Everyone has heard the old adage, “Careful what you wish for, you just might get it,” right? If you haven’t, welcome out from under the rock you’ve spent your entire life living under. For the rest of us, it’s sage advice our life experiences have shown us to be true. In politics, it’s doubly so.
In 2016, Democrats desperately wanted to run against Donald Trump, assuming he’d be the easiest candidate for them to be. They were right, except for one important detail – they didn’t take into account just how awful a person and candidate the person they nominated was. I don’t know if there was another Democrat they could have nominated who would’ve lost that race to any Republican, but Hillary Clinton was so widely disliked by people who’d “gotten to know her” over 20+ years and recoiled at the thought of her being president.
Right now – and I say “right now” because we’re 15 lifetimes in politics away from anyone voting in a primary, let alone the general election next year – Joe Biden is less popular than Hillary Clinton was in 2016. It doesn’t seem possible, but it’s true. Biden is in Jimmy Carter territory, which Carter himself has to be happy he lived long enough to see.
That doesn’t mean he can’t win. Democrats are exceedingly good at turning out their voters, while Republicans have proven exceedingly good at discouraging their voters from trusting voting laws as currently constituted – meaning early and absentee voting. They’re trying to change that now, but it’s a little late considering the concept has been beaten into people’s heads by conservative media and various candidates, etc. Better late than never, but just barely.
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In the glee of horrible polling, conservatives proudly point out every single gaffe and rambling, lost moment Joe Biden has. I’m just as guilty as anyone. But there will likely come a point, when what the President has deteriorated to the point that he has to go.
The more publicity Biden’s senility gets, the harder it becomes for the leftist media to prop him up. As conservatives make every “senior moment” go viral, more Democrats are getting uneasy with him as their public face. If his poll numbers go down much further, Democrats who’ve been lying to cover for Joe’s dementia, will have no choice but to abandon him. That will screw over Republicans I don’t think they’re ready for.If Donald Trump is the nominee, there’s a good chance he could beat Joe Biden. Every other Republican in the race beats Biden easier. (I know die hard Trump devotees believe everyone loves him, but that is simply and factually not true. The amount of love a person has for a thing has no bearing on how much love other people have for that thing – intensity is irrelevant to quantity, and there is no poll showing anywhere near a majority of Americans looking at Trump favorably. Don’t take it up with me, take it up with reality. I’m just pointing it out.)
But what if Joe Biden is not the nominee? That changes things dramatically.
I’m not going to go off on who does better against the other options Democrats have: Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, Bernie Sanders, etc. All of them would be much tougher to beat than a senile guy who needs staff to shut him down before he looks even more lost. But very few Republicans are preparing to run against anyone other than Joe Biden.
By that I mean most aren’t running against the left-wing progressive agenda, just specifically Biden. Trump has to, his campaign is alternately about redemption or vengeance, depending on the day. But the rest of the field isn’t much better.
There’s a lot of disagreement from Biden, but everything is also true of Democrats. The field needs to broaden its aim and take a page from the playbook of Ron DeSantis. He’s running on what he’s actually done in Florida, which is the wholesale destruction of the progressive agenda. There’s plenty to criticize about Biden, but he’s just a symptom of what progressivism is. That should be the focus, more than just Biden.
Democrats are noticing Joe has lost it and it worries them. A couple more lost points in the polls or a few more points up in people saying he’s too old and he will be replaced. It will be spun as something else, they can’t admit they’ve been lying so an excuse will be made, and we on the right will laugh and cheer (I’ll do it too). Then we will realize the entire dynamic of the race changed in a snap. Who’s going to be ready for that? Any of them?
Democrats are plug and play – it doesn’t matter who the candidate is, they all play their role and fight for the same goal. Republicans don’t. We just don’t. It’s why we lose more often than the popularity of our principles would dictate. If the right doesn’t start to think a little bigger, a little wider and a lot smarter, we could be caught with our pants down over the “win” of getting Biden to ride off into the sunset and lose everything else in the process. Careful what you wish for, especially if that’s all you focus on.
Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.
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