Why Trump Is No Longer the Clear Favorite

Credit Image: © Imago via ZUMA Press

In 2020, Donald Trump supporters were confident he would win. In 2022, Republicans predicted a “red wave.” Incredibly, in 2024, Republicans and Donald Trump supporters are not just confident but complacent, even with the former president now taking on Kamala Harris.

They are not totally irrational. On the surface, Kamala Harris is not a formidable candidate. The Biden Administration seemed almost embarrassed by her, giving her unwelcome and unpopular jobs rather than putting her in charge of prestige assignments. It was her job to manage border security, one of the Administration’s most blatant failures. She went to Europe just before Russia invaded Ukraine; deterrence failed. Joe Biden won in 2020 because he undermined President Trump’s hold on working class white voters in the Rust Belt; Kamala Harris is unlikely to have the same appeal. She is a liberal senator from California with a voting record that political consultants feast on. Fewer than 38 percent of voters have a favorable opinion of her.

However, that image could change quickly. Kamala Harris was essentially hidden away during most of the administration, so the media can redefine her. The press that savaged President Joe Biden has now lined up behind her, raving over the beginning of her campaign. Her tendency to dance and cackle is now making her a TikTok star and winning over influencers and celebrities. Axios published an article denying she was ever “border czar,” even though this is contradicted by Axios’s own reporting. GovTrack also changed its ratings to make her seem less extreme.

This you, Ron? https://t.co/jEKNKG1jF1 pic.twitter.com/wM4mgRgVyX

— Bill D’Agostino (@Banned_Bill) July 24, 2024

It’s not just Axios. Now GovTrack went back and erased Kamala’s ranking as the most liberal United States Senator.

The cover up is on! https://t.co/fV5scYUrVm pic.twitter.com/T9f0DUdB7K

— Mike Berg (@MikeKBerg) July 24, 2024

Some say Kamala Harris is not authentically black. She is a first-generation daughter of immigrants, both professors, and in 2004, the Los Angeles Times called her a “privileged child.” When she tried to get street cred by bragging about smoking marijuana, her father (from whom she gets her “blackness”) blasted her in the Jamaican press. She is probably descended from a slaveowner. She refers fondly to Kwanzaa celebrations that probably never happened, and appears to have plagiarized an all-too-pat story about saying she wanted “fweedom” as a little girl. As a district attorney, she put many blacks in jail on drug offenses, but, of course, supported Black Lives Matter.

None of this matters. A woman of color who uses power, even arrogantly or recklessly, is somehow always fighting privilege. It does not matter that blacks are recipients of government largesse. Kamala Harris fits seamlessly into the liberal mythology of people of color overcoming white racism. Her view that America is the “scene of a crime” against non-whites is widely shared. Americans are so conditioned they can’t conceive of a black woman holding power and therefore potentially abusing it.

Think of how it would be reported if a white attorney general in a Southern state snuffed out a liberal non-profit as black New York Attorney General Letitia James ended VDARE.com. For Letitia James, it is probably a quick ticket to becoming attorney general in a Harris Administration. If she manages to confiscate Trump Tower in New York and turn it into a homeless shelter, it would be an even greater coup. Similarly, Kamala Harris saying she will hold President Trump accountable as if he were a sex abuser could prove compelling to some voters.

Democrats can take advantage of the basic illusion whites have that non-white “integration” into government, police, education, or culture makes non-whites feel American. Many whites really seem to think non-whites are just like us, but with a different skin tone. It is not true.

Instead, non-white participation becomes a victory over whites in a racial struggle whites don’t even realize is going on. That’s why there is story after story about BIPOCs “breaking barriers” that don’t even exist. Even with set-asides and quotas, non-whites celebrate their “success,” like a child who gloats over his father who just threw a game of checkers. Instead of integrating into institutions, non-whites change institutions. While whites brag about “not seeing color,” non-whites brag, first and always, about supporting their own race. White conservatives fondly believe institutions have power. Race realists and non-whites understand that people run institutions, and if you change the people, you change what institutions do. At the same time, there is leftover prestige attached to an old institution.

This is ideally suited to Kamala Harris. She has accomplished nothing substantial as vice president, but this does not matter. She is a black woman with power, and this is her most valuable accomplishment. Joy Reid encourages non-whites to vote for her for no other reason than she is non-white, and social media are filled with pleasure at the thought that a non-white could humiliate Donald Trump. This is incomprehensible to white conservatives trying to “get past race” but it’s obvious to anyone else.

