Victor Davis Hanson: The Wild 2024 Race

American Greatness ^ | 27 Jul, 2023 | VictorDavisHanson, vdh

[MtnClimber]

Current polls, pundits, and politicos insist that the 2024 race is a sure rematch between former President Donald Trump and incumbent President Joe Biden.

It may well turn out that way.

But in past election cycles, summer polls 15 months before the general election usually did not mean much.

In December 2003, the CBS poll headline blared, “Dean Pulls Away in Dem Race.” Howard Dean would eventually be clobbered by nominee John Kerry.

In the Gallup Poll of late June 2007, Hillary Clinton still continued to enjoy her wide lead in the Democratic primary over eventual nominee and elected president Barack Obama.

On the Republican side, Gallup noted of its summer 2007 polls that, “There has been little serious threat to the frontrunner, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani”—who bombed out early in the race.

About this time in 2015, Jeb Bush was leading Donald Trump in the Republican primary. Or as CNN characterized their summer poll, “He [Bush] holds a significant lead over the second-place candidate Trump.”

By January 2016, the favorite, can-do Wisconsin governor Scott Walker was leading all candidates by a substantial margin as they headed for the Iowa caucuses.

There are lots of reasons to believe that 2024 may prove to be the most volatile race in recent memory.

Not since 1912—when third-party ex-president Theodore Roosevelt challenged incumbent President William Howard Taft in a three-way race with Woodrow Wilson—have two presidents run against each other.

Both, remember, lost that year to the far less experienced Wilson.

Second, Donald Trump is currently the target of at least four state and federal prosecutors.

Millions of Americans feel that current and likely future indictments are patently political. The Trump prosecutions would never have gone ahead had he not run for the presidency a third time...

[MtnClimber]

Why don’t Republicans do the same thing to Joe Biden? He has enough real crimes that none would need to be fabricated. And why don’t Red State AGs go after Hunter? You know, turnabout and all of that.

[MtnClimber]

VDH ping

[MtnClimber]

VDH ping to the right recipient this time.

[ronnie raygun]

Because they are all in the same bed!

[Boogieman]

“But in past election cycles, summer polls 15 months before the general election usually did not mean much.”

Hansen’s usually good but he’s missed the mark here, because summer polls 15 months before the general election when there is an INCUMBENT running almost ALWAYS are very good predictors.

And now we essentially have 2 incumbents running.

[ClearCase_guy]

Why don’t Republicans do the same thing to Joe Biden?

The GOP supports Biden more than it supports Trump.

[marktwain]

Why don’t Republicans do the same thing to Joe Biden? He has enough real crimes that none would need to be fabricated. And why don’t Red State AGs go after Hunter? You know, turnabout and all of that.

Because they fear the Media, as in the old Progressive, dominant media. The old Media was able to make and break politicians if they did not tow the Progressive line.

They decided what was a scandal, and what was not. They decided what was acceptable to debate, and what was not.

Their power to control the narrative is breaking down, which is why they and their deep state allies are resorting to outright censorship.

More and more politicians, like the current Robert Kennedy, are finding they can survive Old Dominant Media and Deep State attacks.

[skr]

Trump doesn’t hold the office for which he is running, therefore he is not the incumbent. The poll numbers might not tighten as much between the front-runner and the rest of the pack as they have previously, but they will tighten as more people start paying attention.

[euram]

“The Trump prosecutions would never have gone ahead had he not run for the presidency a third time.”

I think he’s wrong, the Media-Dem Party has so much hatred for Trump that they would have done all this even if he had announced total withdrawal from politics. They are likely to continue hounding his every step for the rest of his life, and may very well continue long after he dies.

[aligncare]

Polls this far out actually do mean something when you can’t trust the results of elections. They are an indicator, a gauge of the level of cheat involved in the theft. Like the 2020 race stolen from President Trump.

[Tell It Right]

VDH has got me convinced to vote for Biden in 2024 .... in the primary so that he’s a feeble opponent to Trump in the general election.

[Hatteras]

"It is even more difficult to envision a frail Joe Biden holding his own against either Democratic rivals or a Republican contender in the general election."

A debate between Biden and RFK Jr would certainly keep the closed captioning guy on his toes...

