You can tell why President Donald Trump secured the Republican nomination through a simple glance at the RealClearPolitics 2024 Republican presidential nomination poll average chart. It shows Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) steadily gaining support right up until the end of March. At that point, DeSantis was in striking distance of Trump, 30% to 45%.
But then something happened in April that sent Trump up 10 percentage points and DeSantis down 8. It wasn’t DeSantis’s disastrous Twitter/X rollout with Elon Musk. That wouldn’t come for another month.
No, the event that secured the nomination for Trump was Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s unprecedented and flimsy indictment of Trump for “falsifying business records.” This was followed by more legal attacks by Democrats against Trump from Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and special counsel Jack Smith.
All these blatantly political attacks using far-fetched legal theories come as Biden’s Department of Justice feverishly covered up the corrupt Biden family business.
Watching this all play out, even the most Trump-skeptical Republicans felt the need to defend the former president. Maybe it was time for the Republican Party to move on from Trump and embrace a new generation of leadership. Maybe it wasn’t. But Republicans sure weren’t going to let Democrats make the decision for them, especially when they turned such an obvious blind eye to Biden’s malfeasance.
As Biden’s former communications director admitted on CNN last night, the Biden White House wants Trump to be the nominee.
Running against Trump worked for Biden in 2020, but it failed Hillary Clinton in 2016. The question is if Biden has become as hated a figure now as Clinton was then.
Signs point to yes.
In 2020, Biden could run as President Barack Obama’s competent adult successor. That is not the case anymore. Biden has since presided over a disastrous bout of inflation that has most workers worse off now than when he was sworn into office, and the world is now in chaos from wars in Ukraine and Israel to shipping lanes being terrorized by pirates to a southern border that has been completely overrun.
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Biden is now seen as old and incompetent in an increasingly dangerous world. He is not the same brand that beat Trump four years ago.
It is a terrible situation for voters. The vast majority of people do not want to see a Trump vs. Biden rematch. But here we are. The only silver lining is that, in four years, we are guaranteed to get at least one new candidate.