It's the morning after the most disastrous performance by an incumbent president in a debate in history. It's also my day off, but I woke up very early, started thinking about last night, and realized it was time to make some strong coffee.
The Democrats are now suffering from a hangover they began working on as soon as it was obvious that Joe Biden would be their nominee in 2020. They had to create a Joe Biden story out of whole cloth. The Democratic National Committee's complete control of the major mainstream media outlets, combined with all of the COVID panic that the MSM worked feverishly (I couldn't resist) to maintain, enabled them to do so.
For most of my four decades as a conservative activist, the Democrats have been the master long-game strategists of American politics. The Republicans were election-to-election plodders, while the Democratic National Committee was always thinking many elections in the future.
When their machinations to essentially crown Hillary Clinton in 2016 were blown up by Donald Trump, they began to lose focus. They seized on the pandemic smokescreen in 2020 but didn't fully ponder the long-term consequences of what they were doing. I'm sure most Dem elites thought Joe Biden would voluntarily be a one-term president. That conclusion could only be arrived at by ignoring Jill Biden's obvious ambition. The old-school Dem machine would have realized they might get stuck with an octogenarian nominee.
One can almost smell the flop sweat when reading the various MSM debate post-mortem analyses today. The New York Times is in full reckoning mode, publishing an article written by seven contributors explaining that the road to replacing Joe Biden has a few bumps in it.
There is now a sinking feeling among many Republicans and conservatives that Trump's momentum and current polling advantage will be wiped out by whoever might replace Biden.
I'm not so sure about that.
The Democrats have been patting themselves on the back since March over Biden's energetic performance during the State of the Union address. It's almost certain that the Dem power players are regretting that today. That wired, scripted performance of Biden's merely gave them a few more months of lying to themselves while Trump built momentum. Rather than be honest about the Joe Biden we all see in public, they've kept SOTU Joe memories running on a loop in their heads.
While there is no good time to abandon an incumbent and presumptive nominee, five-and-a-half months before the convention is much better than a month-and-a-half before.
The prevailing "wisdom" in the MSM today is that Trump's biggest advantage is that Biden is old and frail. True, Trump does rightfully highlight that a lot, but he has also been running a vigorous campaign against Biden's policies. Biden's potential replacements can't run away from those. Every prominent elected Democrat has been all-in on the Biden agenda and the false narratives employed to prop it up.
Should Trump end up with a new opponent, his campaign will emphasize the fact that this country isn't in shambles because Joe Biden is old; it's a mess because his policies have been an unmitigated disaster across the board.
As I wrote in my Friday Morning Briefing, "'I'm going to do the same things Joe Biden did, I'm just not going to slur as much' isn't really a winning sales pitch for independent voters."
The most important aspect of this drama is that Trump is running a very focused, disciplined campaign. The Democrats' flying monkeys in the mainstream media are poised to pounce on any major mistakes of his, and thus far, they've only been able to whine about some of the tangents he likes to go off on during rally speeches.
The only negative to Trump's campaign was that Biden had a huge cash advantage. The Bragg/Merchan Soviet show trial took care of that. There is also the fact that he didn't have many chances to screw up on the campaign trail because the Dems deliberately stuck him in a courtroom to keep him away from it.
Given the fact that the trial did nothing to hurt Trump's polling, the Dems are currently being taught a rough, ongoing "Be careful what you wish for" lesson.
The Democrats will be in garment-rending mode for a while now, but I doubt anyone in the Trump camp will lose sleep this weekend. Yes, a lot can happen between now and November, but Team Trump is right where they want to be at the moment.
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