Trump went to New York for a rally and a lot of people are puzzled by that – with the puzzlement ranging from “he’s an idiot wasting time” to “he’s gonna flip New York!”. Neither are correct but that we’re getting that wide a variance indicates that one of the main things about the 2024 cycle is the lack of thought people are putting into it.
As I’ve been saying for years, Trump reads from a script. It seems spontaneous – and he has the talent to insert genuine spontaneity to his public appearances – but it is all very carefully planned. Guys who earn billions of dollars off of real estate don’t do things on the fly. They can’t. There’s too many moving parts and too many things that can go wrong. So, you plan. Here in 2024, Trump is working from a plan. This plan appears to have been thought out within weeks of the Presidency being declared for Biden. I doubt there was a moment’s doubt in Trump’s mind that he was going to try again (though I suspect that Melania was a voice against it; not that she’s not supportive, but I get the sense that she thinks it a burden…though I’ve detected a switch to steely determination since the assassination attempts). The first step in this plan was to keep “Stop the Steal” alive.
This was nearly universally derided by everyone outside Trump’s orbit (and I’ll bet dollars to donuts plenty of people inside it urged against it). Even I thought for a short while he should drop it…but he kept it up. A rolling, steady drumbeat about the questionable actions. And that formed the basis for his 2024 primary campaign – which he was supposed to lose as a GOP electorate, tired of Trump’s “tirades” about 2020 switched over to a new standard bearer. But a funny thing happened – it worked. Mostly because the Democrats walked right into it…opting for lawfare which merely solidified in the GOP base’s mind that the steal was real (not that we needed much urging – we could see it). The fatal moment for those who wanted to replace Trump atop the ticket, turns out, was their failure to condemn in no uncertain terms the 2020 result. That became the litmus test – the only thing which could tell a GOP base voter that a candidate was reliable. We all knew there was fraud. It was obvious…to not condemn it and seek to alter the system bespoke a desire to please the Establishment rather than us…and so Trump cruised to a win in the primaries.
You have to sort of review all that in your mind – the events from December 2020 to the time Trump was indicted. Once you look at it in hindsight, you can see the plan. “Stop the steal” rhetoric kept the base on Trump’s side…and positively goaded the Democrats into ever more extreme actions. They knew they had used fraud to get Biden in…but what stuck in their craw was Trump not politely rolling over on it. Nothing angers a liar than being called out on it. You can just see it got under their skin…probably most of all under Biden’s. Of course, the ever more extreme actions just solidified Trump’s position in the GOP…while the totally absurd nature of the lawfare started to generate some sympathy for Trump outside his base voters. I mean, seriously: dragging Trump into court in New York because a clearly insane woman wanted to use a law written just for her to sue Trump for assault was ridiculous…and outside far left partisans, everyone could see it was ridiculous. The rest of the cases were no less silly. And they all have worked out to Trump’s advantage.
I don’t know if Trump counted on wiping Biden out in a debate. But he sure leaped at the first opportunity, didn’t he? Everyone said it was a huge mistake – Trump was walking into a trap. But here’s what we can see in hindsight: for all of Biden’s manifest flaws, he does have working class appeal. Can’t deny it. He really did grow up poor. He can speak the language of the working class. He’s lying his a** off when he does it, but he can do it. Trump to win in 2024 needs blue collars…lots of them. The upper and middle class urban and suburban whites rejected him in 2016 and even more so in 2020. No doubt they will largely do so again in 2024. It became a crucial necessity to break Biden’s ability to pull in blue collar voters…and Trump knew that Biden was going gaga. All he had to do was get him on any stage, even in the most Biden-favorable circumstances, and Biden would be exposed as the senile, frail old man that he is. Presto! Done. Whether or not he thought they’d dump Biden for Harris or just put Harris front and center to keep Biden off stage would become a complete irrelevancy…only Biden can pull in the blue collars that Trump needs and if he’s off the ticket or off the stage, he can’t do it. He was able to do it with rare appearances in 2020 because he was still reasonably lucid and Covid gave the excuse for being rarely seen. But in 2024, it had to be Biden out there matching Trump appearance for appearance and the debate showed that Biden is done…and simply can’t do it. Meanwhile having Harris out there either in the top spot or as surrogate is a complete disaster for Democrat attempts to pull in working class votes…she’s just too clearly West Coast upper class Leftist…the very sort of person that the entire American working class has always despised.
