28 May Election 2024: Trump’s to Lose
That’s it. I’ve seen enough. I’m going to go ahead and call it: the winner of the 2024 presidential election will be Donald Trump.
Unless something drastic changes, not only will Trump win, but he will win convincingly. And note, when I say, “something drastic,” I don’t mean anything as piddling as Trump getting convicted or going to jail or having to finish the campaign from prison. That’s small potatoes and wouldn’t change a thing. No, the only way that Trump will not win is if the world explodes or he drops dead of a heart attack or, conversely, Biden drops dead and is replaced by a different, far better candidate. (Or the Democrats follow my longstanding advice and ditch the sitting president for someone – anyone – else.) Short of something like that, this thing is over.
Note as well that I don’t make this call today because I think Trump is a fantastic candidate or because he is doing a bang-up job on the campaign trail – when he’s not in court, that is. I remain today as I have long been, Trump-skeptical. I understand his appeal and admire his political instincts, but I question – for good reason – his governing instincts and some of his personality “quirks.”
In any case, Trump is going to win, not because he is especially great but because his competition is especially – historically – terrible.
The biggest problem the Biden campaign faces, of course, is that it’s called “the Biden campaign.” The name at the top of the ticket says it all. We would be hard-pressed to name a worse incumbent candidate since, probably, Herbert Hoover. He is worse than Jimmy Carter. As dreadful as Carter was, he could at least walk and chew gum at the same time. Biden struggles to do each separately. If the Republicans were nominating Ronald Reagan this summer – even in his current state – then Biden would lose even worse than Carter did. Heck, he’d probably lose even worse than McGovern and Mondale did (49-1).
The second significant problem that the Biden campaign has is that it is apparently chock full of people who would likewise struggle to walk or chew gum (discretely), despite being considerably younger and less ravaged by senility than the boss. The people running Biden’s campaign are really, really bad at this. They make the guy who recommended that Nixon not wear makeup on TV in his debate against Kennedy in 1960 look like a genius. They’re comically terrible – unless, that is, you want Biden to win, in which case, they’re tragically terrible.
And you don’t have to take my word for it. One of the most successful campaign consultants in Democratic presidential history agrees and has been trying his darnedest to sound the alarm for months (warning: strong language):
Famed Democratic strategist James Carville absolutely tore into his party’s messaging — arguing the reason it is not attracting younger voters and Black voters is because it is ignoring the economy.
In a video for the non-partisan podcast and event outlet Politicon, Carville — who has been highly critical of the Left on a variety of fronts in recent months — ramped up his attacks by arguing that Democrats have focused too heavily on the War in Gaza and canceling student debt. And in the process, Carville argued, they have ignored “generational thievery” that has been perpetrated on young Americans.
“We keep wondering why these young people are not coming home to the Democrats,” Carville said. “Why are Blacks not coming home to the Democrats? Because Democrat messaging is full of shit, that’s why!”
He added, “talk about cost of living, and ‘we’re going to help deal with this.’ Don’t talk about fucking Gaza and student loans!”
Carville went on to cite a recent Harvard/Harris poll — which found three of the five issues Americans care most about are economy-related, while the Israel-Hamas conflict placed 13th. He went on to trash President Joe Biden’s recent $7.7 billion student debt forgiveness package.
“Why are we forgiving student loans for people that go to Harvard?” Carville said. “Which — according to Scott Galloway, quite accurately, is nothing but a hedge fund that has classrooms — well, they got a $52 billion fucking surplus! Why are taxpayers gonna bail these people out?!”
Carville is right, but there’s even more to it than that. The people running Biden’s campaign don’t seem to know anything about anything, least of all the American people. A few weeks ago, they announced that they had gathered a handful of surrogates to help with the campaign: Barack Obama, George Clooney, and Julia Roberts. Do you think they know that Barack Obama never helped a single candidate not named Barack Obama win an election? Do you think they know that Obama went out to “help” his fellow Democrats campaign in 2010, 2014, and 2016? Do you think they know how those elections turned out? Do you think they know that there are probably fewer than ten people in the country who give a tinker’s damn what George Clooney and Julia Roberts think about anything, much less politics?
This morning, apparently bored, with nothing else to do, the Biden campaign sent another surrogate to hold a press conference outside the courthouse in Manhattan where Donald Trump is on trial for doing what Bill Clinton did routinely. As if that wasn’t a bad enough idea, the surrogate they sent was a cranky, incoherent, foul-mouthed high-school-drop-out with a bad temper and a reputation for being easily flustered, 80-year-old Robert DeNiro. Not to beat a dead horse here, but do you know who cares about Robert DeNiro’s take on Donald Trump and politics in general? No one. Absolutely no one. And the fact that Biden’s campaign people think otherwise is truly amazing.
Some commentators have speculated that the reason the Democratic Party urged President Biden to debate Donald Trump next month, before the conventions, is that the powers that be want the chance to see the old guy in action as early as possible, giving them the chance to make an emergency change if necessary. That makes sense. Of course, if they do make a change, they should change the entire team as well. This group could kill any candidacy. They’re that bad.
Anyway, as of now, it’s Trump’s race to lose.
