Yesterday Donald Trump announced his entry into the 2024 presidential race. I guess not too many people were surprised or hopefully not too surprised. So, all the usual suspects are encouraging a war between Trump and DeSantis and all the usual NeverTrumpers are reiterating the list of Trump’s many “crimes.” Blah, blah, blah.
Really, my only question is this. Does Donald Trump have a plan to stop or at least match the ballot harvesting operations by the Democrats? Because if not I can predict the outcome in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia and Nevada. His opponent will win in those states. And based on that his opponent will win the electoral college count. It’s as simple as that.
Now he has two years. But has he begun the process of rounding up the bodies on the ground and the infrastructure to call and visit that many people who don’t usually vote but can be persuaded to. Has he studied the way the Democrats are currently doing it. Does he know where he’ll run into trouble? Does he have the lawyers on the ground to handle the challenges? And does he just plain have the money to make something like this happen?
I won’t assume that just because the Republicans did nothing in 2022 about what happened in 2020 that Donald Trump will be equally helpless. You would think that in places like Arizona where they had just seen the 2020 catastrophe that they would have been working behind the scenes to fix things or at least put together their own ballot harvesting initiative. Instead, they did nothing. I’d like to believe that Trump is a smart operator and he’ll contact the Republican organizations in each of these states and work with them to build a machine to get this done. But no one is talking about it.
Look, no one wishes more than I do for a Republican party that is functional and agile. Politicians are supposed to be the ultimate pragmatists. They are supposed to be the masters of the backroom deal where coalitions are built by greasing the palms of the power brokers. But long painful experience has taught me that the Stupid Party is a strange combination of corrupt and inept. They combine the worst features of self-serving satraps and clueless rubes. They feather their own nests but forget that they’re supposed to also advance their constituency’s agenda. Stupid Party just doesn’t capture all of the Republicans’ qualities. I think Useless Party is closer to the mark.
And unless Trump is going to build an organization from the ground up, he will have to use the existing Republican apparatus. This is what makes me think that preparing to win 2024 by fighting ballot harvesting with ballot harvesting will not work. It’s like pitting the Keystone Cops against the Three Stooges. Sure, the Keystone Cops are pathetic and stupid but compared to the Stooges they’re like Navy Seals.
So that’s my thoughts. If Donald Trump is already working to put together a ballot harvesting plan to beat the Democrats, then fine. Or if he has some kind of challenge in the courts to eliminate harvesting that he is pretty confident will succeed then, also fine. But if all he is going to do is run against Biden’s admittedly horrible record then he will lose exactly as the Republicans lost in 2020 and 2022.
So that’s my take on Trump’s run. He’ll get the nomination. But unless he changes his tactics he’ll end up with the same result as 2020.
What do you think? Agree or disagree? Some other point to make?