Federal Judge Issues Temporary Injunction Keeping Title 42 Immigration Rule in Place

U.S. District Judge Robert Summerhays has agreed to issue a temporary restraining order [pdf ruling link] blocking the administration’s planned May 23 lifting of the CDC immigration rule known as Title 42.

(MSM) – […] The judge said he agreed to issue the restraining order after holding an online status conference on Monday between lawyers for the states and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The details of the order, however, remained unclear — the notice said attorneys for the two sides “will confer regarding the specific terms to be contained” in the order “and attempt to reach agreement.” (more)

NBC is reporting that more than 170,000 illegal aliens, most not from Mexico, are waiting on the other side of the U.S. border for Title 42 to be lifted.

GOP Gains Could Be Twice What the Cook Political Report Predicts

Establishment pundits wildly underestimate the degree to which COVID policies have hurt Democrats.

by Jeffrey H. Anderson for American Greatness

Voters appear poised to clobber the party that brought us COVID lockdowns, mask and vaccine mandates, and inflation. Indeed, rising inflation has largely resulted from COVID-related disincentives to work, disrupted supply chains, and blowout spending, along with federal restrictions on oil and gas production. It’s perhaps surprising, therefore, that the Cook Political Report foresees Republican gains in the House of Representatives as being only “in the 15-25 seat range,” while its projections suggest that Democrats have at least a coin flip’s chance of holding the Senate.

In a widely read piece, Cook’s Amy Walter grants that “both sides see the possibility of a Red Tsunami in 2022” and that “every metric we use . . . point[s] to huge gains for the GOP this fall.” Walter nevertheless remains skeptical that a big Republican wave will materialize, in part because “districts are more polarized than ever,” leaving fewer competitive seats on the board. Her skepticism, however, is also rooted in (and perhaps informs) which numbers she chooses to use in her analysis.

“In every midterm election since 2006,” Walter writes, “the party in the White House has seen its share of the two-party House vote (the popular vote for the House) drop by anywhere from 6.5 to 17 points from the previous presidential election.” She then projects the Democrats could see their share of the House vote drop by 6.6 points—essentially matching the low end of the historical range she cites—which she says could result in a net loss of 15 to 25 Democratic House seats.

Walter calculates this prospective 6.6-point shift from Democrats to Republicans by comparing the RealClearPolitics average for the generic congressional ballot, which favored Republicans by about 3.5 points at the time of her writing, with the national House vote in 2020, which the Democrats won by 3.1 points. Interestingly, she chose to compare the current generic congressional ballot with prior election results, rather than comparing the generic congressional ballot at this point in 2022 with the generic congressional ballot at this point in 2020, which would suggest how much things have changed over the past two years. Comparing the generic congressional ballots across the two years shows a prospective swing of 10.9 points between Democrats’ 7.4-point advantage on April 22, 2020 and Republicans’ 3.5-point advantage on April 22, 2022—rather than the 6.6-point swing of which Walter writes.

“So, what would a 6.6 point shift to the right look like?” Walter asks. “At a very crude level, we could say that it would shift the 2020 vote margin in every CD, about 7 points more Republican.” 

Oddly, however, she then pulls Joe Biden into the picture, writing, “So, for example, a district that Biden carried 52 percent to 45 percent (+7) would become a jump ball (50-50) in 2022.” She adds, “Or, a better way to think about it is that any district Biden carried by less than 7 points would be in danger of flipping to the GOP.” Walter observes, “there are only 21 districts where Biden’s margin was fewer than seven points,” and “eight of those 21” are already held by Republicans. This would suggest that GOP gains might be on the order of 13 seats (21 minus 8), lower even than Walter’s projected range of 15 to 25.

The shift that would really matter, however, is the shift in the House vote, not the shift in the House vote in relation to the presidential vote. 

The Democrats won 31 House races in 2020 by 7 points or less (or by less than 7.5 points, to be more exact). Most of those Democratic-held seats will presumably be quite vulnerable in 2022. If the shift in party support, however, is more like the 10.9-point difference between the current generic congressional ballot and the one from two years ago, that would bring even more Democratic-held seats into play. 

In 2020, the Democrats won 41 House races by 10 points or less (or by less than 10.5 points, to be more exact). Extending that range by another three points encompasses another dozen districts where Democratic incumbents are up for reelection. In addition, in another five districts in which Democrats won by an average of just under 15 points (California’s 9th Congressional District, Florida’s 7th and 22nd Congressional District, New York’s 4th Congressional District, and Rhode Island’s 2nd Congressional District), early retirements have put even more seats into play. 

