STOP WHISTLING PAST THE GRAVEYARD

The “news” today at the Bulwark, the morning note at Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall’s subscriber email, and every show on MSNBC, was that Trump “underperformed” in Iowa last night.

He “only” got 51% of the vote and it was a light turnout. There were 1/3 of the caucus-goers who said that Trump being a convicted felon by November would keep them from voting for him, that Haley had “Nikkimentum” going into New Hampshire.

I’ll admit, I was ready to write this post tonight and reinforce all that.

Until Chris Cillizza pulled out his adding machine and said “let’s run all the numbers.”

And there, there’s a problem with the new “party line.”

“All the numbers” includes the secondary question asked of those who voted for DeSantis and Haley, and even Vivek. That questions was: “If the candidate you are voting for in this primary wasn’t running, who would you vote for?”

All the Vivek voters said they would vote for Trump.

75% of the DeSantis voters said they would vote for Trump.

40% of the Haley voters said they would vote for Trump.

Now “run the numbers.”

If you take away Haley and Vivek, Trump’s total would have beaten DeSantis by around 60-63%.

If you t ake away DeSantis and Vivek, Trump’s total against Haley would be around 68-70%.

Those numbers are what one expects of an “incumbent.”

Take away DeSantis and Haley and Vivek - which is going to happen by the week after New Hampshire’s primary on January 23 - Trump’s total last night would have been around 72-75%, right on the money for an “incumbent.”

In 2016, everyone was saying “There’s no way he can win.” Except he did.

Here we are in 2024, and a horserace poll was released this morning that has Trump beating Biden in November by 4 points. So yeah, let’s find a way to “prove” that isn’t a fact. “His support isn’t as strong as they say it is.”

Except it is.

Teddy Schlieffer, who reports on the “money people” for Puck, had news in his email today that the Trump campaign has told all the Republican donor class who haven’t supported him so far that there will be a fund-raiser at Mar-A-Lago on February 16, and if any donor hasn’t jumped on the Trump Train by then, “it will be too late for you to have any influence.”

Anyone who thinks the Republican primary is “in doubt” now needs to let me have some of whatever in hell it was that they ingested.

We can hope that McKay Coppins was right in his article about visiting a Trump rally he published in The Atlantic today, when he said that when Trump got into raving about the election being stolen, and the legal cases before him are all “election interference” by Democrats, that rally-goers began “drifting toward the exits.” Yeah, they’re all tired of his shtick, he’s not “entertaining” anymore. Except that interviews with rally-goers where they were asked about whether his statements that he would “have no choice” but to imprison his political opponents, that migrants are “poisoning America,” that “magnets don’t work when you put water on them,” would lead them to not support him revealed the opposite. Those crazy statements increase their enthusiasm for him.

There are no “magic beans” that are going to prevent Trump running a far more competent campaign in 2024 than the disorganized mess he ran with in 2016 (and won).

No, don’t run to your bedroom and pull the covers over your head.

The only thing that’s going to defeat him is Beating Him.

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment isn’t going to save us.

Being banned from doing business in New York state for the rest of his life and the lives of his children is not going to save us.

Being found guilty of attempting to overthrow the 2020 election is not going to save us.

Whatever little fantasy explanation your favorite MSNBC host comes up with to show he can’t possibly win is not going to save us.

WE are the only ones who can save us.

Like my old boss Willie Brown said, run like we’re 10 points down and don’t listen to the horserace, till five minutes after the last polling place closes. Then celebrate the victory.

“Buckle down, Winsocki! Buckle down!/You can win, Winsocki, if you’ll only buckle down!”

I hate that Chris Cillizza is right, but he is.

Nothing worthwhile ever came easy.

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