It didn’t take long for Republican Donald Trump and Democrat president senile Joe Biden to shift into general election mode.
Last week’s Super Tuesday results showed both major party candidates with insurmountable delegate majorities and no viable competition heading into the season every political enthusiast craves – the one-on-one presidential campaign. Neither man was pressed during the party nominating processes nor did a single urgent matter nearly derail them.
Both Trump and Biden locked up their nominations with this week’s primary results in Georgia and Mississippi, among others. There’s no turning back now!
2024 wasn’t at all like 2020, and it definitely wasn’t akin to 2016, when both parties needed the better part of half a year of debates and voting to settle on a standard-bearer. Now that the mystery is solved, however, there are some who gripe that the final men standing aren’t all that confidence inspiring.
“The numbers only get worse for Mr. Biden. Just 20% in the New York Times poll said his policies have helped them personally while 42% said Mr. Trump’s had. A mere 20% in the AP poll had confidence Mr. Biden has the mental capability to serve effectively as president, while 63% don’t.
“Team Biden believes his comeback starts Thursday night with his highly hyped State of the Union address. But it is hard to remember when any such election-year address to Congress moved the needle in a sustained way. This one probably won’t either. If it’s remembered a week from now, I’m guessing it’ll be for something negative rather than positive.
“It is the oddest thing. We’ve never seen two candidates wrap up their nominations this early. What could have been contests have turned into coronations. Yet both Messrs. Trump and Biden aren’t only weak contenders but massively flawed, old and declining, despised by much of America. In my lifetime there have been lower points in our nation’s politics, but it is hard to recall them just now.”
Low points in Rove’s lifetime? I can’t speak for him, but certainly one such basement dwelling moment in his own span of consciousness must have been when his good friend and “client” George W. Bush limped out of office in 2009 with near historically low approval ratings, despite having enjoyed two terms in the White House with mostly Republican majorities in Congress to help steer his agenda through. (Note: The final two years of Bush’s term there was a Democrat House majority and a working Democrat majority in the Senate. By the time Bush left office, Democrats had huge partisan advantages in both chambers.)
Most conservatives I know now regard George W. Bush as a decent, well-meaning man, but one who was so completely blind to the needs and wants of Republican voters that he lost the ability to govern. By constantly pandering to the center and to Democrats, GW Bush betrayed conservatives who’d been hopeful that his ascension to power would equal meaningful progress on the pro-liberty agenda. Instead, Bush teamed with Democrats to push through No Child Left Behind, Medicare Part D and (nearly) amnesty for illegal immigrants.
This isn’t mentioning the massive corporate bailouts that finished off whatever support was left for GW Bush’s administration other than swamp creatures like Karl Rove. Bush did such damage to the party that he left it in disarray, which led to the nominations of John McCain and Mitt Romney in the next two presidential cycles – and ultimately brought forth the rise of Donald Trump, whose populist appeals represented a stark contrast to the status quo.
In other words, Rove can cite his poll numbers all he wants, but Trump revived the Republican party at the executive level, and his low survey tallies reflect the total hatred of Democrats as well as the enduring animosity of Never Trumpers who can’t handle change.
Nikki Haley’s been out of the Republican race for over a week now and there’s hardly a clamor for her to return to give disaffected GOPers an “alternative” to Trump. Yes, Trump is going to need some of Haley’s backers to reenter the Republican “tent”, but Biden’s awfulness itself should convince many of the wayward folks that there’s only one path remaining for American revival.
And those train tracks run right through MAGA-land.
I realize that Rove’s “nobody likes either candidate and polls show that Americans want someone else” argument is getting tedious and, for lack of a better way to put it, “old”, but nonetheless he brings up some interesting points that beg for a rebuttal, simply because Rove speaks from a lofty establishment pedestal and appears to be completely detached from campaign reality. Rove doesn’t understand human nature, and therein lies his fatal flaw.
Real life isn’t like a room full of focus group participants who are paid to provide opinions on subjects they may or may not have given a great deal of thought to. Elections like the one that’s upcoming will boil down to what individuals feel about a candidate personally. I know lots of people who’ve told me they had serious reservations about Trump getting the nomination again, though now that it’s happened – and he’s going up against Biden – they’ll come out of their shells and focus on the issues and the future, not whether they wished (candidate X) was on the ballot instead.
Republicans probably gave senile Joe a smidgen of credit for actually, for once, using a word that accurately sums up the “illegal” dilemma. It’s now time to see Biden for what he’s always been – a phony opportunist and political prostitute who’s never uttered a true sentence in his life without somehow correcting it.
But more than this, Biden himself might’ve done Democrats a huge disservice by behaving like he did a week ago. Certainly, he substituted anger and passion for real abilities, but it could have been enough to convince the gullible – a.k.a. Democrat voters – that he was sufficiently “with it” to serve as the party nominee, and thus, should not/could not be replaced.
Did senile Joe’s more-vigorous-than-usual high volume (as in shouted) State of the Union address actually end up damaging the Democrats because it weakens the arguments of those who claim he’s too old and mentally decrepit for another term and therefore, MUST be replaced?
If senile Joe continues to languish in the polls (which he probably will) and there also remains a large but generally undefined group of Democrats who believe that the only way to prevent a Donald Trump 2.0 administration is to find a suitable replacement – and then do the unthinkable, pull a switcheroo at the party convention (which also seems to be the case) — then juicing him up to go before the nation and give every ounce of his energy he has left to rail against his opposition wouldn’t be such a great thing for them.
It doesn’t require a complete rehash, but Biden stumbled a number of times during the hour-plus SOTU address, including uttering several non-intelligible things that left members of our viewing audience (in my living room) wondering what the heck he just said? Or it could’ve been that his same old tired Democrat platitudes (the rich and corporations need to pay their fair share!) just seem more and more absurd as time goes on.
The part where senile Joe blasted the Supreme Court members about women and their political power also was tasteless and off-putting. But the Democrat members in attendance and people at home (probably) consumed his every word and provocation with gusto. These people are sick.
It also shouldn’t be forgotten Biden was speaking to a very specific audience last week, that being single women of all races, shapes, ages and national origins, the group which is, by far, the strongest supporters of Democrats – primarily because of the abortion issue. It wouldn’t be a stretch to claim that the single female vote alone drives the Democrat party. By demographic breakdown, married men, single men and married women all favor Republicans, married men being the tightest hold for the GOP.
Just look at the members of “The Squad” and you’ll understand who the Democrats’ most ardent supporters are, though I believe all of them are married (or engaged). Rep. Ilhan Omar, of course, was married to her brother, but that’s another story. It’s safe to say female Democrat representatives and senators couldn’t care less about their presidential candidate’s age, history, intelligence or color of his or her skin as long as they’re devotees to the leftist abortion and welfare missions are satisfied in his rants.
So there you have it. Karl Rove can lament the respective parties’ choices for presidential candidates, but the rank and file of the “base” is crazy about Trump and Biden. Why? Because they bring it home. And here’s thinking they’ll each get the support of the most ardent come November regardless of whether the elites consider them bad choices or not.
To ruling elites like Karl Rove, it defies logic and experience that Americans chose Donald Trump and Joe Biden as 2024’s presidential candidates. Survey results suggest neither are popular, both are seen as too old and other hindrances seemingly weigh them down. But both are prepared to wage an epic battle for the future of the country. Why keep whining about what can’t be changed?
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2024 presidential election