DEI works for Kamala Harris. She was a terrible candidate in the 2020 Democratic primaries. She won no states and Tulsi Gabbard ended her candidacy by attacking her record during debates. However, when black representative Jim Clyburn (D-SC) saved Joe Biden’s candidacy by endorsing him, he demanded blacks in positions of power. This was widely reported. President Biden himself said the White House’s efforts at diversity began with Vice President Harris. She would not be vice president if she did not tick the right boxes.

https://t.co/TlhFsMjvtG pic.twitter.com/bd6WIaIHMO

— Coddled affluent professional (@feelsdesperate) July 24, 2024

However, one must never say that Vice President Harris was a DEI hire. Or that she is incompetent. She is running for president, but to criticize her is an attack on an entire race.

NEW: CNN’s black panelists have a MELTDOWN and play the RACE card after a Republican strategist calls Kamala Harris ‘incompetent’

Van Jones: “There’s a smart way and a dumb way to do anything. It’s a very dumb way to, after 400 years of this mistreatment of Black people and… pic.twitter.com/GekoCzXJIc

— Unlimited L’s (@unlimited_ls) July 24, 2024

Whites are entirely fair game. The Trump/Vance ticket must be criticized because they are both white men. Despite his non-white wife, Senator Vance is especially scary because he has a family graveyard that goes back six generations, and he hopes to be buried in it.

On the one hand, DEI and race preferences are necessary because otherwise non-whites wouldn’t get jobs. On the other, you can never call them DEI hires. It was enough to get Nathan Cofnas fired at Cambridge.

Whites who are elbowed out because of DEI must never complain. All whites have “privilege,” by definition. Even to suggest whites can be victims of power is to be a racist — or a whiner. “White privilege” is hidden in institutions and in “invisible knapsacks,” while explicit laws, statements, and programs of blatant race preference don’t matter. It is revealed truth — an obligatory profession of faith — that whites are the unique bearers of the sin of privilege.

The Republicans will therefore find it hard to criticize a black opponent. Also, Kamala Harris is a woman and can work the abortion issue. A national abortion ban is deeply unpopular with voters. Even in deep-red states, pro-life activists suffer crushing defeats. Abortion will be at the center of the Democratic campaign, and Mr. Trump is defensive about it. Despite delivering the repeal over Roe v. Wade and thus making this problem for himself, some pro-lifers seem to have misgivings about supporting him again.

The second problem is that Mr. Trump is now facing a candidate who is younger and appeals to multi-culti America. Kamala Harris looks like the future while Mr. Trump looks like the past. Then-senator Barack Obama became a national star after he gave a speech and said there was no red or blue America; just one America. Of course, Barack Obama’s presidency gave us the current era of racial politics, with the Department of Justice inserting itself into local police disputes and the president preaching about racial controversies. Thanks to changing demographics, Kamala Harris can skip the pleas for unity and campaign the way President Obama governed. She can win by turning out younger and non-white voters.

The presidential debates will not go well for Mr. Trump. His age is showing, and he was never a good debater. However, Joe Biden was so utterly lost that President Trump looked energetic by comparison. Kamala Harris will look smug and say, “Mr. Trump, I am still speaking,” when he interrupts her. Journalists will trumpet this as a devastating display of speaking truth to power. Also, Mr. Trump should prepare. Against Mr. Biden, the fact that he couldn’t tell the difference between a campaign rally and a debate didn’t matter. This time, it will.

Shed no tears for Joe Biden. He was a kind of American F.W. de Klerk. He was necessary in 2020 to convince some white voters to stay home or switch their vote to restore “normality.” Yet everyone in the Democratic coalition (except him) understood that he was only a one-term place-holder to the next generation. Now, party elites have dumped him, reportedly to his confusion and anger. Having served his purpose, he is now an irrelevant punchline. It is a welcome reminder to white liberals that they will be tossed out when they are no longer needed, with nary a look back.

Yet his departure clarifies things. The Atlantic recently blasted J.D. Vance for suggesting that America is a nation, rather than an idea, calling this an “exclusivist” vision for the “far-right.” However, the entire Democratic coalition is less a progressive movement than a confederacy of contending tribes. It would be better to define most progressives as far-right nationalists for their own side, rather than people committed to a universalist version. Whites, and whites alone, are frozen out of this system.

White identity remains forbidden, even to the Trump campaign, which is eagerly (and fruitlessly) chasing minority votes. There is no real message to the Trump campaign other than the man’s personality. That dated personality cult pales compared to the Left’s vigorous assertion of collective interests for protected classes.

Still, Donald Trump is a politician like none other in American history. Only a fool would count him out. The assassination attempt adds to his mystique. Yet Kamala Harris has an entire system at her back. It is not just the Democratic turnout machine, the press, the NGOs, and the open conspiracy of political manipulation that proved effective in 2020. Mr. Trump must fight the larger mythology of racial oppression and redemption. Hillary Clinton never had that; Kamala Harris would be nothing without it. The Trump campaign underestimates her at its peril, because the election is not about her. It is about the system that produced her.

Original Article