In a move that surprised supporters and opponents alike, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis dropped out of the 2024 presidential race before the New Hampshire primaries. Rumors immediately hit that his and Trump’s people have been negotiating for several days following the Iowa caucuses, and speculation abounds on what DeSantis’ future will be. In the meantime, it looks like nothing short of an act of G-d is going to stop us from having a 2020 rematch.
The world is vastly different now versus four years ago. In the last election, Covid was the deciding factor in the election. Not because voters had any particular issue with the Trump approach to handling the virus, but because the virus allowed states to radically alter their electoral process in questionably legal (and definitely illegal) ways. According to Pew Research, nearly twice as many Biden voters mailed in their ballots as did Trump voters. The Democratic machine in large cities harvested those ballots in huge numbers, swaying the votes in key states like Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. That will not be as much of a factor this time, although every state has different voting rules, and each one should be analyzed to determine how much of a factor electoral procedures actually are. Yet this is definitely a change in Trump’s favor.
Another massive shift between 2020 and 2024 is social media. In 2020, the key social media platforms were in the pocket of the Left, actively hiding vital information that voters needed to know. The most obvious of these stories is the Hunter Biden laptop, which has now been confirmed as authentic, but at the time was called “Russian disinformation” by the Biden campaign with the false testimony of over 50 former intelligence agents backing him. This is actually one of the reasons why Elon Musk bought Twitter and revealed the Twitter files, blowing the lid off this massive conspiracy to keep Trump from winning re-election. Musk will not allow his platform to be used in such insidious ways again, so this change is also in Trump’s favor.
Trump has several more factors in his favor heading into November, the most obvious one being that Joe Biden is a really bad president. Trump’s two biggest accomplishments as president were foreign policy and the pre-Covid economy. These are Biden’s two biggest failures. Foreign policy-wise, there are two massive wars occurring right now under Biden’s watch, and the US is actually losing service members again and engaging in overseas conflicts. The Afghanistan pullout is the most disastrous PR situation for the US military since the fall of Saigon, and it’s probably worse. Ukraine looks to be in a forever war with no offramp, and the Biden administration can’t decide if it wants to back Israel or sanction it.
Despite everything the Biden team is trying to sell, the American people just aren’t buying that “Bidenomics” is working. Biden can tout the employment rate since coming into office all he wants; voters are old enough to remember that these numbers are pretty much the Trump economy recovering more slowly than it should have because Biden pumped the brakes. (This is probably why Democrats want children to vote: shorter memories.) There’s also no getting around the fact that inflation caused nearly every good and service to cost between 15 and 20 percent more today than it did in 2021. That is 100 percent on Biden and the terrible legislation he passed with a Democratic House and Senate in 2021 and 2022. Biden may be cheering that gas in many states is finally under $3 a gallon, but people remember when $2 was the norm, not the wild exception.
The year 2020 was a referendum on Trump. He was president, Covid was bad, he was unpopular, there were riots in the streets, and vital information was kept out of the view of the public. 2024 is very different. Trump has not been president, and the situation is far worse. The referendum will be on Biden. It’s not that people will switch their vote from Biden 2020 to Trump 2024; it’s that people who voted then for Biden will just stay home now.
Obviously, none of this means that Trump is a shoo-in; he’s not. No one drives more people to vote against them than Trump. Trump is hated with a fiery passion by Democrats, and they will do anything they can to stop him. There’s also a small but vocal minority of “Never Trump” Republicans who will make a foolish bid at trying to get a third-party candidate like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. more votes. Trump’s greatest challenge are his legal troubles, where polling data claims that potential Trump voters are less likely to give him their support if he’s actually convicted of a crime. However, if it’s painfully obvious that Trump is getting railroaded by his political enemies, more people may come to his defense than he would lose. His first indictment (and each subsequent one) only boosted his polling.
Here’s the question that everyone should be asking about Democrats: Why wouldn’t they cheat? They’re on record for nine years saying that Trump is Hitler, and this election would be the last in US history if Trump wins. They have been able to manipulate the electoral process, the news media, the legal system, the courts, and social media to wild success in the past; there’s no reason to believe they won’t try again. Blue states have already removed Trump from the primary ballot. Why would a battleground state with Democrats in charge not try to do the same for the general elections? One of the reasons Vivek Ramaswamy gave for voting for him before he dropped out was that there are corrupt bureaucrats that will do anything to stop Trump. “I don’t even think they’re gonna let the guy get anywhere within spitting distance of the White House,” he told a voter. He’s right.
Either way, someone is going to win. The next president will be Trump or Biden, that much is certain. What is also certain is that there will be riots. If Biden wins, Trump supporters will be marching on Washington the same as 2021 because the election will, somehow, be rigged. If Trump wins, the Leftists will be rioting like they did in 2017 (Yes, that happened. Legacy media wants to ignore that there was massive property damage and rioting in DC in 2017 but there was) and the summer of 2020. This year is not going to be pretty. But it definitely will not be the last election we have. Only the next one.
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Correction: Last week’s column, entitled “Police Transparency Bill May Halt Policing Altogether,” implied that Councilmember James Gennaro voted for the “How Many Stops Act” on the December 20, 2023, vote. He was on medical leave and did not vote. I apologize for the error.
Moshe Hill is a political analyst and columnist. His work can be found at www.aHillwithaView.com and on X at @HillWithView.
