Fight
“Now on the street tonight, the lights go dim.
The walls of my room are closing in.
There’s a war outside still raging.
You say it ain’t ours anymore to win.
I want to sleep beneath peaceful skies in my lover’s bed.
With a wide open country in my eyes,
And romantic dreams in my head.
Well we made a promise, we swore we’d always remember.
No retreat, baby, no surrender.
Like soldier’s in the winter’s night with a vow to defend.
No retreat, baby, no surrender.”
The debate between Trump and Biden was less than three weeks ago as I write this missive. In that short time, everything in politics has changed. Since that debate, Biden’s cognitive deficiencies have gone from being “deep fakes” according to the regime media, to being undeniable. What was a unified Democratic Party has splintered over whether Biden should run again or even resign as president and, if he did one or the other, over who would replace him. On the other hand, a deeply divided Republican Party has totally unified behind the Trump/Vance ticket. Speaker Mike Johnson no longer faces any credible threats to throw him out, and he is able to pass almost any legislation he wants with only a two seat majority.
That said, if Trump wins (increasingly a likely probability), the Republican Party will cement its transformation from the NeoCon, business conservative party of Goldwater, Nixon and Reagan into a new America First Populist party. On the other side, the Democrats will do some soul searching to see if they need reinvention as well.
Let’s look a bit deeper into all of this.
Unsuccessful assassination attempts historically tend to improve ratings for the intended target, in part out of sympathy. Reagan’s approval rating went up 22 points after he was shot. This time however, I think it was Trump’s reaction after the shooting that has led to the enormous outpouring of support. His spontaneous fist pump while bleeding and shouting “fight, fight, fight” showed a man who was unbowed by any form of attack and who was strong, relentless and a fighter. America longs for strength in leadership and that showed it.
Furthermore, we seem to witnessing a somewhat different Donald Trump. As Biden was self-immolating after the debate, Trump resisted his instincts to pile on and say too much instead opting to be quiet. Smart. He has done the same after the assassination attempt displaying a steely determination to simply move forward, win and restore America.
Candidates always get a “bump” in polling after their convention in both parties. Trump had his first “bump” after the debate and then he will have two more from his survival as well as the convention. Polls after the debate showed reliably blue states like Minnesota, Virginia and New Hampshire in play. Now, some show New Jersey and New Mexico as very close as well as Biden’s lead in deep blue New York down to single digits. In the US Senate races, 52 Republican seats is looking very likely with chances for more. And retaining the House majority is also looking good for Speaker Johnson as more money is rolling in and some districts that Biden won with double digits in 2020 seem to be winnable.
The choice of JD Vance as the Vice Presidential candidate is a sign of Trump’s confidence that he will win. I don’t see that Senator Vance adds any constituencies to the ticket. His youth helps with an electorate tired of octogenarian leaders. He is the same age and basically at a similar point in his political career as was Richard Nixon when Eisenhower chose him in 1952. He is a 40 year younger ideological clone of Mr. Trump who is very, very smart and extremely articulate. I believe Trump chose him not because of how he could help him win but more out of how he could help him govern. Watching a debate between Vance and Kamala Harris will be like watching the Harlem Globetrotters play the Washington Generals. Harris is many things. Smart is not one of them.
On the Democratic side, things are obviously not so rosy. I hate it when the regime media says that people are concerned with Biden’s “age.” Yes, 81 is old. But have you seen videos of Mick Jagger singing and running around the stage during the current Rolling Stones US tour? Jagger is the same age as Biden. Warren Buffet is well into his 90s and his comments are cogent and thoughtful and I still pay attention to everything he says. It isn’t that Biden is old. It’s that he is infirm. He has either Parkinson’s or Dementia or something that has damaged him cognitively.
Yet, the Biden crime family does not want to let go. Biden is making daily appearances to try and show how vibrant he is. They are not working. As I write this, his NBC interview and speech before the NAACP show continued weakness. He is continually losing his train of thought in the middle of a sentence (even when reading a teleprompter) and then says “anyway,” and moves on to something else. He does this a lot. I think Biden is by far the worst president in my lifetime and maybe the worst in American history. But this is sad. Sad and dangerous as our enemies can see how incapable he is. If I were running his campaign, I would put him back in his basement in Delaware, from which he ran a better campaign than he is right now.
