But let's look at the glass as half empty.
The histories since 2020 is not encouraging. Trump was consistently coming down on the right side of policy issues but he was showing an alarming pattern of poor judgment in his selection of staff and cabinet. Senator Sessions' choice as Attorney General was a near fatal miscalculation. Trump permitted backbiting and leaking within his administration that lent a bit of credence to the Democrat allegation that the administration was in chaos. The Russian hoax, the impeachment, and all the rest let a poorly informed electorate conclude that Trump was simply unstable in the office. The fiasco of Obama Care only confirmed the worst suspicions of the electorate that had been so artfully cultivated by Democrats and the media.
So the election of 2018 was a severe disappointment. Then came the Floyd riots and Covid and, at the last minute, abortion. When in the run-up to the 2020 election my television showed night after night of Democrat condoned burning and looting, extending right up to the White House itself, I was sure that the electorate would vote the way it had in 1968, that is, for the law and order party.
We were all aware that the bias of the media was just as flagrant as it is today but I concluded that if Trump could not win under the circumstances of 2020, we as a party might not be able to win under any circumstances. Perhaps Trump beat Hillary in 2016 because she was the only Democrat he could defeat and perhaps Trump lost in 2020 because he was the only Republican Biden could defeat. In other words, the electorate was defending itself against politicians they did not like.
The defeat in 2020 under the circumstances which should have produced a stunning Republican victory, should have at least produced an agonizing reappraisal, a come to Jesus style unrelenting analysis of where we had gone wrong. In my view this analysis did not occur because we misplaced focus on an election that was stolen. Stolen or not, the score was too close under the circumstances. The score, honest or otherwise, revealed disturbing Republican weakness.
Above all, 2018, 2020, and now 2022, demonstrated that the Republican Party had not found a way to overcome the media bias which is the central theme of this thread.
If this time different? In four elections we won only one and that was against Hillary by the barest of margins. Why is it different this time?
The elected Victor of the primary process, President Biden, has been taken off the ballot by a palace coup. His replacement, is a singularly ineffectual and unattractive person with a dreadful record without accomplishments but instead actual maladministration. She is an identifiable Marxist with extreme and bizarre economic prescriptions for an economy which most believe her administration has damaged and which has been universally panned by critics.
Nevertheless despite her obvious inadequacies, the media has beatified her in a remarkable campaign that has catapulted her from a figure that was universally dismissed and disparaged to a figure of hope of near angelic quality. Her first decision was to pick a vice presidential running mate who it turns out is a poltroon who desportes himself on stage as a cross between an aging being in rapture and and unfortunate in a fit. Her economic scheme is risible.
Yet, Harris is actually threatening Donald Trump in the reported polls.
I find these polls to be not nearly as threatening as reported. It is clear they are sampling to favor Democrats and they are deceiving us by controlling the timing of the polls and the timing of the release. Yet it is undeniable that Harris' recovery is phenomenal.
Under the circumstances one might expect that a candidate such as Donald Trump would adopt the advice tendered to him by those who support him and by those who do this for a living to the effect that he should modify his approach to be less confrontational and condemning and more statesmanlike, if you will. Obviously, such a turn is beyond the DNA possessed by Donald Trump. So this raises the specter that the media will treat Donald Trump the way they treated him in 2020 and the way they treated Hillary in 2016.
On the other side, we have the brilliant choice of JD Vance who is presenting a running mate who is wonderfully articulate, poised, and able to lend an intellectual respectability to the ticket. More, the addition of Elon Musk offers the support of an authentic American wunderkind. The endorsement of RFK adds a tone of moral integrity and bipartisanship to the candidate and underscores the moral depravity of the Democrat ticket.
This time the people are beleaguered by inflation and that is a driver of an election that is relentless, reminding us all with every trip to the grocery store or stop at the gas station. The American dream of homeownership has been denied because of inflation.
I actually don't believe the final result will be close, I believe the election will break for Trump because the momentum that the facts on the ground will generate will be irresistible.
