With former President Trump blowing away the opposition in the Iowa caucuses, we should step back to think: is all the lawfare and demonization of Trump a brilliant strategy that will bury him in the November election? Or is it a Baldrick’s Cunning Plan — as in the servant of Blackadder in the long-running historical comedy TV series starring Rowan Atkinson — that always goes wrong.
The simple answer is: We Don’t Know.
Is there coordination at the highest level? Well, yes. We know that Fani Willis’s special prosecutor boyfriend attended high level meetings at the White House.
But we also know that the people prosecuting Trump are low-lifes from blue cities: Fani Willis, Alvin Bragg, Letitia James. And Jack Smith, the guy prosecuting the documents case seems a rather unappetizing character. But who cares, as long as they get Trump.
Then there are the executive orders: on student college debt forgiveness, and now one banning gig workers working as independent contractors rather than employees covered by labor laws. Are these brilliant ideas that will bring in the Democratic vote in November, or are they the equivalent of dropping money out of helicopters?
And then there is the open border. Is this a brilliant plan to import more Democratic voters? Or is it just a fantasy of the various activist groups?
You could ask the same question of the two headline programs of the Biden administration, fighting climate change and systemic racism. Is this a brilliant plan to save the planet and bring non-whites home to the Democrats, or is it just the Democrats responding to their endless activist groups?
Again: We don’t know.
But I suspect that success in politics is very much a question of luck rather than brilliance. And I like to reduce it to the friend / enemy distinction.
Your job, as a politician, is to go out there to beat up your enemy. And promise gifts to your friends.
Will it work? You never know unless you try.
Looking back over the presidents of the last century, Biden, Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, Eisenhower, Truman, Roosevelt, Hoover, Coolidge, Harding, Wilson: were any of them remarkable? Did any of them change history? Or did they all slot into their time at the helm, going with the Zeitgeist, and maybe moving the needle just a bit? (Hey, why not mix metaphors!)
You tell me.
I don't know ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OACcc5R_9K8