Still dumbfounded by how Trump won re-election by decisively overcoming his unending lawfare charges, a sometimes-abrasive persona, and his omnipresent sparring with the legacy media, California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently claimed the Democrats had yet to do an autopsy of what went wrong.
However, in answering that question, an analytical principle first appearing in 1852 might surprisingly guide the way.
That still-useful investigative tool, Occam’s Razor, “shaves off” false assumptions by asserting that when competing explanations exist for a confounding result, the most obvious “keep it simple, stupid” possibility is often the primary catalyst.
That said, beginning with Trump’s first term and continuing during Biden’s administration, one factor dominated in triggering an electoral result that few predicted — and that was, progressive gaslighting prompted such a theatrically exaggerated and electorally limiting perspective that, over time, only blind-faith followers could grudgingly support.
Of course, no roster of negatively invented falsehoods would be complete without mentioning the Russian collusion hoax.
For more than three years, Democrat lawmakers and their media bedfellows claimed to have absolute evidence that Trump was an agent of the Kremlin. Yet, when it became indisputably clear that those charges were part of an elaborate scam, retractions were virtually absent.
But amazingly, branding Trump a Russian agent was merely an opening act in the off-Broadway play “Destroy Trump or Else.”
During the last presidential campaign, the hyperbolic Democrats and their media partners continued to construct alternate realities to beat Trump a second time.
Early on, before Biden mercifully agreed to abandon the race, videos of his undeniable senility were labeled as “cheap fakes,” while obvious evidence of Biden’s influence peddling was ignored.
Instead, as an evasive shell-game pivot, Democrats hysterically shifted focus by claiming Trump was inciting political violence by stating, “It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country” if he lost the election.
However, it did not matter that he was figuratively talking about the loss of manufacturing jobs to Chinese automotive plants in Mexico or that a dictionary definition of a bloodbath is a “major economic disaster;” the double-down lie of Trump prompting disorder was repeatedly expressed.
Moreover, before Biden ended his campaign, the Democrats’ penchant for such absurdities continued when he claimed his Afghanistan withdrawal was “an extraordinary success,” that with the “strongest job growth in history,” Bidenomics was working, and that after undoing dozens of successful Trump-era executive orders greatly curtailing illegal immigration, the border was “secure.”
Of course, those claims were outrageously false.
The bungled Afghanistan withdrawal stranded hundreds of Americans and thousands of allied locals with the Taliban, left billions of dollars of military equipment, and caused the deaths of 13 American service personnel at Abbey Gate.
Regarding the economy, inflation reached a 40-year high, real wages greatly declined, and over 60 percent of the jobs Biden claimed to have created were merely people returning to work after the COVID pandemic.
And lastly, only in Biden’s alternate universe could he claim that “I’ve done all I can do” to secure our southern border.
For, if true, how then could Trump do more in his first four months than Biden did in four years to stem the flow of illegals entering our country, in numbers totalling more than the population of all but 10 states?
And who could forget the nationwide headlines and media outrage falsely claiming that if re-elected, Trump bragged he would become a dictator?
But having been described by Kamala Harris as a fascist threat to democracy who was “dangerous” and “unfit to be president,” his comments were again surgically parsed to give that context-free impression.
After all, since Trump’s campaign rally in Madison Square Garden was likened to a Nazi convocation, and Oprah Winfrey made the outrageous claim that his victory could mean that opponents would never vote again, it must be true.
And just weeks after Trump’s inauguration, Democrat insanity continued.
Since the price of eggs rose days after Trump took office, it was implied that in causing that inflation, he abandoned the working class.
Shortly thereafter, his connection with Elon Musk made him guilty by association with a man said to be making a Nazi salute.
And Trump’s obvious joke about serving for three or more terms was claimed as a serious trial balloon to “normalize his unconstitutional and anti-democratic goals.”
So, even though Democrat cons foretold their electoral demise, their laughably unserious gaslighting has continued in their end-of-the-world attacks on Trump’s trade policies and in claiming illegal immigrant deportations ignore constitutionally guaranteed due process.
Yet, because the clarifying logic of Occam’s Razor often explains what was and infers what will be, this second act of their Trump Derangement Syndrome will again prompt a self-inflicted wound.
For although their pervasive deceptions to destroy Trump’s second term may continually dupe sightless loyalists such as Gavin Newsom, the more widely felt “fool me once, shame on you — fool me twice, shame on me” voter turnoff will again become a fatal threat to themselves.
Thus, in a recurring and suicidal symmetry, failing to internalize this autopsy result from 2024 will require another such examination in 2028 and beyond.
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