Election 2020: A Few Early Thoughts

     The skies have brightened since the election of President Trump – we’re not at war, the economy has improved, and there are a couple of new, Constitution-respecting Justices on the Supreme Court – but there are clouds on the horizon that one must not overlook. The most important of them is that in a year and a half we’ll face another electoral test. The Democrats will go all-out to win this one, by any means expedient.

     There will be massive vote fraud. There will be “ballot harvesting.” There will be millions of votes from non-citizens. There will be intimidation at the polling places. There will be campaigns of propaganda blacker than anything since 1860. And of course the sham “investigations” of non-crimes for which there’s no evidence will continue up to Election Day and beyond.

     Whether the Republican Party will step up to the necessary degree is questionable. Quite a large fraction of the GOP still resents Trump for showing them up, including a few governors and senators who, pace John McCain and Mitt Romney, feel that it was “their turn.” Now that turn might never come (boo hoo).

     President Trump will stand for re-election, of course. If he wins, which seems likely but is by no means certain, he might finally succeed in “draining the swamp” and restoring a semblance of Constitutional government. But his many opponents, the nabobs of the Deep State prominent among them, are resolved that his tenure shall be a brief interregnum rather than a restoration.

---

     The factor most in favor of a second Trump term is the appalling lack of stature of the Democrats’ declared candidates. Quantity, in this case, does not make up for a lack of quality. Only Joseph Biden, serial plagiarist and doddering pre-Alzheimer case, has anything resembling a national profile. The others are essentially unknowns outside their state and local domains. (Pete Buttigieg? Really?) No amount of artificial clamor can give them a stature they don’t possess.

     You might have thought the excellent economy would be the first factor. I can’t see it. The Left is campaigning against prosperity and people are listening. The key has been to frame their assault as a quasi-religious matter: “global warming,” “economic inequality,” and similar shibboleths that defy both objective evidence and objective definition. How many voters will be swayed by this bilge is unclear.

     The factor most opposed to Trump’s re-election is the Democrats’ success at perpetuating the notion that he’s mired in impeachable scandals. The entirety of the major media is enlisted in that effort, for the usual reasons. It’s entirely at odds with the findings of the Mueller investigation. Indeed, it involves crimes committed by the Obama Administration and the Deep State against Trump and several of his relatives and associates. But the media megaphone won’t permit those facts any column-inches or air time.

     Where the balance falls in the correlation of forces for November 2020 is not at all clear.

---

     No one ever won a war by playing defense. If we want a second Trump term, we must attack, without reservations or any restraint of our forces. But what does that mean in an environment like the present one, in which the enemy’s major weapon is a miasma of unsupported accusations? How does one attack such a haze?

     Is it enough to expose the motives of Trump’s detractors and show how unsavory their own behavior has been? What about the channels they use to promulgate their propaganda? Can we take those down, or are they immune to our displeasure? Are there other means available that aren’t criminal?

     In presidential politics, a year and a half is like unto the third quarter of a football game: time isn’t going to run out right away, but the opportunities for new initiatives and course corrections are dwindling. It’s time for this discussion to get serious.