On the flip side, although the latest census favored Republicans, it appears this advantage has been negated, and then some, by redistricting. While redistricting seems to have had little effect across most of the country, blatant gerrymandering by Democrats in New York and Illinois will likely cost Republicans about a half-dozen seats in relation to how many they likely would have won under the old map. In those two states combined, redistricting cut the number of GOP-leaning districts by more than half, from 15 to seven. No Republican-led states were as ruthless in targeting Democratic districts. (Florida’s new map—proposed by Governor Ron DeSantis and approved by the Florida legislature—which the mainstream media has roundly criticized while remaining mostly silent about Illinois and New York—would cut the number of Democratic-leaning seats by less than a fifth, from 11 to nine.)

Despite these challenges in the Empire and Prairie states, Republicans appear poised to make big gains in the House. Indeed, putting all of this together, GOP gains in the House could be twice as large as the midpoint of Walter’s projection. While things could change over the next six months (although the cake is probably largely baked), a GOP gain of 30 to 40 House seats appears more likely at this stage of the contest than Walter’s projected GOP gain of 15 to 25 seats. 

The Cook Political Report also suggests the Democrats have at least an even-money chance of holding the Senate—a bet that not even most Democratic operatives would take. 

With Republicans needing to pick up just one seat to take control of the Senate, Cook currently has five Senate contests rated as “toss-up” races, with three of these being Democratic-held seats. So, if all other races go as expected, Democrats must win three of these five “toss-up” races to retain control, while Republicans must win three to take control. Neither party would seem to have an identifiable edge, according to Cook—except that Republicans must also defend three additional seats that “lean” their way but are nevertheless “competitive,” while Democrats must defend only one such seat. So, if anything, the Democrats appear to have the advantage—according to Cook.

This seems wildly off, and indeed Cook’s own history suggests that it is. Across the past four federal elections (2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020), Cook designated 32 Senate contests as “toss-up” races (in its final projections before the election). Republican Senate candidates posted a win-loss record of 23-9 in those contests, winning a whopping 72 percent of the time. 

Beyond these so-called toss-ups, Cook claims Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is in more danger of losing his Senate seat in 2022 than Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) is of losing his. Cook designates Bennet’s race as a “likely” Democratic win and says that it is “not considered competitive” by Cook at this time, while Rubio’s race is “competitive” and merely involves a “lean” toward the GOP. Again, this seems wildly off, and—again—Cook’s history suggests that it is. 

Across the past four federal elections, eight Democrats ran in Senate races thatCook (in its final projections before the election) said were “likely” Democratic wins, and those Democrats won by an average of 9.1 points and a minimum of 0.8 points (Virginian Mark Warner’s sliver of an advantage over Ed Gillespie in 2014). Meanwhile, 11 Republicans ran in Senate races that Cook said merely showed a “lean” toward the GOP, and those Republicans have won by an average of 13.7 points and a minimum of 7.3 points. 

In other words, Republicans have been noticeably more dominant in “competitive” races in which they’ve merely enjoyed a “lean”—according to Cook—than Democrats have been in allegedly noncompetitive, “likely”-win races. So, based on Cook’s own history, Rubio is notably safer than Bennet.

Over that same period, seven Republican candidates have run in Senate races that Cook said were “likely” Republican wins. Those Republicans have won by an average of 18.9 points—more than double the Democrats’ 9.1-point margin in such “likely”-win races. Among these seven Republicans, the smallest margin of victory was 10 points.

So, here’s how to decode the Cook Senate projections: If Cook says a race is a toss-up, give the Republican between a two-thirds and three-quarters chance of winning. If Cook says a race is a likely Democratic win or one that leans that party’s way (Democrats’ average margin of victory in races that “lean” Democratic was 8 points over the past four federal elections), expect that the Democrat will probably win pretty easily but recognize that he or she has a dark-horse chance of losing. If Cook says a race leans Republican, consider it pretty much a sure thing for the GOP. And if Cook says a race is a likely Republican win, consider it an outright lock and expect a GOP rout. 

