Today's burning question is, "How are they gonna cheat this time?"
There's a "Democratic civil war" brewing thanks to a "season of ugly polling for President Joe Biden" that has "Trump’s vote share in national polls is higher than at any time in the past year." Americans are cranky about the economy, despite being told again and again that we proles just don't understand how good we've got it under Biden. We're cranky about the world, too, with the China-Russia-Iran axis starting wars of aggression on Biden's watch in Ukraine, in the Middle East, and maybe even over Taiwan.
I haven't seen an incumbent president look this vulnerable since Jimmy Carter in 1980, but that's not the election that today's headlines have me thinking about. Instead, let's set the (Not So) Wayback Machine to November of 2019 — because if the tail end of 2023 feels a little like 2019, that's because it is.
Democrats four years ago had a problem — actually, two problems. The first was that Donald Trump was doing a fine job as president, and the second was that it looked like unelectable socialist Bernie Sanders was going to win the nomination. "Moderate Joe" Biden might not have a chance to win, but at least he wouldn't spoil the party's brand like Sanders would. So Sanders got sabotaged and Biden got the nomination-sealing endorsement of South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn.
When it came to rising wages and world peace, Trump delivered the goods, so at this point four years ago, it looked like any Democrat was going to have an uphill battle.
That's one reason, even if subconsciously, I think Republican primary voters chose Bob Dole to run against Bill Clinton in 1996. With the economy humming — and Clinton's worst instincts hemmed in by a GOP House and Senate — Clinton's reelection was basically a gimme. So why not give the old soldier one last chance to serve his party and his country, even if that chance was slim to none?
Democrats, on the other hand, don't play to lose — even if 2020 had been shaping up to be effectively a replay of '96.
Then came COVID-19. Or, more accurately, then came the government overreaction to a nasty respiratory infection that killed the old, the sick, and the morbidly obese — but hardly anyone else.
If the COVID lockdowns and other forms of panicmongering wouldn't have been enough to boot Trump from office, the Dems had two other weapons ready to go. The first was their grossly cynical abuse of George Floyd's drug-related death while in police custody to mobilize black and urban voters. The second was their grossly cynical abuse of American election law (among other election-day shenanigans) to change, virtually overnight, the way Americans vote and have their votes counted. Or maybe sometimes not counted [cough, cough].
But those cards have been played.
Our public establishment so thoroughly discredited itself with its politicized reaction to COVID that a similar scare is unlikely to work with anyone outside the small (if loud) Busybody Demographic. Black Americans quickly woke up to the fact that Defund the Police wasn't doing them any good, and now the call to "re-fund the police" is coming from inside the house, so to speak.
They need something new.
Maybe the shiny new thing will be a convention switcheroo this summer of Biden for Calif. Gov. Gavin Newsom. The party mechanics — and that "civil war" between the Newsom and Kamala Harris factions — would be tricky to navigate. But, honestly, Dems excel at that kind of thing.
Maybe it will be some massive new public scare. COVID is out... but a war might do.
Honestly, I think sometimes I lack the imagination to think like a Democrat, and, yes, that is a humblebrag.
But just because we can't tell exactly what's coming doesn't mean that something isn't brewing to keep the White House blue in 2024.
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