This Just In – If having the lead in a race – any kind of race – meant that you had it won, there’d be no reason to compete at all.
My social media accounts are buzzing with “What if” scenarios that range from The Former-Now-Indicted Guy getting the GOP nomination and winning the presidency once again to his losing (at any/every level) and his followers taking to the streets and so on.
For unrelated reasons, I’ve been practicing the art of deep breath-taking lately. In times of crisis, you need to be able to slow yourself down to make important decisions. America, please take one step back and take a nice, deep breath.
While we all breathe, let’s try to dispassionately look at what’s happening with the 45th president. He’s managed to get indicted three times and is (at press time) facing 78 felony counts of crimes including obstruction, fraud and theft of nuclear/military secrets. Seventy-eight counts.
Disregarding what may come from Georgia’s indictments that can drop anytime, this is about 40 counts of criminal acts charged by the federal government. According to the Pew Research Center, more than 90% of cases brought by the federal government result in conviction.
Federal defendant Trump is well aware that his probability of acquittal is close to zero, especially in the January 6th Insurrection case. His shoot-the-moon strategy is to win the presidency and end the prosecution from the Oval Office by (more) corrupt use of presidential power.
It is much more likely that I will become the prima ballerina for the Bolshoi Ballet.
During our deep breathing exercise, let’s remember when the national polls were so very predictive of who would be the next president. If a huge lead and high probability of winning was all there was to it, Hillary Clinton would have sailed into the presidency in either 2008 or 2016.
Let’s see … 2011? Who was leading in the GOP race at the end of that year, just prior to the start of the 2012 race?
Rick Santorum. Ron Paul.
Neither of them won the GOP nomination. That went to Mitt Romney and although President Barack Obama was not showing strong numbers in early 2012, he easily won re-election.
How about going back to 2000? Was George W. Bush the golden boy of the GOP? Not yet. Elizabeth Dole was leading in the polls at the end of 1999, just a point or two ahead of George W. Bush. He got John McCain out of the race with some dirty tricks in the South Carolina primary and the rest is history, but at this stage, it wasn’t at all clear that Bush Jr. was going to ascend to the presidency. Perhaps only Ralph Nadar was sure of that.
In 1991, while president, George H.W. Bush was riding high in popularity in the wake of a very successful Gulf War, expelling Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. Bush had approval numbers in the 80+% range and may have thought his re-election was a certainty.
The problem for him was an ambitious governor from Arkansas with an exceptional gift for retail politics and an understanding of the average person’s plight in a struggling economy. His wife was an underestimated asset that Bill Clinton leveraged to maximum value.
In 1991, we didn’t really know what the 1992 election was going to be about. It turned out, as James Carville put it, “It’s the economy, stupid.” George Bush had never seen a supermarket scanner and didn’t know off hand what the price of a gallon of milk was. Bill Clinton could walk up to ANYONE and connect.
Game over.
Back to breathing … we don’t know what the central focus of next year’s presidential campaign – the general election – will be. It’s a year away. That’s a lot of time to breathe and contemplate what we want it to be about.
My first thoughts on that are these subjects are worthy of policy-based debate:
- Securing Voting Rights
- Climate Change
- Gun Safety
- Codifying Roe v. Wade
- Serious Comprehensive Immigration Reform
- Legislating Ethics for the Supreme Court
Of course there’s more, but this is where I’d start. How about you?
Jean Bolduc is a freelance writer and the host of the Weekend Watercooler on 97.9 The Hill. She is the author of “African Americans of Durham & Orange Counties: An Oral History” (History Press, 2016) and has served on Orange County’s Human Relations Commission, The Alliance of AIDS Services-Carolina, the Orange County Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, and the Orange County Schools’ Equity Task Force. She was a featured columnist and reporter for the Chapel Hill Herald and the News & Observer.
Readers can reach Jean via email – jean@penandinc.com and via Twitter @JeanBolduc
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