Using this handy decoder, Cook’s current projections suggest that—as most people assume—Republicans will likely take over the Senate. Odds are they will win three or four of the five “toss-up” races—those involving Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), and the open (GOP-held) seat in Pennsylvania—while easily winning the races that “lean” their way (Rubio and the open races in Ohio and North Carolina to fill GOP-held seats). That would be enough to give Republicans a Senate majority. 

The “lean”-Democrat race involving Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) is also very much in play and might eventually find itself in Cook’s “toss-up” column (from which Republicans usually emerge victoriously). In addition, Bennet’s seat is a realistic long-shot possibility for the GOP. In all, the chances of the Democrats holding onto the Senate are lower than the chances of the Republicans ending up with at least 53 seats—and hence a Romney- and Murkowski-proof majority. 

Party allegiance has shifted considerably over the past half-dozen years, and it’s still shifting. Yesterday’s freedom-loving hippie is today’s authoritarian scold (see: Young, Neil), as this political cartoon nicely depicts. The Wall Street Journal published a news story headlined, “School Mess Drives Parents to GOP,” and a subheadline reading, “Some Democratic voters, frustrated with party’s Covid policies, are backing Republicans.” The Democrats will almost surely pay a hefty price for their coercive mandates in November. 

Most establishment pundits, however, still don’t recognize that voters granted Republicans control of the House in 1994 (for the first time in four decades) because they opposed Hillarycare, that voters backed Republicans and gave Democrats a “shellacking” (to use President Obama’s term) in 2010 because of Obamacare, and that voters mutinied against the establishments of both parties in 2016, largely over questions of immigration and trade but also because of general frustration with the disconnected ruling class. Those same establishment pundits aren’t likely to see the next wave coming—or even to recognize it after the fact.

X22, And we Know, and more-April 25

 

Advice: Is it wise to try and get through a finale that I know I'm going to full on hate just to see if I luck out in the last few minutes, even if it looks like now that I'm more then likely not going to luck out? (NCIS LA question).

Here's tonight's news:

Our Spanish Civil War? ~ VDH

Deep and brutal strife in 1930s Spain was a prelude to the barbarity of World War II. Now with the war in Ukraine, we’re reminded that the veneer of civilization is very thin.

by Victor Davis Hanson for American Greatness

From 1936 to 1939, the civil war in Spain became a European laboratory of new tactics, strategies, logistics, wartime morality, and weapons. Right-wing nationalists under General Francisco Franco finally defeated loyal supporters of an evolutionary socialist republic—but only after much of the Western world had variously weighed in.

The cost to the Spanish people of such brutal and vicious strife was horrific. Over 500,000 Spaniards would die in a little over two-and-a-half years. The country was left in shambles. 

Dictatorships in Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and autocratic Portugal poured millions of dollars in military aid and money for Franco’s efforts to seize power. In turn, the Soviet Union often matched that aid with shipments to various communists, socialists, and anarchists of the Popular Front forces. 

Whether by design or by accident, Spain became a proving ground for many of the strategies, weapons, and tactics that would follow later in World War II. And it would be a preview of just how impotent democracies and international bodies were to stop aggressive powers.

The relatively new regime of Nazi Germany sent to Spain hundreds of tanks and “volunteer” troops, pilots, dive bombers, and transport planes of the Condor Legion. 

But Germany’s intervention was not always quite what it seemed. Behind the scenes, Adolf Hitler provided enough aid to ensure Franco’s likely eventual victory. But he did not send quite enough immediate help either to antagonize his European democratic rivals, or to ensure a quick victory for the Nationalists that might have created a powerful and independent Iberian fascist rival bloc to his own. 

The Soviet Union ostensibly countered fascist supply chains. But Joseph Stalin had even more strings attached to his aid. He systematically favored communist recipients and harassed and often eliminated their socialist and anarchist allies in the Popular Front. 

Stranger still, even before the Soviet-Nazi nonaggression pact of 1939, Hitler and Stalin were already secretly aiding each other’s rearmament in their shared hatred of Western European democracies. It would take years of research to fathom all of the subtexts and agendas behind the great powers’ interventions in the Spanish Civil war.

The same labyrinth of plots and twists will likely prove true in the present Ukrainian war. Ostensibly NATO and the EU are staunch Ukrainian allies. But powerful German interests remain worried about their tenuous energy supply lines from Russia and are not so ready to cut off all trade with Putin.  

