One thing is certain about the 2024 presidential election. Donald Trump’s opponents will stop at nothing, short, I hope, of violence, to keep him out of the White House. Fair or unfair, legal or illegal, Democrats will continue to use the judicial system  not just to prevent him from campaigning, but to destroy him financially, and exhaust him emotionally.  The mainstream media and the entertainment industry, abetted by most of academia, will miss no opportunity to demonize him as a pale American version of Hitler. Democrat politicians In the big cities they control will miss no opportunity to rig voting results  in Democrats’ favor.

Why am I convinced that the Democrats will resort to doing ”whatever it takes” to win? The party has evolved from being an advocate for the working man and the less fortunate to a party controlled by a combination of elitists who presume to have a quasi-divine right to govern and ideologues who have disdain for America, capitalism, and Judeo-Christian values. These people believe that they are intellectually and morally superior to the rest of us and therefore  are entitled to hold power  by any means necessary. In that respect they are not much different from the Jacobins of 18^th century France or the Bolsheviks of the early 20^th century.

It is no coincidence that so many of the uber wealthy and powerful, along with people with high verbal intelligence, support today’s Democratic party. Wealth and power provide both a platform for a lavish display of their virtue and a shield against the effects of policies that are as destructive as they are well intentioned. The rich, the powerful, and the chattering class never have to say they are sorry. Indeed, they can indulge in expressing hate for Donald Trump, secure in the knowledge that this will be considered approved behavior among their right thinking fellow elitists. After all, it surely is ok to hate a Hitler.

Democrats have a boulder in their path to permanent power. While their supporters  control the commanding heights of American society, they  constitute a small minority. They rightly fear that a majority of Americans might be so benighted as to vote the “wrong” way.

What are the prospects that the Democrats will retain the presidency, and maybe even control both the House and the Senate? Besides leftist ideologues and the elites in the media, academia, entertainment, government, big tech, and corporate America, whom can they count on? Two constituencies are a lock:

1. Tribalists, people who will reflexively vote Democrat no matter what because that’s what their parents and they have always done;
2. People whose direct, immediate economic interests are furthered so long as the Democrats remain in power, e.g., teachers’ unions, federal government employees (excluding he military), people in non-profit organizations dependent on government funding.

Everyone else and even some of these groups are up for grabs. Many Americans look around and are mightily dismayed. They see schools that fail to educate.  They see the substitution of indoctrination for education. They see a push to substitute “victimocracy” based on race, gender or ethnicity, for meritocracy. They see inflation eating away their economic security. They see open borders and rising crime. They see a double standard of justice. They see runaway government spending and intrusive regulation. They see government incompetence and failure to execute.

So will Americans keep the current crowd despite strong evidence of corruption and failure, or will they take a chance once again on the “red-haired devil”? It probably will be a close run thing, but I think Trump himself will determine whether Trump wins. If he focuses on how he has been unjustly persecuted by the legal system and how crooked Mr. Biden

is, he may well lose. The elites will be able to portray him as an undisciplined, authoritarian egomaniac making false claims. If he focuses on what his fellow Americans are worried about and how he is going to fix things, his chances seem pretty good, especially since more and more Americans are seeing that the elites not only are incompetent, but to make matters worse, have contempt for anyone unsympathetic to their views.

The political situation is uncertain , volatile, and dangerous. If Democrats see that Trump’s chances of winning are high and rising, they will become increasingly desperate. No one knows the lengths they will go to or how the public will react. Conversely, no one knows how Mr. Trump will behave and what difference that will make. We do know that the stakes for America’s future are high.

For over a century, Americans have witnessed the centralization of power into the hands of those who control the federal government. The implied promise has been that in return for giving up a little freedom, we will gain greater economic security. The reality is that by sacrificing freedom and the responsibilities that come with it, We will end up with neither freedom nor security.