Purely Political

by Jim Buckley

Charlie Chaplin stars in The Great Dictator, 1940. Source: befunky

Trump as Hitler is the Democrat Campaign

The 2024 presidential election is upon us. Less than a month from now (January 15) Iowa Republicans will hold their caucuses in nearly 1,700 locations to voice their preferences for presidential candidates. Each of whom will be allotted a percentage of Iowa’s 40 delegates to the national Republican convention (to be held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin from July 15 to July 18). If Trump, for example, receives 50% of the caucus votes, he’ll go home with 20 convention delegates.

The winning candidate will need to pocket at least 1,235 delegates by July 15 from the rest of the states to become the nominee.

Polling the Pollsters

Here’s where things stand now: former President Donald Trump is the likely winning presidential candidate. Many talking heads and other prognosticators are crowing about a Republican victory.

My own preferences are Mr. Trump and/or Ron DeSantis.

But it’s way too soon to take anything for granted. It’s eleven months before the end of the 2024 presidential election and some Republicans are once again counting the number of chickens they’ll have before their eggs are hatched.

The wolves hanging around outside the coop, however, have their own plans, including either devouring or taking those feathered creatures home with them for later consumption.

Even Mr. Trump – who admits he’s never seen a positive poll that he hasn’t liked – is concentrating on the polls, which show him increasingly likely not only to wrest the Republican nomination for president, but also to be re-elected president over a hapless Joe Biden.

And maybe that will happen.

I, for one, hope, pray, that it does.

But I’m withholding my enthusiasm until the day after the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, which by my calculations will be Wednesday, November 6.

Because anything can – and most likely will – happen.

For your consideration, here are the numbers from those polled in the most recent Pew Research Center Assessment:

64% are not at all confident that Joe Biden can make good economic policy decisions; only 36% (of the 5,200 or so polled) believe he can.

65% don’t believe Joe Biden can handle an international crisis well; 35% believe he can.

64% don’t believe Joe Biden can work effectively with Congress.

67% don’t believe Joe Biden can make wise decisions about immigration policy.

75% don’t believe Joe Biden can bring the country closer together.

Joe Biden’s approval rating as president has sunk to 33%.

Can we say he’s vulnerable?

Yes, we can.

Can we then assume he’ll lose the 2024 presidential election.

No, we can’t.

Why?

Well, one reason is that the election itself has been stage-managed over the past few decades to benefit the lazy, the stupid, and the non-involved, most of whom curiously enough tend to be Democrat voters who’d never otherwise cast a ballot. Machinations such as “early voting” (now up to six weeks in some places), “ballot harvesting,” and “drop boxes,” are now employed to capture those votes.

There is no more “Election Day,” so, if, for example, you have unlimited funds ($400 million-plus just from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to help “get out the vote” in battleground states) and a lot of time, you can pile up a plethora of mail-in and absentee ballots before that critical first Tuesday after the first Monday in November deadline.

Democrats have perfected their methods of pre-collecting filled-out (or not) ballots from nursing homes, hospitals, colleges, universities, inner city apartment houses, etcetera. Some states have engineered the process so slickly that even ballot signature checks are no longer required.

So, there’s a lot of work left for Republicans who must go door-to-door in the more spread-out sections of the country, the suburbs, the farmlands and elsewhere in the countryside.

It’s a daunting task and the Democrat Party has an enormous advantage.

Which is why Democrats seemed so confident they were going to win in 2020, even though in many cases they were behind by midnight on “Election Day.” They knew how many votes they had piled up, where they had come from, and understood that 90% of them would be for their guy.

Here’s another reason for worry:

The “Hitler” and/or “Dictator” gambit.

Pollsters have discovered the one thing that makes potential Trump voters hesitant is a worry that as President, Mr. Trump will be reluctant to give up his office once his term is over.

This is the reason for the TV production of the January 6 “Insurrection,” why it is continually regurgitated and why many MSNBC, CNN, and other mainstream media outlets’ talking heads bring up the “Hitler” scenario so many times a day.

I watched television the entire day of January 6. I thought having a rally outside the Capitol building on that day was a bad idea.

A very bad idea.

But I listened to President Trump’s entire speech, and he said nothing about forcibly taking over the halls of Congress, refusing to give up his office, or of ousting anyone. He did go over his complaints about fraudulent votes in states like Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Georgia and did say he hoped Vice President Pence would “do the right thing,” and refuse to certify the electors from those three states. Trump believed the results were fraudulent and wanted a re-vote.

Everything he tried to do to overturn the election results he did through the courts, using every Constitutionally allowed means available.

His speech that day was a rambling discourse, and he seemed to really think then as he probably still does, that the election had been “stolen.” Many on his legal team presented what he believed was solid proof of that contention, but that “proof” turned out not to be substantial enough to hold up in court.

However, what happened on January 6 was not an “insurrection” in any sense of the word.

It was a “redress” to Congress but not much more.

He had made a plea for a do-over in certain states where he believed illegality had occurred, but our system doesn’t really offer such an option.

One does wonder what anyone could have done even if Trump and his team had proven their case.

In any case, because of January 6, a large segment of the public has fears that once back in office, Mr. Trump will refuse to give up the presidency when his term is up.

Which is nonsense but it is one thing that strikes a chord with many voters. So, for the next eleven months, you are going to hear how “Hitler was elected” (though he was appointed) and how closely Mr. Trump resembles the German dictator. The “end of democracy,” “Dictator Trump” and other memes will likely play an outsized role in the Democrats’ campaign.

Depending upon Donald Trump’s demeanor (if he should become the candidate) between now and then, the “Hitler” gambit could succeed.

So, don’t break out the champagne yet.

Republicans need to get to work piling up voters and their votes, matching the efforts of a very efficient and determined Democrat Party.

Beginning now.

Right now.