China seems all in as a Russian benefactor. But it is sending mixed diplomatic signals as it weighs lucrative gas and oil deals with an increasingly isolated Putin against endangering its profitable mercantile trading with the West. Before the war, plenty of Ukrainians from its majority Russian-speaking borderlands were playing both sides during the ongoing turmoil. As with the Spanish Civil War, Ukraine ostensibly is a war between elected governments and autocracies–but with deal-making and intrigue on both sides. 

The relatively young League of Nations never could broker peace in Spain. It had earlier failed in Manchuria to stop Japanese aggression, and it never stopped the brutal Italian occupation of Ethiopia. So by 1936, the league remained mostly a shrill megaphone, without any power to stop either fascist or communist aggression. 

Instead, ad hoc alliances sprung up during the war to enforce nonintervention among individual nations. But their declarations, sanctions, boycotts, and embargoes were likewise mostly soon bypassed by both Germany and the Soviet Union.  

In other words, an anemic League was not all that much different from an impotent United Nations that has been utterly ineffective in offering any solution to Ukraine.  

Similarly, the West may boast of its unprecedented tough sanctions against Russia. But in truth, governments that control the majority of the planet’s population—especially the nearly 3 billion people of China and India—are still trading freely with Russia to guarantee their own oil and gas supplies. In 1936 sanctions did not stop the immediate killing, and they likely will not either in 2022. 

Franco was roundly condemned by the Western democracies and his supporters were sanctioned, but his efforts were not materially altered. That, too, may sound familiar when we compare the idealism of anti-Russian sanctions versus the reality of the considerable wherewithal at Putin’s disposal.

Spain soon became a romantic cause for international brigades. Idealist Westerners flocked to help the Republicans, while the Nationalists were often secretly sent “volunteers” from their fascist supporters. Yet, for all the idealist rhetoric, foreign fighters played a minor role in the war’s outcome. 

Novelists like George Orwell (Homage to Catalina), Ernest Hemingway (For Whom the Bells Toll), and Muriel Spark (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie) portrayed the misplaced idealism of the international brigades, the often-cynical use of them by their hosts and third-party nations, and the chaotic changing alliances within Spain itself. 

In similar fashion, we hear sensationalized reports about Europeans and Americans pouring in to fight for Ukraine. Darker stories abound about Syrians, Chechens, and private mercenary killers that Vladimir Putin has hired or impressed. But more likely, as in the Spanish Civil War, such foreigners will play a relatively insignificant role in the outcome.  

Political ideologies certainly had sparked European wars, from antiquity to the Napoleonic era. More often, however, conflicts were fought over disputed lands, religion, natural resources, race and ethnicity, nationalism, and competition for continental influence. 

Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II was propagandized during World War I as an anti-democratic monster. But the war itself was not so much ideological as it was a great-power European rivalry, particularly over how to handle the rising “German problem.” 

The Spanish Civil War was a different 20th-century ideological struggle for the future of the contours of Europe. Both the Popular and National Fronts symbolized growing extremism that the democracies were ill-equipped to contain. 

Indeed, Western European democracies appeared weak in comparison to the zeal of communists, anarchists, and radical socialists, especially when empowered by the new communist Soviet superpower. Similarly, Franco saw Europe’s future more in line with the increasingly influential and often popular fascism of Hitler and Mussolini, albeit with his own Catholic monarchist twist. By 1936 leftist and rightist ideologues were battling in every Spanish town, as violence broke out even among families and friends. 

Ukraine likewise is not just a Russian power grab as we saw in Ossetia and earlier in Eastern Ukrainian and Crimea. This time around, Russian propaganda has masked its war of aggression under the banner of Western traditionalism—autocracy, orthodox Christianity, conservative social mores, the preservation of traditions, the power of reactionary Mother Russia—versus the supposed “decadent” democracies. 

The democracies see Putin as the new evil incarnation of fascism, whose bleak view of Europe’s future would mark a return to the dark days of the 1930s. Whether true or not, “freedom” and “democracy” versus “tyranny” and “fascism” are now the ostensible fault lines in Ukraine. These ideological catalysts are mostly unlike what drove recent conflicts of tribalism, religion, and ethnicity in the Middle East, the former Yugoslavia, or Rwanda. 

Ukraine is also offering a supposed preview of what the next war will be, in the manner that novel close air support for armor thrusts occasionally characterized the Nazi role in Spain. By September 1939, those tactics were applied to Poland. Monoplanes bombing towns and blasting pathways for tanks replaced the trench warfare of World War I as Germany unleashed its now honed blitzkriegs throughout Europe.

