While it seems as if time has shuddered to a halt, we are - unfortunately - inching our way towards a presidential election. In only a few months, President Donald Trump will face former Vice President Joe Biden in a battle for the White House. According to the aging Biden, it’s a fight for America’s soul. In reality, it’s a fight to determine whether or not the radicalism surging through the Democratic Party will gain a foothold in wider American politics.
With these high stakes in mind, conservatives must ask why Donald Trump is struggling. If recent polls are in any way accurate, Trump is facing the prospect of an embarrassing defeat in November, opening the door to Joe Biden and - more dangerously - those whispering in his ear.
While many will reject the accuracy of these poll results by citing the inaccuracy of past predictions, these are objectively worrying times for both those who wish to promote and protect American conservatism, and those who are terrified by the growing radicalism of the American Left. While we are distracted by blaming the polls, or the Democrats, or the mainstream media for the constant waves of partisan - and often unfair - criticism hurled in Trump’s direction, we remain blind to reality. The responsibility for holding the Left’s insatiable lust for power at bay lies with one man, and one man alone: President Donald J. Trump.
Currently, Trump should be enjoying the easiest re-election campaign in modern American history. He should be lauding the recent ground-breaking economy nurtured by his administration which President Obama himself claimed was impossible. He should be celebrating his generally strong foreign policy, standing on the ashes of ISIS. Finally, he should be taking full advantage of the fact that Joe Biden is not only a proven liar with a history of racist comments and accusations of corruption, but also a man who is in obvious mental decline. After all, when you are competing with a man who believes that 120 million people have died from COVID-19 and who struggles to remember which office he is running for, all you need to do is stand next to them and demonstrate that you have a pulse.
Instead, Donald Trump is acting as if he doesn’t want to be re-elected. His silence during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic and Black Lives Matter riots abandoned the airwaves to the politically opportunistic Democrats. His decision to hold mass rallies with no thought for social distancing gave ammunition to the mainstream media who are working overtime to blame the Republican Party for the failures of Democratic mayors and governors. Finally, his increasingly erratic Twitter outbursts drag the election from what it should be - a decision between an incumbent administration with a history of economic success and a geriatric career politician who was labeled as a racist by his potential running mate - into a desire to find an alternative to the Left’s caricature of Donald Trump.
Those who dismiss, or even celebrate, Trump’s behavior by arguing that it rouses his base are missing the crucial point that this election will not be won or lost with a hardcore base. This election is a battle for those in the middle who, yet again, find themselves deciding between two suboptimal choices. It is those people Donald Trump needs to win over. The way to do that is not by tweeting at 3am in capital letters. It is by calmly proving that the mainstream media are partisan hacks, the Democrats are power hungry cynics, and Joe Biden is an incompetent liar.