Trump, Harris, and the Future of the Nation
The momentum in the 2024 election seems to be shifting in Donald Trump’s favor. Though it’ll likely be a close election (certain indicators suggest it might not be), Trump seems to be in a more comfortable position than he was heading into the 2016 or 2020 elections.
According to the RealClearPolitics polling average, Trump’s currently beating Kamala Harris by half a point. Though that’s still well within the margin of error, it shows considerable weaknesses for Harris compared to where both Hillary Clinton (+4.3) and Joe Biden (+7.9) were at this point in their respective races. Trump also has slim leads in five of the seven battleground states and considerable confidence from the betting markets.
Trump’s working as a fry cook at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s and appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast have paid dividends—consolidating and widening his reach, while leaving his enemies sputtering and angry. Additionally, J.D. Vance’s continued travel on the hostile Sunday political show circuit is sharpening his debating skills, and building confidence for a future presidential run, which is undoubtedly having a positive effect on the ticket as well (as does his own appearance on Rogan’s show).
Meanwhile, Kamala Harris is facing mounting bad news. The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today, among other major papers, have declined to endorse her, which has predictably resulted in newsroom temper tantrums and mass subscription cancellations. And in front of highly sympathetic audiences, she’s giving The Office’s Michael Scott a run for his money with a series of flubbed lines, illogical statements, and cringeworthy attempts at mustering human responses.
Nate Silver, founder of the polling mecca FiveThirtyEight, recently admitted in The New York Times that if he had to pick who will win the 2024 election, he’d go with Trump. The Dockers-clad NBC elections analyst Steve Kornacki said on Meet the Press last Sunday that it’s “hard to ignore” the final results of four major polls (The New York Times/Siena, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and CNBC), which showed Trump either tied or even slightly leading Harris. Kornacki noted that “in the context of this close race,” the “potentially meaningful movement in Trump’s direction” should not be ignored.
Predictably—and a testament to the depths of their moral bankruptcy—the Harris-Walz campaign, Joe Biden, and the Democrats have lowered themselves even further in the campaign’s final days, spouting off yet even more dangerous rhetoric aimed at dehumanizing Trump and Vance, along with tens of millions of Americans.
They’ve launched what’s clearly a coordinated campaign to call Trump—and by extension his voters—fascists and Nazis, people who shouldn’t have a place in polite society. Hillary Clinton and Tim Walz disgustingly described Trump’s Sunday event at Madison Square Garden as a “Nazi rally,” likening it to an infamous 1939 gathering organized by the German American Bund at MSG (read Stiven Peter’s account of the rally if you’re interested in what actually happened). Pirate Wires has reported that over 5,500 articles have been published on the topic of Trump/Hitler, with Trump’s former Chief of Staff John Kelly conveniently saying right as people are casting their votes that he too remembered hearing Trump speak well of the Austrian-born tyrant.
In one of the lowest rhetorical displays by a sitting president of the United States, Joe Biden on Tuesday night called Trump supporters “garbage”—a far worse slur than Hillary’s “basket of deplorables.” The Federalist’s Mark Hemingway pointed out that the same people who have spent years lying about Trump’s “very fine people” comment are now trying to deny what Biden clearly said.
The “when they go low, we go high” line that the Democrats and their allies keep trying to tell themselves has no connection to reality when push comes to shove. And if you need yet another reminder, this is the political party evangelical elites like David French and Ray Ortlund are voting for in 2024.
The Democrats’ recent efforts are less an October surprise and more of an orchestrated international smear campaign—Wikipedia is busy promoting the Democrats’ messaging—intended to help drag Harris and Walz over the finish line by whatever means they can.
Marching orders have clearly been distributed to journalists on email listservs and various group chats. Politico’s White House Bureau Chief Jonathan Lemire had the gall to turn Biden’s slur into a “Republicans pounce” episode—and ran cover for the White House’s misleading transcript that made it appear that Biden was only talking about a comedian who spoke at Trump’s rally in New York City.
As a key faction of the ruling class, the Democrats are clearly rejecting anything resembling political persuasion and are lashing out at anyone who questions its abysmal record. These tactics reek of desperation and serious mental psychosis that the ruling class has normalized, scaring voters into thinking that they are un-American if they want someone else in the catbird seat.
If Trump manages to pull off a win next week (or in the days or weeks ahead, whenever the votes are actually counted), it’s just the beginning of the effort to take back the government from the ruling class. Unlike the misnamed Reagan Revolution, a true political revolution will require multiple administrations to break the petrified grip of our current batch of rulers and fundamentally change the trajectory of the United States. J.D. Vance will need to win in 2028 and then again in 2032—and another president in the same mold will need to be victorious in 2036 and beyond. And that’s just at the presidential level.
Part of this resurgence must include mobilizing evangelicals. Despite what you may have heard, the tired claim that evangelicals are too political—that they regularly put politics above Jesus, supposedly like what the Moral Majority did—obscures the truth: they aren’t. A recent Barna survey showed that 41 million evangelicals are not even planning to vote in the 2024 election.
Evangelicals must reject the spiritualized voter suppression from the likes of David French and Russell Moore and assert themselves politically in every conceivable dimension. Stop thinking that your vote is a Gospel issue—instead, it’s one means to the worthy end of good government. As Samuel G. Parkison has persuasively argued, “Christians in America tend to exaggerate how consequential their voting decisions are on their ‘witness.’ I don’t think voting for Trump is nearly the genuine ‘evangelistic obstacle’ we make it out to be. And I don’t think your vote is a sacrament.”
Additionally, if Christians want to be a sizable influence on the GOP this century, they must put together a substantial coalition that can exert influence on all its pressure points. Moving the GOP in the right direction simply cannot come by moralistically withholding votes.
Also, Christians must run for office on the local, state, and national levels. They must work to take over existing civic institutions or build new ones, filling up the space between the citizen and the state. And pastors must teach their congregations a full-orbed political theology, including all the duties Christians have in the civil realm.
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The Democrats have gone low this cycle, but the Republicans have gone even lower. The only morally righteous position to hold is that of a third party voter.
David French lives rent-free in Sabo’s head…
Your side calls Democrats ‘Demonic’ and tells us ‘EFF Your Feelings” and yet nobody is as thin-skinned about insults as you are. You’re all bullies who can dish out the insults — Trump does nothing else; his whole program is being as brutish as possible to all his opponent. — but you sure can’t take it. Biden’s problem was that he was entirely too nice to you. You all are garbage or worse. You ARE fascists who want to kill your opponents. Why is it wrong to say so openly?