Small, skilled Ukrainian teams with Javelin and Stinger missiles destroyed multimillion-dollar helicopters and armored vehicles. Cheap, armed drones are now ubiquitous on both sides. Do these relatively inexpensive arsenals presage a more decentralized brand of warfare, where handheld weapons take out relatively sophisticated tanks and helicopters? Are we back to the superiority of quantity over quality in weapons of war? 

Perhaps, but whether armor and artillery prove vestigial weapons and tactics remains to be seen as the theater is now shifting to the rolling wide-open plains of Eastern Ukraine. 

Before Ukraine—as before the Spanish Civil War—there were lingering Western pretensions that certain “rules of war” always formally exempted civilians. These assumptions supposedly precluded the deliberate slaughter of civilians or the bombing of residential centers into oblivion.  

Often contemporary Western leaders talked of 19th- or 20th-century wartime values as passé in our more enlightened and evolved 21st century.

In World War I, the filth and disease of the trenches in Western Europe, in peripheral theaters in Italy, Russia, and the Middle East, had cost 20 million lives. But postwar utopians in the 1930s still believed that civilians had not been deliberately targeted in World War I, whose greatest percentage of dead remained largely soldiers. 

Spain shattered such illusions. Both fascists and communists murdered innocents. They executed neutrals on the spot. The fascists bombed cities without strategic rationales. Picasso’s famous oil painting “Guernica” of the German bombing of a Basque town of mostly women and children became instantly emblematic of a novel form of 20th-century war. So the barbarity of the Spanish Civil War offered a glimpse of World War II to come when the vast majority of the 65 million dead would prove to be civilians.  

Before Ukraine, few, if any, recent leaders of a major nuclear nation had ever seriously threatened to use nuclear weapons against either his enemies on the battlefield or those who sent help to them—not in Vietnam, not in Afghanistan, not in the wider Middle East. Now Vladimir Putin not only brags about his nuclear arsenal and tests long-range missiles but boasts about his right to use any weapon he chooses to defeat Ukraine and its suppliers.

Ukraine, like Spain, has awoken us from our false sense of security that has grown since the end of the Cold War. Unfortunately, soldiers in war sometimes do deliberately flatten apartment buildings and shoot civilians en masse—whether in 1936 or 2022. And some leaders apparently now view nuclear bombs as more or less deadlier conventional weapons.

Human nature is constant, despite radical changes in technology, social systems, and physical landscapes. That bleak reality should remind us that the veneer of civilization is always very thin, while the innate barbarity of humankind is forever very deep. We saw that in 1936-1939, and what followed from it in World War II. And now, in 2022, we have awakened again out of our complacency—with a deep foreboding of what will soon follow in war after Ukraine.

Matt Walsh Reminds Us That The Groomers At Disney Have Been Sexualizing Children For Literal Years

 

Posted by Harris Rigby at NotTheBee

On Monday, The Daily Wire's Matt Walsh pulled out this 4-year-old clip that made the rounds in 2018 featuring a "drag kid" doing a dance for Good Morning America's studio audience.

Remember "Desmond Is Amazing"?

Let me remind you that ABC is a Disney-owned company, and yes, they featured a sexualized 11-year-old child on their network 4 years ago.

https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1518569040230457344

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Later in the same segment they bring out there adult drag queens who give the young boy gifts of makeup and free "dance classes." This is a real thing that happened and was aired on ABC. pic.twitter.com/qmUxp877r0

— Dr. Matt Walsh, Women’s Studies Scholar (@MattWalshBlog) April 25, 2022

.

Again, this was in 2018!

https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1518569971898540032

This isn't a Disney cartoon or Disney network show, but this is somehow more disturbing. It's a little boy being sexualized for ADULT audiences.

Please tell me how this is not grooming.

You can watch the full segment here if you have any doubts about the depravity.

https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1518590714422210564

But Disney is so "family-friendly." They just want to make sure that it's okay to say "gay" in schools.

They would never try to sexualize children...

It's right in front of us and it has been for years.

 

Teflon Don: Is a Trump Return to the White House in 2024 Inevitable?

posted by Mike Miller at RedState 

If we were to conduct a snap poll on social media and ask: If Donald Trump runs for president in 2024 (it’s inconceivable at this point that he won’t), will he win back the White House? Responses would range from  “Hell yes” to “Hell no” — with a myriad of other responses and plenty of heated debate in between.

