We’re barely over a month in 2024, and yet already, it is becoming a year where one of the great ironies of our time looks set to explode: That is to say, the party defending so-called “democracy,” which literally is named the Democrats, are so hapless at getting votes that they have had to resort to every conceivable anti-democratic measure to try to keep power. Unfortunately for them, those same attempts are being cut down like weeds by the very institutions they hoped would bail them out. Already, five different situations have occurred to weaken their hand, which we present below.
1. Colorado Ballot
Preeminent among those institutions is the legal apparatus, which is why it’s fitting that we begin with the highest court in the land: the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS). Last week, SCOTUS heard oral argument in the case Trump v. Anderson, centering on Colorado’s attempt to kick former President Trump off its 2024 ballot. The reception was about as crushing for Colorado – and encouraging for Trump – as one could imagine. Not only did the court’s six conservative (and conservative-leaning) justices offer incisive rebukes to Colorado’s legal theory, but two liberal justices – Elena Kagan and even Biden appointee Ketanji Brown Jackson – also appeared unconvinced. Which means that, at present, the worst case scenario for Trump appears to be an 8-1 decision, with the “wise Latina” Sonia Sotomayor as the only potential sympathetic justice to Colorado’s cause.
While this is unquestionably good news for Trump (and for actual democracy), however, the skepticism of the justices alone is not the only good news, or even the best news. The best news is why they’re skeptical. In effect, the justices agreed that while the clause of the Constitution barring “insurrectionists” from holding office may exist, only an act of Congress can apply it to specific people. Which, considering Trump’s party controls one house of Congress, is essentially a death warrant for the idea of using the “insurrection” clause to kick him off any ballot, period.
This means, in effect, that while the Democrats’ lawfare approach could still plausibly be used to bloody Trump up in advance of November, or to advance a claim that he’s ineligible due to committing “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the idea of using January 6 as a pretext to preemptively kick him out of the race will likely be foreclosed forever.
2. J6 Case
Moreover, considering that Trump has just appealed the question of his immunity to SCOTUS, and that SCOTUS is considering the question of whether the charges he (and other J6 defendants) face in his DC trial are even legitimate, it is far from certain that he’ll even see the inside of a courtroom, let alone face conviction. To start with, SCOTUS is considering the case of Fischer v. United States, a case brought by January 6 defendant Joseph Fischer, who is challenging the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) attempt to bring charges of “obstructing an official proceeding” against January 6 defendants. Fischer’s argument is that the law under which these charges were brought – the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act – was designed to be used against defendants in cases like the Enron trial (ie to prevent witness tampering), not against protesters who disrupt government bodies. The district court agreed with Fischer, while the DC Circuit Court sided with the government, albeit by 2-1. How SCOTUS will rule is anyone’s guess at this point, but should they side with Fischer, at least one of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s charges against Trump would necessarily be invalidated, as well. Combine this with the fact of Trump’s appeal on the question of immunity, about which the Supreme Court has already requested a reply from the federal government, and it increasingly looks like Jack Smith’s vengeful attempt to prosecute Trump could be tied up in red tape until well after the election. This is so obvious to everyone, including the judge assigned to the case herself, that the case isn’t even on the docket yet.
But let’s not kid ourselves, it’s not as if the lawfare approach is working that well outside DC, either.
3. Fani Willis
Flash southward to Fulton County, Georgia, where Trump is also facing trial, and you might find yourself extremely confused. Because right now, in Fulton County, it sure doesn’t look like Trump is the one on trial: rather, the person being treated like a criminal is Fani Willis, the very District Attorney who is trying to prosecute him. Most recently, a Georgia judge has ruled that evidence exists which may justify kicking Willis off the case altogether, in the aftermath of revelations that Willis engaged in an improper romantic relationship with Georgia special prosecutor Nathan Wade. Willis and Wade argue that while the relationship existed, it only began after she had already hired Wade, meaning that there was no favoritism in the original hiring decision. Whether the evidence will bear this out remains to be seen (at least one legal filing certainly disagrees), but either way, it’s far from the only hiccup Willis faces: witnesses are crawling out of the woodwork to testify against her for alleged financial misconduct, as well.
To say that this is not what the Democrats wanted to be talking about when it comes to Trump’s Georgia trial is a massive understatement: they would rather talk about almost anything other than the misconduct of their chosen Trump slayer. We say “almost” anything else, because yet another one of their preferred strategies was dealt a perilous blow last week: namely, the strategy of gaslighting voters about Joe Biden’s mental state. And ironically, this rebuke also came from a legal apparatus which they had counted on to protect them.
4. Classified Documents
In this case, when evidence emerged that President Biden had improperly handled classified information, the Democrats appointed special counsel Robert Hur to “investigate” the president’s acts. This was, clearly, supposed to be a cover-up which exonerated Biden of all wrongdoing. Unfortunately, reality got in the way so much that Hur himself couldn’t ignore it.
We have already pointed out the unintentional hilarity of Hur’s report, at great length. What we could not have foreseen was that the response from the Democrats (and especially Biden himself) would be even funnier. Shortly after the report emerged, suggesting Biden was an “elderly man with a poor memory,” Biden called a press conference in which he thundered that his memory was fine, only to then…walk back to the podium and show how poor his memory was by confusing the presidents of Egypt and Mexico. The veil was ripped away, and what armies of so-called “journalists” ignored and downplayed by design, President Biden revealed by accident: he was exactly as mentally vacant as Hur’s report had said. The incident was so bad that even Jon Stewart of The Daily Show mocked it on his inaugural episode returning to the show.
“Joe Biden had a big press conference to dispel the notion that he may have lost a step, and politically speaking, lost three to four steps,” Stewart lamented.
Stewart could have been talking about the Democrats themselves, only they haven’t just lost steps. They stepped in quicksand, and then kept walking. And all the while, President Trump is consolidating his own influence over the Republican party, while racking up crushing margins over the functionally irrelevant Nikki Haley and still winning most pre-election head-to-head polls against Biden, himself.
5. The Border
No one is buying Biden's claim that the border collapse is somehow the fault of Trump or the Republicans. Polls show that Americans are more concerned about illegal immigration than inflation, and given the price of eggs these days, that's really saying something. So what have the Democrats done? Simple; they have tried to force Republicans to the bargaining table, first by arguing that Biden can’t act without legislative authority from congress (a flat out lie), and then by still trying to cram through a wholly unnecessary “deal” on border security, which was less a border security bill than a grab bag of gimmes for the Left, particularly in terms of funding for the Ukraine war.
When that bill collapsed, they then tried to tie funding for the war in Ukraine to funding for Israel, a gambit which (shamefully) attracted 18 Republican votes in the Senate. However, it has since died in the House, after Speaker Mike Johnson proclaimed it “dead on arrival.” In other words, the attempt to get more money for the corrupt Ukraine government – literally the only thing standing between Joe Biden and a foreign policy legacy of absolute, crushing failure – has become just as impossible as landing a glove on President Trump. And as such, the Democrats’ list of “accomplishments” for Biden to parrot looks likely to grow thinner.
In short, the Democrats’ chickens aren’t just coming home to roost; those same chickens have defecated all over their heads as well, which is why their entire campaign stinks to high heaven. Thankfully, so far, the American people can smell a rat.
