Donald Trump is Democratic Failure

The RNC concludes

Donald Trump’s speech at the 2024 Republican National Convention was a meandering slurry; whatever pathos he found, at the outset, was buried under the typical, tedious fulminations against China, the illegals, and the Biden Democrats. As Trump blew past the hour mark, seemingly forgetting he was, in theory at least, trying to reach voters beyond his frenzied base on the convention floor, I realized he was beside the point. Sure, Trump survived an assassination attempt, and that is remarkable. The convention had built to his triumphant return, to his stampede to yet another Republican nomination. All the chatter was over how united the party was and how, in turn, this guaranteed success. Literally no one inside Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum, I am certain, believes he won’t win in November.

As I made my way off the floor, and returned later on to watch the balloons drop, I knew what was gnawing at me—all of this was made possible by elite Democratic failure. Trump was here because the Democrats cannot engineer effective, ordinary presidential campaigns; he was here, with Hulk Hogan and Kid Rock screeching, because Hillary Clinton ran one of the worst presidential campaigns in modern American history. He was holding a commanding polling lead eight years later because the Democratic Party can only decide between nominating an 81-year-old president who cannot complete full sentences in a televised debate or a vice president who failed so badly in the 2020 primary that she never even competed in the Iowa caucuses. Trump is alive because Democrats throttled not one but two national primaries. Clinton, thanks to Barack Obama’s intervention, was coronated in 2016, even though she had never won a competitive election and most voters were plainly revolted by the concept of a Clinton political dynasty. The only viable alternative was the septuagenarian Bernie Sanders, who took it upon himself, despite the rancor of the Democratic establishment, to campaign. It was then that Joe Biden should have run. Instead, he was forced to wait until 2020, when he won because most Americans were tired of the pandemic and tired of Trump. The implicit promise of that campaign was that he would be the bridge to the next generation of Democrats after slaying Trump.

It turned out Biden very desperately wanted a second term, even as he slid into senility.