If Biden can’t win the D.C. uniparty, can’t win the far left, can’t hide his corruption, and can’t hide from Trump, how is he supposed to win another election?
On Tuesday, The Washington Post’s David Ignatius called for pulling the plug on Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
“I don’t think Biden and Vice President Harris should run for reelection,” said the man frequently considered the media’s mouthpiece for intelligence agencies. “If he and Harris campaign together in 2024, I think Biden risks undoing his greatest achievement — which was stopping Trump.”
Just 10 months ago, Biden and the Democrats had a surprisingly good midterm election. So what has Ignatius — and the deep state apparatus he speaks for — so gloomy?
Quite simply, 2023 has not gone according to plan.
Democrats were never planning to run on Joe Biden’s accomplishments in 2024. They know those accomplishments don’t exist. The border is a mess, and everyone knows it. Foreign policy is a mess, and everyone knows it. They can massage the economic stats all they want, but they can’t convince Americans struggling with exploding prices that the economy is actually good.
So what was their plan for 2024? Simple: Make the actual issues irrelevant.
2023, for the D.C. regime, was supposed to be about locking up 2024 far in advance of any ballots being cast. In their vision, this was going to be the one where they permanently destroyed Donald Trump and then took a yearlong victory lap into a triumphant 2025 and beyond. This was going to be a triumph of political machinery over political accomplishment.
But the machine is breaking down. Five core assumptions that were at the heart of Democrat plans have all gone up in smoke — or rather, exploded right in their faces.
1. The Indictments Backfired
The criminal indictment of Trump was supposed to send him into a downward spiral. The Democrats’ reasoning was that “no future, sitting, or former president has ever been indicted for a felony.” Tag Trump with the mark of a criminal, they figured, and his followers would abandon him. Trump would collapse inward, obsessing entirely over his personal legal drama and forgetting about national issues and Biden’s mismanagement of the country.
In short, the left thought their indictments would shatter Trump and his base psychologically. In fact, they did the precise opposite. Instead of delegitimizing Trump, the Democrats have instead discredited the very idea that being indicted is disqualifying for the presidency. By bringing such coordinated, obviously political prosecutions, they have only sent the message that Donald Trump is the one candidate the D.C. regime authentically fears.
2. The Hunter Biden Inside Job Got Blown Up
The press successfully scuttled the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020, but the laptop still exists, and inevitably the full scope of its contents has trickled out. No big deal, Democrats thought: Just cut a quick plea deal with Hunter about the least consequential of his misdeeds, bury a sneaky clause immunizing him from any further federal prosecutions, and bury the story forever.
Instead, on the brink of pulling it off, they got caught. Multiple IRS whistleblowers came forward to testify about the pressure they’d seen from the top to protect the First Son. An alert federal judge spotted the unprecedented, sweeping nature of Hunter’s plea deal and called it out, forcing the whole thing to be scrapped. Now Hunter is being hit with new charges, and healing this nagging sore on Joe Biden’s political fortunes has become...