I don’t know if the Democrats will replace Biden in the less than 4 weeks before their convention starts in Chicago. There are no indications now that Biden will go willingly, so they would have to forcibly remove him. I don’t think they can do that without the black caucus and Jim Clyburn specifically going along. To do so would be “racist” by their own terms. Furthermore, if the Dems believe they are going to lose in November, they may want to let Joe take the fall rather than sacrifice a younger, fresher candidate who might lose their viability for 2028 by so doing. Some of Kamala’s supporters have been vocal that hey don’t want her to be top of the ticket in 2024 for exactly this reason. If Biden/Harris loses, they see her returning to California to run and be elected governor in 2026 and then run for president in 2028. No, I am not making this up.
What does all this mean longer term? If Trump/Vance wins and Biden/Harris loses, there will be a reset in both parties, as I alluded to in the opening paragraph of this missive. The Republican reset will be complete. The party of McConnell, Romney, GW Bush etc will be gone. The new party of Trump, Vance, Hawley, DeSantis will be the order of the day. The culture wars will be waded into, not avoided. Regulation will not always be seen as bad, particularly to enforce conservative societal goals. America’s involvement in foreign wars will be contained. Tariffs will replace unrestricted free trade. Business interests will not be able to reflexively count on Rs for support on all they want. And fiscal hawks (like me) will likely be in the back of the room. I am not saying this is all good or all bad. It is what it is.
On the Democratic side, it will be an opportunity for rebirth. With Biden gone, Pelosi weakened and Schumer in the minority, they will search for new leadership. I know many of you think that Obama is orchestrating everything like the Wizard of Oz. Perhaps. But he, Bernie and Hillary are also aging out. That said, it is unclear to me where that new leadership is.
The hate and vitriol being spewed by so many Democrats before, during and after the assassination attempt is stunning in its breadth. The Democrats have had a hegemony in media, education, entertainment and government for so long that simply parroted their positions into the American psyche for decades. That is starting to turn. It is a long way from being balanced but the left sees what is happening and they will do almost anything to stop it. The Neo-Marxists are desperate that media and culture may lose its effectiveness in indoctrinating the populace to their lies in the future.
One of the main issues for the Dems will be whether they want to change what their party stands for. Today, they are the party of abortion, transgender preference, anti-semitism, deficits, inflation, racism, climate change religion, democracy (as defined) and foreign wars. If they stay with these positions, I suppose Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Whitmer could lead the charge. But I suspect some smarter, fresher Democrats will realize that this is not going to work in a changing environment. The new Republican Party will have abandoned some ground that the Democrats could seize if they want to. Maybe they will. Maybe not.
Additionally, I personally believe that economic conditions and international instability are going to increase and could be very bad by early 2025, just when Republicans take control. My confidence that anyone can fix all this without substantial pain is low. Could a Republican victory in 2024 be pyrrhic?
The one thing that is certain is that nothing is certain. Right now, Republicans are energized and Democrats are despondent. The political landscape today is dramatically different than that which existed only six months ago. It could change again. The assassination attempt was a “black swan” as arguably the debate was as well. There could be more “black swans” between now and election day, in which case a new analysis will be necessary. But, this is how I see it today.
I want to mention three other quick things before I sign off for this week.
A 20-year-old nobody nutcase was within a few millimeters of successful assassination of an American president. What if the assassins had been well organized and trained state actors from Iran or China or whoever you think really killed JFK? The screw-up here on that part of the Secret Service is epic. The agency head would resign if she had a lick of integrity but she does not. This is what happens when merit is no longer the main criteria for hiring. I wish I trusted the FBI to find out exactly what happened, but I don’t. That’s a story for another day. Books may be written about what ‘really” happened decades from now as is still being done with JFK.
The NY Times was all in for Biden and now wants him out. They obviously believe they run the Democratic Party and maybe they do. But, if I were a Democrat, I wouldn’t want them to. As a Republican, I would be uncomfortable if Fox had that much power. It is interesting to watch so many elected Dems turn on the NYT and on CNN and the media turn on them. Be careful what you wish for.
Gavin Newsom just signed a bill in California which makes it illegal for a teacher to tell a parent if their child changes pronouns or otherwise “transitions” his or her gender. Democrats supporting this basically agree that the state needs to take over these kids from the parents. They may finally have gone too far even for California. Elon Musk will leave the state entirely because of this. Other CEOs are voicing the same things. Newsom cannot be a national candidate with views like this.
Fight, fight, fight.
Until next week, I remain respectfully,
Congressman John Campbell
Drive Fast & Live Free