[COBOL2Java]

Why don’t Republicans do the same thing to Joe Biden? He has enough real crimes that none would need to be fabricated. And why don’t Red State AGs go after Hunter? You know, turnabout and all of that.

What??? And get disinvited to all the Beltway parties??? Not be asked to argle-bargle on the Sunday morning talk shows??? Risk losing all those Deep State investment clues??? Surely you jest!

[erlayman]

If Kennedy runs as an Independent Biden is gone either way. He probably wouldn’t even have enough support to bother with a debate.

[Taxman]

ping

[bray]

The only people who hate Trump more than the DNC is the GOPe. He ruins their Country Club.

[Tom Bombadil]

It is going to be Michelle Obama for the Dems.

Her pattern over the last 6 years has been almost identical to Barak’s before his first election.

No legislative track record, a hagiographic auto-biography, cultivating black affiliations etc, etc,

[texas booster]

Ping! Out to the Victor Davis Hanson list

But the Left’s weaponization of the legal system is playing with fire.

Or will the nonending legal morass eventually wear out Republican primary voters, resulting in their rage at such unfairness helping another Republican candidate?

Fourth, not since Woodrow Wilson’s incapacity rendered him bedridden and all but incommunicado for the last 17 months of his presidency, has a president appeared so enfeebled.

Apparently Democratic insiders hope Biden does not run for reelection—but by all accounts must finish his term to prevent a Kamala Harris presidency in either 2023-4 or thereafter.

Lots of juicy thoughts in this column ... worth your time today!

FR Index of his articles: Victor Davis Hanson on FR

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American Greatness: Victor Davis Hanson on American Greatness

His website: Victor Davis Hanson

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[Bratch]

A Specific Type of Continuity

July 21, 2023 | Sundance | 351 Comments

In roughly the past fifty years, the term “continuity of government” has been used with increased frequency describing how the United States of America, a constitutional republican system of government, contains internal mechanisms to protect the executive branch in the event of crisis, attack or disruption of leadership by adversaries.

The term ‘continuity of government‘ became much more common in the aftermath of 9-11-01 and the thunder shock of an al-Qaeda inspired terrorist attack in New York and Washington DC.

Within the very brief discussion period that led up to the 10-26-01 Patriot Act [pdf here], literally a structural reform of the entire domestic terrorist apparatus that created the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA), a bill only debated for a few weeks, the baseline was the enhanced ‘continuity of government‘ in the event of an emergency

As we have exhaustively outlined on these pages, the outcome of the Patriot Act was to create a system where every American was now viewed by our federal government through the prism of the citizen being a potential terrorist threat.  The federal government aligned all of our institutions and systems accordingly.

DHS was created to monitor American behavior, the TSA was created to scan American travelers, and the FBI was enhanced with resources to conduct surveillance despite our Fourth Amendment protections within our Constitution.  Instead of the U.S. Govt protecting U.S. citizens from foreign threats, the Patriot Act changed the mission of government to protect itself from potential citizen threats.

In essence, We the People became the suspects, and all of the constitutional viewpoints within the FBI and Dept of Justice were modified to create monitoring systems.

The legislative branch was considered part of a this newly protected elite class of Americans, and the judicial branch deferred all scrutiny to the executive as long as they claimed, ‘national security.’  The secret FISA court system would grant the agents surveillance power over U.S. citizens.

As the foundation of this new surveillance state was just being finalized, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Eric Holder then entered government via the 2008 election, and weaponized this system to target their domestic political opposition.

However, there is also a second element to this ‘continuity of government’ that flows with the first premise.

The continuity of a very specific outlook by government.

The continuity of a very specific construct of government.

The continuity of a view within government of how government should operate. This is part of the continuity of government not discussed.

You can argue it was the viewpoint of a very specific type of government “continuity” that led to the opposition against Donald Trump by Democrats and Republicans.

Trump would be a disruptive influence if introduced into a continuation mission that did not like change.  This ‘continuity’ mindset then established the justification for every institution and element of the bureaucracy, including almost all layers of the people who run them, to oppose Donald Trump.

