So far, so good – with about six months to go, Donald Trump appears to have a slight lead in the race for reelection, but of course, that can change. Nothing is set in stone, nothing is assured, except that Joe Biden will become even more senile, corrupt, and incompetent. Oh, and Donald Trump will be successfully railroaded by the New York jury. But how much will these things matter in the end? Biden’s track record of failure is baked in, as is Trump’s framing. Biden, though, can fail a lot more. Give him credit – he’s that bad on every issue. But for Trump, once the Soros DA fraud is over, that’s it for trials until after the election, if ever.
At one point this was a race between the guy who could not get elected versus the guy who could not win. Biden’s amazing losing streak – there is literally not a single achievement to his credit since allegedly winning the 2020 election, and everything he has touched has turned to Schiff – was up against the 53% of people who were never going to vote for Donald Trump. There are still a lot of people holding that irrational prejudice against POTUS 45, but the polling indicates that 47% is no longer a hard ceiling and is certainly not in the battleground states where the polls lately show Trump with a lead in most and sometimes in all of them. I did not think it would happen, and it might not happen in the end – the hoary old cliché about the only poll that matters being election day holds true – but no one will be happier than me to be proven wrong. And the evidence indicates that the prior view of Trump as unelectable was wrong.
Credit the one signal accomplishment of Joe Biden – he has managed to make a guy the majority of American voters disliked the frontrunner. How? Inflation, spending, Afghanistan, Ukraine, DEI, trans weirdness, betraying Israel, 7% mortgages and so on. And that’s before you take into account his inane babbling and manifest physical infirmity – the guy staggers around like a zombie who just washed down a handful of Ambien with a slug of Jack Daniels. People see. People know. The dude is a mess, but he has the best insurance policy in the world – Kamala Harris. She is, incredibly, even worse. So, this guy is going all the way to November. Even if there was a way to pry the fake doctor’s claws out of the White House walls, the Democrats cannot replace him. They would have to go with the Kackler, and that’s even worse than Mr. Magoo’s seniler, dumber, more corrupt brother Joe.
Trump has a number of gifts, but perhaps his most important and effective gift is his luck. The guy is incredibly lucky, starting with his choice of enemies. As off-putting as he can be to many Americans – Trumpiness is an acquired taste most of them have not acquired – he has somehow managed to have opponents who are even more off-putting. They overreach, as with the NYC criminal case. Trump has actually gained in the polls since being indicted. And all the attempts to silence him worked. He was knocked off social media, and the Democrats did their Mr. Burns tented fingers thing because Trump could not get his message out. Oh boy, that’ll wreck him for sure! Except the people who like him did not need to hear his message, the people on the fence got their message from Biden’s fumbling, and the people who hated hearing Trump being Trump stopped hearing Trump being Trump.
The geniuses managed to eliminate the thing that most alienated people from Trump. That was the proverbial mean tweets, since his record as president was good (though not perfect – see COVID). Trump was driven to the MAGA ghetto of Truth Social, where normal folks never saw Trump in all his furious and infuriating glory. The Democrats made it so Trump could not do the very thing that made people turn toward the Democrats. Great work!
We will see what happens over the next six months. Biden will preside over more failures (watch for Ukraine to crumble before a Russian offensive, for the Israel-Hamas war to stalemate in the wake of Biden’s betrayal, and maybe Taiwan to get whacked). At the same time, Trump will be convicted (almost certainly), but people get that it’s a set-up. He will be barnstorming the country, and Biden will be stumbling around like the crusty moron he is explaining how your family being impoverished is actually an awesome thing.
It’s looking good for Trump and bad for Biden now, but who knows? There are black swans out there lurking. As always, the X factor is events. But today, it looks good for Trump.
Follow Kurt on Twitter @KurtSchlichter. Get the newest volume in the Kelly Turnbull People’s Republic series of conservative action novels set in America after a notional national divorce, the bestselling Amazon #1 Military Thriller, Overlord! And get his new novel about terrorism in America, The Attack!
Look, you need to keep up the fight by joining Townhall VIP right now. You get access to a bunch of great stuff, not the least of which is my extra Wednesday column, my weekly Stream of Kurtiousness videos every Friday, and the Unredacted podcast every Monday! Plus, some stuff from Larry O’Connor – and a bunch of other stuff.
My super-secret email address is Kurt.Schlichter@townhall.com