While favorability ratings, head-to-head projections, and various other projection tools are of course based on currently available sentiment and data, and numbers can change in a political heartbeat as situations or future developments warrant, Trump bests Biden in virtually every poll and survey.

It’s hard to see that changing.

RealClearPolitics averages, as I write, show Biden with a -9.1 percent spread, with a favorability rating of 42.6  percent and 51.7 percent unfavorable. Trump clocks in at -3.5, at 45.8 percent favorable, and 49.3 percent unfavorable. And Kamala Harris is a total disaster at -11.8 percent: 39.2 percent favorable, 50.8 percent unfavorable.

Again, poll numbers are subject to change on a regular basis, yet we continue to see a pattern, and the message of that pattern could not be clearer: Joe Biden has been a failed president of disastrous proportions from Day One of his occupation of the Oval Office on issue after issue, virtually on purpose. (See: Biden Border Crisis, Biden Oil Crisis, Biden Afghanistan Debacle, Bidenomics, Bidenflation.)

As my colleague, Nick Arama reported on Tax Day last week (of all days), when even CNN declares it’s “really, really, really, bad” for Biden? Yeah, it’s really, really, really bad for the worst president in modern history — if not of all time. As Nick noted in the article:

Donald Trump had an average job approval rating of 42 percent at this point in his presidency — that’s despite being under constant media attack so that skews the number. But meanwhile, Joe Biden who has had largely positive coverage from the liberal media — and certainly nothing compared to the attacks made against Trump — is still at a lower number — with 41 percent.

As early as late September 2021, just eight months into the Biden presidency, as reported by The Atlantic, nervous top Democrats began to openly discuss his failures and lack of success. Bills began to stall in Congress, rank-and-file Democrats had already begun to deny Biden the same “grace” they showered on Barack Obama, and the ever-confused Mumbles Joe was having trouble staying on track.

These realities have progressively (pun intended) worsened as the months have ticked by — further exacerbated by the 79-year-old president’s continued steady decline in mental acuity.

The bottom line: I have to believe nervous-as-hell Democrat lawmakers would wave a magic wand if they had one, and make Biden and Harris disappear — at least from the 2024 presidential ticket. Moreover, I can’t help but believe there aren’t discussions to that effect in the upper echelons of the Democrat Party. My opinion, of course.

So what of Donald Trump?

As I suggested at the top, even the most casual of political observers would be flabbergasted at this point if Trump pulled up on his reins sometime in the next month or two and said, “Nah, I’m no longer interested; I’m out.” Stranger things have happened, but yeah; talk about a major jolt.

Fifteen months after leaving office, Trump remains the kingmaker of the Republican Party. Pilgrimages are still made to Mar-a-Lago on a regular basis in pursuit of his coveted endorsement. Crowds at his Trumpaloozas seem to be as large and boisterous as ever. And most of all, avid supporters want nothing more than a rematch with Biden — to restore the rightful order of things, as it were.

If Biden does run — a disaster for the Democrat Party of incalculable proportions — I can’t see how Trump loses. 2024, in this case, would be similar to 2016 and 2020. In 2016, millions of votes were “Not Hillary,” while untold numbers of votes in 2020 were “Not Trump.”

While some in the Republican Party tend to go off the rails over the notion, it’s true — particularly among independent voters. That said, I can’t foresee tens of millions of disillusioned and angry independents, along with a  substantial number of like-minded Democrats, voting for Biden again.

So back to Donald.

As noted by Just the News, Trump tends to do better in job approval ratings than in favorability ratings.

While the latter focuses more on personal feelings, the former is more about a subject’s performance in office. Throughout Trump’s time in the White House, consistent polling showed the public approved of his job as president more than they approved of him as a person. Now, toss in Biden’s catastrophic job performance — and Trump looks unstoppable.

But again, what if neither Biden nor Cackles Kamala heads the Democrat ticket in 2024? Would “Teflon Don” still be unstoppable?

In terms of the primaries, if Trump does run, I can’t see Ron DeSantis or any other serious contender entering the race; I believe “they” would sit this one out and wait until 2028 or even 2032 to make a decision to run, so the likelihood of a Trump vs. (fill in the blank) race could very well become a reality.

Who wins? Who can predict a race against a “yet-to-be-announced Democrat nominee not named Joe Biden or Kamala Harris”? I cannot; neither can anyone else. Objectively, that is.