The Race That No One Can Win

[Valin]

Power Line

John Hinderaker

 January 6, 2024

A year ago I was confidently predicting that neither Joe Biden nor Donald Trump would be on the 2024 presidential election ballot. The Democrats would be crazy to nominate Biden, and the Republicans would be crazy to nominate Trump. And yet, with the caucus and primary season about to start, here we are. With no sign that the Democrats have a way to get Biden off the ballot, and with mainstream Republicans like Tom Emmer and Tom Cotton lining up behind Trump, we seem destined for an election that neither candidate can possibly win.

In the Wall Street Journal, Barton Swaim writes about attending a Trump rally in Iowa and about the state of the race. His thoughts are similar to mine:

I spoke to many people who regarded the four criminal indictments of Mr. Trump as proof that he is the man the left fears most. Jerry Donavan, a machinist from Des Moines, answered my question about the indictments with a question of his own: Why did I think the left wanted so badly to destroy Mr. Trump? When I failed to answer, he said, “Exactly.”

For a while I thought the Democrats were persecuting Trump, believing that it would keep him in the headlines, arouse sympathy among Republicans, and lead to the GOP nominating its weakest candidate. Now I think they just can’t help themselves.

(Snip)

I think that is true. It is hard to foresee how a second Trump term would play out, given the all-out resistance that the Left would mount.

Swaim concludes:

I wished they [Trump’s fans] could see what I see, or that I could see what they see. What they see, I guess, is a wiser, savvier President Trump foiling his enemies and setting America on a better course. What I see is a catastrophe in which cultural VIPs in government and the media give themselves license to ruin a duly elected president, and his fans, refusing to take it a second time, responding with incomprehending rage.

I’m not sure what Mr. Trump sees. He knows that his enemies’ insane need to defeat him by nonelectoral means tends to fortify his support, and he encourages them to indulge their dumbest instincts. He may ride their foolishness all the way to the White House.

As a matter of cosmic justice, the Democrats, particularly Mr. Biden, deserve a Trump victory in 2024. They have done everything possible to ensure his nomination—funding his preferred candidates, no matter how crazy, defaming his sane Republican opponents, hounding him with spurious lawsuits. They assumed he was unelectable. Thanks to them, he isn’t. He will likely win the nomination.

And, as a consequence of Mr. Biden’s plenary incompetence and perverse refusal to exit the scene, Mr. Trump may win the presidency. Then the real fun starts. Happy days are here again.

That is pretty much how I see it too, except that I don’t foresee much fun in a second Trump term.

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Either way (no matter  who wins) he next couple of years are going to be...interesting.

note: Interesting is NOT always a Good Thing