Let’s look at the strategy the Democrats are using to try to defeat Donald Trump. To understand that strategy, you really have to speculate on whether this is all, as Admiral Ackbar might say, a trap — whether, in fact, the Democrats’ plan was to get Republicans to nominate Trump so they could run against him.
They tried this trap in 2015 and 2016. Hillary Clinton suggested Trump wouldn’t run. She wanted Trump to be the Republican nominee.
And then, of course, she lost to him.
Are Democrats repeating history? Numerous people have suggested that by promoting all of these legal cases against Trump this year, the Democrats reversed all of the momentum in the race — in favor of Trump — because the Republicans reacted to the unjust persecution by supporting him in the race.
And then, the Democrats figured, the entire next year was going to be all about his legal cases.
There’s data to support this. The Republican presidential primary polling shows that right after the 2022 elections, Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis were running basically neck and neck, and then continued to run neck and neck through January and February.
And then something happened in March.
What happened in March? The announcement of prosecutions against Trump. Once that happened, the polls opened up wide, the dam burst, and Republicans moved behind Trump because they perceived he was being unduly persecuted. Plus, they heard his line that the Democrats were coming after him because they would also come after Republicans.
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That line was particularly effective because the Democratic Party was making clear that the center of all of their policies was equity, equity, equity, and when many Americans hear “equity,” they hear that the preferred Democratic voting constituencies are going to get special benefits and everybody else is going to get jack.
So when Trump said they’re coming after him because they’re also coming after you, that had some credibility to it.
The cases against Trump will go on all year long. They will consistently be in the headlines and that could theoretically hurt him. But, on the other hand, Trump ranting about legal cases could mean that it gets boring. When Trump talks about a topic too much, it basically turns into ringing in your ears and it becomes really irritating. It’s like when you wake up in the middle of the night and hear ringing in your ears, so your brain tunes it out so you can sleep.
That same principle applies when the Democrats and media get into insane mode about Trump’s supposed fascism. You tune it out as though it’s background noise.
I don’t think most Americans care particularly much about all of this. I think most Americans think, “You went after him on a thousand different things. None of them seemed to be particularly noteworthy or crazy. We all remember January 6, so that was already baked into the cake. Donald Trump and women. That’s been a thing since the 1980s.”
The bottom line is the Democrats are gambling that Trump’s legal foibles are going to somehow sink his campaign. I don’t know if that’s a particularly amazing gamble.
Thus, the Democrats are now having to rely on some backup strategies. One of those ongoing backup strategies is the attempt to bar Trump from the ballot. That’s undemocratic. You can’t just ban your political opponents from the ballot.
All of these tactics lend credence to Trump’s claims that they are out to get him, which of course, is the reason he got the nomination in the first place — presuming that he wraps it up, as I assume that he will.
And there’s a good chance none of these tactics will work.