So, for Trump, it doesn’t matter who the nominee is – as long as it wasn’t a reasonably lucid and energetic Biden. But Mark, you say, isn’t the polling going bad for Trump? Most of it is. But do remember that when they finally pushed Joe out and inserted Harris the Trump campaign said, directly, that the polling was now going to favor Harris. It had only gone against Joe – and only moderately in public polling – because the Democrats had decided Joe had to go and so needed public polling that pressured him to quit. Team Trump knew that the positive public polling for Trump was a chimera…a temporary glance at reality just to get a particular job done. That finished, the polling switched back to the norm: massively overstating Democrat strength. Someone earlier today posted a screen shot of the Quinninpiac Pennsylvania polling for 2020…it showed Biden leads from 7 to 14 points or so. He barely won the State. Now, this was a whole series of polls done over months and they never even got close to the final result…when you see that sort of miss that consistently in one direction, then that graduates your poll from “mistake” to “lie”. It wasn’t that Quinninpiac got its model a bit wrong or that they missed some detail…they were lying. Bald faced, ridiculous lies. They’re lying again here in 2024. All the pollsters who got big misses in favor of the Democrats (and that is most public polling) missed consistently in the Democrats favor in 2016 and 2020. Not mistakes. They are lies. Lies designed to depress GOP turnout and encourage Democrats to donate and vote.
So, how does this tie into Trump being in New York? Well, it can be one of three things:
- Just a huge, stupid mistake.
- A headfake to confuse and scare Democrats.
- Confidence in 270.
Although Trump is working from a plan, this doesn’t guarantee its a good plan. The most brilliant leader can simply screw up. It happens. We won’t know if Trump’s plan is a good one until 11/5. But that there is a plan can’t be doubted. So, it could be that stupid mistake. If so, we’ll find out for sure on Election Day. It could be a headfake…just a foray into the Blue stronghold to make Democrats look over their shoulder. But such a thing would be better done in Virginia or Minnesota where there is polling showing Trump at least close. So, absent it being a mistake or a headfake, it is confidence in 270. Personally, that is what I think it is.
That is, I believe that Team Trump is very confident that they’ve got more than 270 electoral votes sewn (though they will continue to campaign in the battlegrounds right up to the end) and now they’re making a play for something I think Trump wants very badly: an overall popular vote win. We all know it is irrelevant…but it is highly symbolic and it is something the Democrats have invested in as some sort of political holy grail. Trump can’t win New York – figuring he’s going to flip it is, sorry, just silly. There are simply too many Democrat voters in New York City for that to happen. But if Trump can increase his vote share there by 450,000 (and consequently drop Harris that much from Biden’s 2020 total) then its a huge boost in his chances to get to 50%+1 of the vote. He needs to flip the overall popular vote about 3.5 million his way out of what will probably be 157 million votes. Doable. Not easy. If you had to bet on it then don’t bet the rent. But it is doable. And if done, it takes away most of the arguments the Democrats have against Trump…and the last shred of Never Trump argument.
As I’ve always said, in politics look at what people are doing rather than what they’re saying. Harris is camping out in Pennsylvania. Trump is having a rally in New York. Trump is clearly far more confident than Harris. To be sure, Trump’s confidence can be misplaced. I am absolutely certain Trump will win. November 5th might merely prove me a fool. But I do believe I have facts to back up my case: voter registration numbers, early ballot requests, anecdotal evidence of Trump strength on the ground, etc. Any objective analyst of politics is going to say that if they had to choose who to be, they’d choose being Trump…he’s clearly got the inside track to win. But however you wish to slice that up, Trump is clearly confident of the outcome…and he’s going to follow his plan right to the end. With right now being the play for a popular vote win…which is just as downright ridiculous as the part of his plan that had him shouting from the rooftops in 2022 that the 2020 election was stolen. But, then again, how did the earlier part of the plan work?
I’ll finish up with this: I’m not asking for anyone to love Trump. You don’t have to wear a MAGA hat. But I am asking for all patriots to join in giving a gigantic middle finger to the mountain of lies which sustain Harris and the Ruling Class. Dooming does nothing for you. Having confidence will turn the campaign in to the funnest thing you’ve ever done. Lets get out there and save our country, friends. It is in our hands.
Update: I had talked bad polling for Trump in the post and then Emerson went and did this…with their thumb on the scale for her, this is the best they could do!








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