Kurt Schlichter for Townhall
The Tide Turns Toward Trump
Remember how Donald Trump was totally doomed just a couple weeks ago? Grandpa Badfinger was ridin’ high down in his basement and the GOP was going to be destroyed in November. All the smart people of smartness who make up liberal blue check Twitter tweeted it so it had to be true.
Good times.
And then last week it all changed, turning 180 on a dime as Biden stomped on his Pelosi. It’s looking good for Trump and the Republicans again, and while there will be twists n’ turns, and while we best not get cocky (Hat Tip: Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds) the victory most of us patriots expect is coming clearly into focus as Biden becomes clearly more unfocused.
The polls have improved not just for Trump but for the Republicans running downticket too, not that we should put great store in the polls. Keep in mind that the polls were literally the only indicator showing Biden and the Dems were winning. There’s no other manifestation of a blue wave out there. Do you see any Biden signs? There’s just one in my neighborhood, which is all LA suburban woke wine women, and that’s in a creepy house that the children fear. No, there are no Trump signs either, but then that would invite a hassle. A Biden billboard would presumably invite hosannas for wokeness. And yet, only a single strange-o has one and that’s the guy we all suspect is eating the cats that go missing.
The polls, we were informed, indicate Trump’s doom. Of course, you could have said that in 2016 too, and just ask President Felonia Milhous von Pantsuit about how that went if you can catch her between goblets of screw-top Trader Joe’s Chardonnay. You hear from such unimpeachable sources as human potato-employing CNN that Trump is down 15 points and you wonder where all those people who switched from voting patriot to voting Squad minion are. I have yet to meet one – in all my shameless virtual book promoting around the country over the last month, I’ve interacted with a lot of folks and I have met many people who were all, “Yeah, I did not vote for him last time because Trump’s tweets make me sad as I’m kind of soft, but I can’t vote for the communists’ Trojan Donkey.”
In contrast, the number of people I have met who told me, “Yeah, I voted for Trump and love his conservative achievements, but he’s mean to dumb people on Twitter so I have to vote for Charley UnMcCarthyite” is zero. As in zip. Nada. The number of conservative successes achieved by the insufferable Never Trump Fredocons in the two decades before Trump came along and broke and humiliated them. None.
Where are all these vote switchers? And where are all the conservatives picking up the phone during dinner and saying, “Why yes, I am delighted to talk to you as my rib-eye chills, total stranger, and yes, I strongly support the guy the cultural elite considers to be literally Hitler”? We talk about the Silent Majority and the Shy Trump Voter, but it’s more like the “Kiss my Schumer, you’ll find out what I think in November, jerk” voter.
But it’s not just that few of us answer polls. It’s that there’s no reason to believe the polls aren’t rigged. Now, am I contending that the polls are consciously manipulated by media outlets and others to artificially depress Trump’s popularity in order to demoralize conservatives and keep them from voting since it is a lost cause?
Yes.
The media lies about things right in front of us – “peaceful protestors” anyone? – so what’s stopping them from lying about things that are already opaque like poll results? “Oh well, we’ll gladly invent a Russian conspiracy theory out of whole cloth and cheerlead people being imprisoned and an election being overturned so our political allies can retake power, but we draw the line at tweaking poll numbers. I’ve got muh principles, damnit!”
Except now even the polls are tightening, which seems likely to be the pollsters trying to close it up a little so they won’t look amazingly stupid again when Trump romps to an “upset” victory.
Beside polls, nothing foretells a Democrat win. Nothing. There is no datapoint that helps them. The rusty crustacean spent last week uttering gaffe after gaffe – “Are you a junkie?” – and dwelling in his dungeon. He won’t go to his own convention. He almost certainly won’t debate. And he won’t suddenly turn into the smooth, coherent, intellectual force that he used to be way back never.
There’s an enthusiasm gap that’s even wider than the yawning chasm between Bill Kristol’s self-image and the cheesy reality. Trump voters are willing to crawl over broken glass to vote for The Donald; savvy Dems are looking for broken glass to slash their wrists because they know their addled nominee is a senile old weirdo on an express train to McGovernville. Who, exactly, are the people saying, “I’m really excited by the dynamic possibilities of a Joe Biden presidency!” except the marketing guys at Ensure and Depends?
And who, exactly, is jazzed by the very limited range of Veep options his handlers have given themselves thanks to their race, gender, and wokeness requirements? Kamala Harris, with her graspy ambition and grating style, is Botoxic. Susan Rice will have a Libya problem with both liberals and conservatives. And Stacy Abrams would have to resign the governorship of Georgia; she’s not getting picked and will have to make do with being appointed the ambassador to Diabetes.
Look at the positions Biden and the rest of the Dems are locked into by people like AOC and that other commie who probably married her brother. Trump is for opening up the economy and schools; the Dems are for permanent mouth thongs. And it’s also clear that the people standing in the way of extended unemployment benefits are Pelosi and Schumer, who won’t help normal Americans unless we agree to bail out blue state public employee pensions and make sacrifices to that weird Swedish weather goddess.
On China and freeloading NATO bums, Trump is hard and Biden is soft. Ditto on those peaceful protestors setting fires and attacking cops. And on illegal aliens. And on tech robber barons. And on Big Pharma.
The Dems want to defund the police – oh, excuse me: “reimagine the police.” But voters don’t have to imagine the resulting rising crime rates because it is already happening. One of the reasons Bill Clinton was successful in the 90s is that he got rid of the ridiculous thug-hugging of 60s liberalism, making it safe for voters to elect Dems again. That lesson has been forgotten. Only within the modern liberal bubble could these idiots talk themselves into believing that “There’s too little crime and we’re too hard on criminals” is a great message. What do the American people think? They think “lock ‘n load.”
There’s also the nuts and bolts of the campaign. It’s getting better. The Trump team moved Brad Parscale to digital, a job he excels in. After conservatives complained, it revamped its text outreach – and it set a record for fundraising (Other GOP entities, like the NRCC, are still failing). It’s out-registering the Dems, knocking on millions of doors while the Dems are cowering from the flu. And, vitally, minorities are refusing to simply line up and vote Democrat – many are walking away and moving to Trump despite Biden’s bizarre contentions regarding how black voters must be monolithically Democrat or they apparently stop being black or something.
Trump’s taking the lead again. That’s why you see a doubling down on Democrat attempts to set up the chance to win by fraud and, if they can’t pull that off, declare his reelection victory illegitimate. You can smell their fear even over the musky odor of Biden’s Old Spice.
The win is not a done deal. We need to play out the rest of the election like we’re behind, but just know that we aren’t.
https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2020/08/10/the-tide-turns-toward-trump-n2573952
