Donald Trump, barring the unforeseen or unpredictable, will be the Republican Party nominee for President. I'm not fully convinced yet that Joe Biden will be his opponent; more on that momentarily. First, I want to discuss the Democratic Party’s campaign strategy for winning the 2024 election (besides cheating as much as possible). If Republican leadership understands what Democrats will do, they should be able formulate an effective counter-strategy.
We will, naturally, hear much about abortion, racism, climate change, and how the Republican Party will cut healthcare, Medicare, etc., and throw grandma out into the street. They will push abortion very hard for they believe that is a winning issue. These are all traditional Democratic Party talking points, and they won’t stop using them. They must do this to keep their base firmly on board. The Democratic Party faithful wants to hear these things, and so they will be repeated, ad nauseum, during the campaign. That’s to be expected.
But beyond that, the Democrats do have a problem, and that problem is Joe Biden. Biden is old, he's senile, he’s demented, and everybody knows it. He is becoming increasingly bitter, incoherent, even childish—infantile—in his actions. It seems like he wants to start a civil war. Further, Biden has been a horrible president, causing a terrible economy, with botched foreign affairs, and with inner cities and a border crisis that are only getting worse. The Democratic Party faces these, and other issues, and they're not going to be able to do much with them. They, and especially Biden, own these catastrophes, and there isn’t much positive the Democrats can say about any of them.
So, Biden is a serious conundrum for them. Will the Democrats dump him? He won’t go easily. In his senility, Biden has become a totally selfish human being, a power-mad megalomaniac, with no morality, no conscience, and no self-control. He, and even more, his wife, desperately want back in the White House. He will not voluntarily step down, and will have to be forced out. Will the Democratic Party be able to do that? I don't know. There appear to be many high-level Democrats and other party faithful who would love to ditch Biden because he is such a grave obstacle—the MAIN obstacle—to the Democratic Party retaining the White House. But dumping Biden is far from assured.
So, assuming for this column a Biden candidacy, Democrats must concoct a strategy that gets around him, and it is blatantly obvious what that will be—vicious, unrelenting, undying attacks on Donald Trump. They're going to have to make Trump look worse than Biden. The Democratic Party strategy thus becomes one of the “lesser of evils.” “Biden may not be good, but Trump is worse.” They won’t come right out and say that, of course, but it will be implied in everything they DO say.
Thus, we will hear, every day, about Trump's legal problems, meanness, and bombast. The legal issues that Trump faces will be constantly in the news. Most Republicans not named Haley believe that the judicial attacks on Trump are farcical and totally unjust, but the Democrats aren’t going to convince Trump’s followers of his guilt, or even try. They will attempt to persuade enough Americans that there is something to these charges, and Trump thus is a criminal and should not be elected President. And many Americans will believe them. How many will be a key to the election. These charges aren’t going away before then.
There is a minor attempt now to build up Biden’s economy as a positive, but no middle-class American with a bank account is going to believe that. Thus, it will be a horribly negative campaign, especially from the Democrats. We will hear (constantly) that Trump is Adolf Hitler, a racist, and every other negative they can scrape up. They have nothing positive to offer Americans about Biden, so the strategy becomes “Trump is worse than Biden.” Again, that won’t be their campaign slogan, but it might as well be because that is what they will implicitly be announcing.
They can’t win on the border (obviously). The economy isn’t going to help them, nor will Ukraine, Israel, crime in the streets, or any other issue. They might gain some points with abortion, and they WILL pound that, and they’ll keep their own people with climate change and traditional Democratic propaganda. But again, that only secures the base, and Democrats need more.
Thus, the main thing they’ll do is try to make Donald Trump look as bad as possible, even worse than Joe Biden. Get ready for the most vicious onslaught against a Presidential candidate in American history (it’s already begun, of course). It could backfire on Democrats if the American people weary of it.
But what else have Democrats got?
“Our guy is bad, we can’t find anything good to say about him, but the other guy is Hitler, the devil, and Baba Yaga all rolled into one.” Mr. Trump needs to take the high road, to bend over backwards to avoid adding fuel to this flame, but I fear such isn’t in his nature. This is going to get ugly.
If the Democrats do discard Biden, that will take away Trump’s greatest asset, and make his election far more difficult. If the Democrats stick with Biden, the American people are going to be offered two choices they really don’t want. I wish we had better options, but that is where America is right now. Trump is obviously a far superior selection, but he must convince the American people of that. The Democrats won’t try to prove to America that Biden is better, they are going to try to convince America Trump is worse. That is all they have.
It will be an unsightly brawl. Trump will love it. Decent Americans will be disgusted. I already am.
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