of the people’s responses. Maybe some people met him when he was tired or in a bad mood, and others when he had his morning coffee and was full of energy. It is hard to say.
Though Lai does not have the foreign policy chops that Tsai did when coming into office, his time at Harvard, his English-speaking ability, and his diplomatic trips as vice president give him a far stronger resume than his two rivals. Combined with his popularity, legislative, executive, and political experience, Lai is as close to the perfect candidate as the DPP could put forward.
The most constrained candidate
However, Lai is the most constrained candidate going into the campaign, and largely for reasons not of his creation. His opponent, New Taipei Mayor Hou Yu-ih (侯友宜) of the Kuomintang (KMT), also has some constraints, but less than Lai, while his other opponent, Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), has plenty of room to maneuver.
As vice president and the current chair of the DPP, Lai has to defend the last seven years of the Tsai administration. His opponents do not have to play defense to anywhere near the same degree.
The main issues in Taiwan’s national elections are Taiwan's sovereignty and relations with China. Lai is fortunate in this regard.
He has promised to maintain the Tsai administration’s policies for handling relations with China and to continue its foreign policy initiatives to improve relations abroad, especially with the U.S. and Japan. The Tsai administration’s handling of these issues is broadly popular.
Lai has to be careful about what he says and what slogans he uses, with an eye on the fact that there are some in the U.S. that are concerned he is too pro-independence. In spite of that being Lai’s reputation, there is no actual proof that this the case in recent years.
Lost slogan
Lai has been undermined on this front by an unlikely force: President Tsai herself. During the local elections in 2022, while Tsai was party chair, the DPP ran with the slogan “Resist China, protect Taiwan” (抗中保台).
That slogan was very successful in national elections previously, but voters were not impressed that the DPP was using it in local elections. In local elections, people vote for candidates who can handle sewage repair budgets and build pet-friendly parks. Their position on China is not relevant.
The voters saw this as empty sloganeering and delivered the DPP their worst-ever local election result since the party was founded.
Losing the ability to run on that slogan is damaging to Lai. The KMT is now, with some success, trying to frame this election as a choice between “war” and “peace,” suggesting that the KMT will both bolster Taiwan’s national defense as a deterrent to China while simultaneously conducting dialogue with China under the “1992 Consensus.”
Lai initially tried to counter that with a new slogan, “Peace, protect Taiwan” (和平保台), but recently it appears he has stopped using that and instead going with variations on “Resist the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) but not the Chinese people,” which sounds a lot less clunky in Chinese. I have not seen much evidence that either of these new slogans has found much traction.
He does appear to have gained a bit more traction by framing the election as being “dictatorship” versus “democracy.” By this he means that negotiating with China under the “One China Principle” enshrined in the “1992 Consensus” inevitably leads to an erosion of sovereignty and brings Taiwan closer to being brought under CCP dictatorship.
Lai has also managed to strike some blows to the KMT’s Hou over the “1992 Consensus” and the “One China Principle” because, in spite of the KMT supporting both and already campaigning with those assumptions, Hou has so far dodged all questions on whether he supports either. Both are deeply unpopular with voters, but his party backs them, leaving Hou in a tricky spot, and Lai is going to exploit this as much as he can.
Defending the administration
Lai also has to grapple with the Tsai administration’s domestic policies, some of which have been less well-received by the public. Both the KMT and TPP are on the attack over some key issues including that power supply has only barely managed to stay ahead of increasing demand, recent annual water shortages, lack of qualified workers in key industries, the collapsing birth rate, and the increasing unaffordability of housing, among other things.
Lai has sought to counter these attacks by pointing out that these existed prior to Tsai taking office under the administration of the KMT’s Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and pointing to initiatives that the current administration has undertaken. While Lai’s comments are all true and the administration has tried to deal with these issues, critics have valid criticisms that these problems have not been truly solved, in spite of Tsai having had seven years, and in many cases have only gotten worse.
Being tied to the administration, Lai also can not offer much in the way of new policy proposals or ideas. That would beg the question: “If this idea is so good, why hasn’t your administration done this already?”
Another possible constraint is the DPP factions, but so far there is no indication of a serious problem for Lai, at least not yet or at least not publicly. Lai belongs to the most powerful faction, New Tide, and when making key appointments he needs to ensure that it does not look like he is favoring his own faction too heavily.
Limited on the upside with voters
Although Lai has been leading in almost all the polls this year, he may be constrained in how many more supporters he can attract between now and the election. In a poll asking citizens if they want the DPP to win the 2024 presidential election and remain in power, only 41.7% said yes, while 47.3% said no.
If this were a normal two-way race, that would be deeply alarming, but fortunately for Lai, so far, this is a three-way race and, as long as it remains so, he is still in a relatively strong position. The last time there was a three-way race with three strong, viable candidates was in 2000 when Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) won with only 39.3% of the vote.
Though they deny publicly it is a strategy, Lai and his team so far have almost entirely gone on the offensive against Hou and the KMT, sparing Ko and the TPP. Since Hou is generally running second in most polls and has the backing of the mighty KMT election machine, helping to ensure Ko remains viable might be a smart move to keep the opposition split — unless Ko pulls ahead and Hou starts to sink.
