The Problem In A Nutshell: 2020 Didn't Work

Based on a Harvard-Harris poll taken last week, Donald Trump remains the most popular political figure in the US. What does this explain? Well, I would say just about everything, starting with the January 6 committee, which has occasionally been called Impeachment 3.0.

Although its stated purpose, insofar as it has one, has been to demonstrate that the January 6 demonstrations at the US Capitol were actually a planned, armed insurrection, it seems to me that its existence at all reveals a deep insecurity among the rulers that the 2020 presidential election was in fact not legitimate. We can certainly argue that any post-election audits of the votes have so far indicated there wasn't fraud widespread enough to have affected the outcome.

On the other hand, the subsequent unpopularity of the winner and the continuing general sense that something's wrong has made the certified outcomes irrelevant. Thus the continued attempts to prove that 2020 skeptics are crazies in buffalo hats or something. Let's recall that while Republicans were unsatisfied with Obama, there was never an equivalent sense throughout his eight years in office that the election had somehow been stolen, or that either John McCain or Mitt Romney retained the popularity Trump still has among the electorate.

For instance, in a July 2014 CNN poll conducted two years into Obama's second term, if the choice were between Obama and Romney, Romney would win, but if it were Hillary Clinton versus Romney, Romney would lose. For now, there's no equivalent threat to Trump from any potential third party, and that seems to have some people upset.

And speaking of Romney, we have remarks from him about Trump from just yesterday:

Sen. Mitt Romney says the nation suffers a "malady of denial, deceit, and distrust," and former President Donald Trump would make things much worse.

"A return of Donald Trump would feed the sickness, probably rendering it incurable," Romney, a senator from Utah and former GOP presidential nominee, wrote in a July 4 essay in The Atlantic.

There are several points worth noting here. His repeated metaphors of malady and incurable sickness harken back to the 2020 COVID panic and suggest it was somehow Trump's doing -- Trump is out of office, yet he's clearly still the problem. He's the problem because, as Romney also implies, nobody's taking 2020 seriously, that's part of the whole denial, deceit, and distrust business.

Late last week we had Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony before the Jaunary 6 committee, which seems to have been about as effective as porn star Stormy Daniels's allegation that she had sex with Trump because she "felt trapped"; the allegation that Trump gets two scoops of ice cream with his chocolate cream pie, while everyone else around the table gets just one; or indeed the allegation that he pressured Ukraine President Zelensky to investigate Biden. The public so far has tuned these out as they've come up. Indeed, maybe there should have been such an investigation, huh?

But let's look at another puzzling development: what on earth is Gavin Newsom doing running an attack ad against Ron DeSantis in Florida? It's anybody's guess; it looks like Newsom, having handily defeated a recall attempt last year, has frightened away any serious Republican contenders in this year's regular election for California governor and is off doing whatever, since he isn't running in Florida. Here's one take:

It is indeed a case of Newsom waging culture war on DeSantis’s home turf, the “free state of Florida,” by claiming the mantle of freedom for the progressive policy agenda. And its intended audience is very much not DeSantis or Republicans or even Floridians. Its intended audience is Democratic voters nationwide who feel demoralized by a leadership vacuum that’s metastasized into a crisis.

Newsom is making his pitch to those voters in [the Florida TV] spot. “I’m a proud, unapologetic liberal. Not only will I not back down, I’ll take the fight to the right’s new culture-war golden boy in his own state.”

The problem is that whatever the DeSantis spin, Trump still leads him in 2024 polling despite the January 6 committee hearings. So as of now, Newsom is campaigning against a runner-up, and if he were to try to take on Trump himself, it would be risible. Why is he doing this? The opinion piece continues,

I don’t think he can win a national election. But a Democratic presidential primary? I wouldn’t count him out.

Whatever else one might say about Newsom, he’s a polished messenger. His prime competition for the 2024 nomination if Biden doesn’t run is [not Kamala Harris}.

“She seems completely useless. No one involved in this administration should be in the running,” said one Democratic donor to the New York Post about the prospect of Harris 2024. A Dem staffer on the Hill told the paper that she’s a bad administrator too, which explains the heavy turnover among her staff. Quote: “I just don’t think people are seeing her as a serous contender. If she weren’t the vice president she wouldn’t even [be] ON the list.”

The writer, Allahpundit, a confirmed never Trumper, concludes,

DeSantis versus Newsom is the only plausible option America has for a 2024 election that’s energetic and entertaining rather than dispiriting and frightening. Here’s hoping!

But wait a moment. The whole 2020 campaign was rigged: it was basically set up as Biden versus a bunch of losers preprogrammed to award him the Democrat nomination. Then Biden was spun as some sort of moderate, sane, adult not-Trump who'd "bring America back" and "build back better", which turned out to be a complete fabrication enabled by the media and the commentariat, and the country has been going through a morning after ever since.

I think that in effect, Newsom is aiming at a 2020 replay, in which he convinces the lizard people early on that he's the logical choice, he wins the Democrat primaries in a rigged charade a la Biden 2020, and then he goes on to win the general in a "steal" also a la 2020, which may not be actual in terms of vote count, but in terms of manipulated opinion and general mendacity achieves the same result.

Newsom has been closely associated with the Pelosi family and other Democrat power players like the Pritzgers, and it seems possible that, with Biden faltering badly, he could present himself as an equivalent "sane", "adult", or "moderate" alternative to either Trump or DeSantis in 2024. But as of now, Newsom is nowhere on CNN's Top 20 list above, while DeSantis is just behind Hillary Clinton. And it's worth recognizing that Newsom versus anyone else would be a campaign that would effectively be a rerun of 2020 and an attempt to repair its current perceived illegitimacy, even though it was a theoretical success.

The problem, in other words, is that Trump won't go away, and even if he doesn't run, 2024 right now looks like it will be waged on the issues he raised in 2016 and 2020. And people right now miss him.