Br'er Rabbit In the Briar Patch
I want to bring to your attention something I played on my radio show yesterday, which was from former President Trump.
The Democrats do not think they are winning the election right now. They are not really saying that publicly, but that is a chief takeaway from this report at the left-leaning Axios. Here is the key passage:
In our private conversations, Democrats are a lot more worried about November than Republicans are. Democrats say the race is winnable. Republicans think they're winning. The swing-state map is a big reason why. [Emphasis in original]
Democrats seeing the race as “winnable” instead of that they are winning means they understand the undercurrents of the race. If more than the most likely voters show up in November, Trump wins. Trump must overcome his resistance to early voting and get his voters out. But that is possible.
In the meantime, a majority of Americans have come to conclude the Democrats are engaged in lawfare to take out Trump in the courtroom because they cannot beat him at the ballot box.
The result?
Trump has become a more efficient and disciplined campaigner. He is tied up in a courtroom every day, so he has to make every moment before the cameras count. Go back to that clip. He goes after the Columbia protestors, whom a plurality of Americans oppose; then he takes the side of those who have been denied a graduation ceremony; then he ties it all to Joe Biden’s donors— the show is then over and off to court he goes.
It set a lot of the news coverage for the day. It forced the Biden team to respond to the report about their donors while also scrambling to deal with pulling back ammunition from Israel just as Israel invades Rafah.
This is happening more often. Trump is tired after being in court. His rallies in Michigan and Wisconsin have not been long, rambling off-script affairs. He has kept to key points and reiterated them repeatedly. His polling in those states has gone up.
Four years ago, every day was a new day, message, and chaos. Every time Trump took to Twitter, he changed the direction of the day. Between getting him off Twitter and anchoring him to a courtroom, Trump has been thrown into his own briar patch. With limited media exposure each week, every media outlet fixates on what he says. He has honed the message and is focused on the big story out of necessity.
And the punchline is that Democrats did this to Trump. They threw him in the briar patch. Now, they’ll have to live with the consequences. What happens if the jury in New York does not find Trump guilty?
If they find Trump guilty, we will have gone through the looking glass. Seems to me that most of the prosecutions witnesses have been very favorable to Trump’s position. Of course a conviction would get overturned on appeal, but the Dems don’t care. This is the 2024 version of the laptop. Election interference that is going to backfire big time.
Pressing question is what happens if they do find him guilty. That jury and judge are biased beyond belief. Even if they convicted him it would be appealed and thrown out. But would that all happen before the election?