It’s a bit early to call the 2024 presidential election, but I did publish a July 2014 column explaining why Hillary Clinton would never be president.
My liberal then-editor laughed at my two-plus years’ early prediction. He — and probably everyone else he knew — considered Hillary “inevitable.”
But, who’s laughing now?
I wrote: “Hillary becomes less likable when she speaks. She’s a lousy campaigner with terrible political instincts, an overbearing sense of entitlement and a gratuitously combative demeanor. Hillary is vain, thin-skinned, vindictive, and, in stump speeches, her voice can cut glass.”
President(ish) Joe Biden also has difficulty speaking, and he barely campaigns at all. In fact, Biden shares most of Hillary’s vulnerabilities, including compelling evidence of personal corruption.
Hillary had virtually no Senate record, andforeign policy was a disaster during her State Department tenure.
As a senator, Biden was closely aligned with the Senate’s segregationist, anti-busing faction, and he sponsored an infamous 1994 crime bill that led to mass incarcerations disproportionately affecting black men. There is no rational way to defend Biden’s current foreign policy.
Biden’s lone advantage this year may be the good fortune to be running against a man the left thoroughly reviles.
Former President Donald Trump, though, is also advantaged. He’s running against a failed, incompetent, mentally/physically diminished geriatric with dismal public approval ratings.
The primary issues driving Biden’s low approvals are interrelated — inflation, illegal immigration and crime — things Biden cannot correct before November.
Food, housing, and energy costs are straining household budgets. Interest rates raised to curb inflation have put homeownership out of reach for many Americans.
Jared Bernstein, chairman of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers, once wrote: “… [W]e learned in the 1990s…that a surefire way to reconnect the fortunes of working people at all skill levels, immigrant and native-born alike, to the growing economy, is to let the job market tighten… A tight job market pressures employers to boost wage offers to get and keep the workers they need. One equally surefire way to short-circuit this useful dynamic is to turn on the immigrant spigot every time some group’s wages go up.”
“Spigot?” In 2021, Joe Biden opened a fire hose to ten million — so far — illegal aliens, including criminals, traffickers and drug cartels. Accordingly, public health and safety have suffered, as have opportunities for jobseekers forced to compete with illegals, while the additional demand for products and services millions of aliens generate helps to drive inflation.
The costs of feeding, housing, educating, and providing healthcare for illegals are bankrupting American cities, towns, schools and hospitals.
Ironically, while Biden tries to buy votes by illegally redistributing student loan debts, recent polling data by Harvard’s Kennedy School reveals that, like their elders, 18- to 29-year-olds are most worried about cost-of-living issues. Their top five are inflation (64 percent), healthcare (59 percent), housing (56 percent), gun violence (54 percent), and jobs (53 percent). “Student loan debt” (26 percent) ranked last.
There’s a widely-held perception that, because Democrats know they can’t beat Trump fairly, they’re engaging in election interference by tying him up in serial Soviet-style court proceedings, a form of cheating that’s backfiring spectacularly, especially in minority communities where Trump is gaining ground.
Plus, the immigration-related crime and drugs creeping nearer and into their communities, as well as the anarchists who are disrupting, occupying and vandalizing campuses in support of Hamas murderers, rapists and kidnappers are alarming the college-educated suburban females Biden won in 2020.
Furthermore, Monmouth polling shows that Republicans enjoy a 27-point edge in voter enthusiasm. Biden excites … exactly … nobody — and Rasmussen reports that voters, especially those under 40, overwhelmingly consider Biden too old.
Indeed, Jurassic Joe could face-plant before his party’s convention or election day, but, if he remains semi-animate, desperate convention super-delegates could still negotiate a backroom deal to replace Biden with someone younger. But they would first have to buy off his even less popular, unelectable vice president.
Nostalgia for Trump-era peace and prosperity is growing, and administration/media-fueled “MAGA” fears are losing traction, so, if the election were held today, Donald Trump would win. And Trump can win a fair November election — emphasis on “fair.”
If Joe Biden is nominated and lasts until November, only censorship, propaganda from the compliant media to whom Slow Joe outsourced his last campaign, and lots of cheating have a chance to save him — maybe …
Contact columnist Jerry Shenk atjshenk2010@gmail.com
