The Four Main Issues That Gave Trump The Victory (Part Two)
By John J. Duncan Jr.
duncanj@knoxfocus.com
(Continued from 11/11/24 edition)
In my column last week, I wrote that Donald Trump won the election for four main reasons: the economy, immigration, Kamala Harris and lawfare (using the courts for political purposes). Last week I covered the first two reasons (economy and immigration). Now, on to #3.
3) Kamala Harris: Harris was simply not a good candidate. She probably peaked in the first two weeks after Biden pulled out due to the Democrats’ relief at not being stuck with him as their nominee.
Harris tried to run away from all her previous positions on the issues and pretend she was a moderate. But most were not fooled by this. This country, thank goodness, is not a far left nation, and a majority did not want a far left leader.
When socialism has ruined the economies of most nations around the world, and when many millions have come here (and many millions more are on the way, fleeing socialist run governments), the biggest mistake we could make is to elect a socialist as our president. Thankfully, enough people were intelligent enough not to fall for the for the siren call of socialism in this election.
There were jokes or humorous imitations going around with Harris saying at the end of every question on every issue, “I’m from the middle class.” Harris lost the middle-income and working-class vote because the Democrats had become too elitist. I remember after the 2016 election that even on the Democrat’s network, MSNBC, one of the leftist analysts said that the party “needed to learn to be less elitist.”
Joe Scarbrough said, or at least implied, that Harris lost because of race and gender bias. Well, this country has already twice elected a black man as President.
Even more significantly, this nation has elected more blacks and people of color to high office by far than any other majority-white country and possibly any other country other than a small number of African nations.
This country also does more for blacks and people of color than any other nation, including even the African countries. A very good case can be made that the U.S. is the least racist nation in this world, because there is some racism in every country, even in majority-black countries.
As for gender bias, it would also be hard to find a nation where more women have been elected to high office than here. We have elected and re-elected many women as governors, senators, representatives, mayors, and other positions of leadership all over this country.
Probably 15 or 20 years ago, I was sitting on the U.S. House floor with Rep. Cliff Stearns of Florida. I told him then that I thought women might be in the majority of Congress by the year 2050.
4) Lawfare: A majority of the people simply reacted against the Democrats’ use of our courts for blatant political purposes. Using our judicial system to wage political war against Donald Trump really backfired and, ironically, caused many poor and lower-income people to feel sorry for, or at least sympathize with Trump.
People could understand and even respect fighting hard in a clean and fair election. But what they couldn’t understand and refused to accept was the Democrats fighting so hard to bankrupt and/or imprison a political opponent. And all the cases against Trump were and are blatantly political, and this is obvious except to the most blindly partisan Democrat.
Then, too, the Democrats’ pious and very superior claims to be fighting to save our democracy rang hollow when they came at the same time their party had efforts going on in 30 states to keep Trump off the ballot. Even the liberals on a unanimous Supreme Court ruled that that was going too far.
There were other factors, of course. I thought I might add that the main reason the election was close was because of the bias of the national media. However, that bias has been so obvious for so many years now, I’m not sure it is still a major factor.
Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee sat by me at a dinner several years ago. He told me then that campaigning was the hardest thing he had ever done, but that governing was even harder.
Donald Trump will face tremendous challenges because of our $35 trillion debt and all the problems we face both here and abroad. But he is the most anti-war president we have had since Eisenhower.
To be a poor loser is a bad thing. To be a poor winner is worse. Now that the election is over, I am hoping for a kinder and gentler Donald Trump. He gave us four years of peace and prosperity in his first four years. I hope and pray that he can do so again in the next four.