By the time the 2016 election arrived, We the People had already been defined by the Patriot Act outcome as a threat to government.  If we the people did not select the right kind of candidate who would be approved by the continuity system, then our selection would be rejected by all of the operators of that administrative system.   

That’s what happened.

Every move by the U.S. federal government, from 2016 to now, has been contrast against the backdrop of a new awakening and visible understanding.

We the People are the threat, and those who control the DC power centers that determine the continuity of government, will not accept any modification or diminishment of their mission.  This is how they justify their conduct in very real terms, including through application of law.  This is also why the people who operate these systems are very visible with their conduct and do not have any reservations about showing their omnipotent mindset.

From their perspective, they are doing what they do, running government how they run government, maintaining the continuity the system was designed to protect, and we are what they consider futile and irrelevant voices.

Both the Republican and Democrat leadership hold this same view.  This “continuity of government” is the core of their UniParty alignment.

Here is where this understanding gets really interesting.  In order to maintain this system, there has to be an internal monitoring system, a surveillance system to protect itself against any adversary.  A domestic surveillance state has to exist as an outcome of the logical sequence.

Within this total surveillance state, the FBI is the federal agency – a national police force with a mission to run monitoring operations.  Everyone is monitored, and in case anyone would raise objection to being monitored, the corporate media provide protection against criticism by saying the agencies doing the monitoring need to be independent.

As we plunge deeper and deeper into this weaponized surveillance state, if you engage in any conduct to avoid monitoring, you run the risk of being caught in the DHS surveillance sweep.  You run the risk of becoming a DHS subject of interest, just like candidate Donald Trump – only smaller.  If you choose to fight against accepting the weaponized surveillance state, you will be considered a DHS subject of interest – just like the J6 detainees.

When the FBI was recently fighting against the release of the FD-1023 report, outlining the Confidential Human Source (CHS) that gave evidence to the FBI against Joe Biden, people missed something.  The DOJ/FBI reluctance to admit the FD-1023 report existed was not just about Joe Biden, it was about a surveillance process this reporting would reveal.

The confidential human source (CHS) was a person giving information to the FBI for their files.  This is the library on congress.  There are hundreds of thousands of these FD-1023 forms created, as CHS’s undercover agent employees (UAE’s) and a myriad of resources, are deployed in this surveillance system.

It’s the breadth of this surveillance system that leads to the FBI saying,

“The safeguards the FBI placed on the production of this information are necessary to protect the safety of confidential sources and the integrity of sensitive investigations. Today’s release of the 1023 [form] – at a minimum – unnecessarily risks the safety of a confidential source.”

As noted by the Federalist Margot Cleveland,

“During Wednesday’s hours-long hearing, IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler both told lawmakers they had never seen the FD-1023. Significantly, Ziegler then stated: “There’s things that are contained on that document that could further corroborate other information that we might be having an issue corroborating because it could be regarding a foreign official. So if we have information regarding that in a document or a witness, we can further corroborate later evidence.”

The reason the IRS agents were not aware of the CHS reports to the FBI, is because keeping the FD-1023 report hidden did not have as much to do with protecting Biden as it does with protecting this surveillance apparatus.

Who are all of these CHS’s and UAE’s like Igor Danchenko, Patrick Byrne, Azra Turk, Carter Page, Joseph Mifsud, Ray Epps, 1% Watchdog, etc. etc. etc?  There is a massive surveillance apparatus underway monitoring everyone, including an assembly of files against sitting members of congress and political leadership.

Keep in mind, the FD-1023 reports are not blackmail, they are reports of conduct and action.  Blackmail and/or leverage is an outcome of knowing information.  The massive assembly of FD-1023 reports are the source information.  This is a big part of the reason why FBI Director Christopher Wray initially denied there ever was an FD-1023 report.

In the bigger of the big pictures, this Joe and Hunter Biden story is the tip of an iceberg story about how the FBI is a domestic surveillance operation assembling files on everyone; that includes members of Congress and key political leadership that could advance to power.  Why is all of this surveillance taking place?…

….Because it is a very specific type of Continuity of Government that must be maintained.

Don’t look at the Potemkin village we call Washington DC.

Look for the people behind the construct.

Look for the people who are using these files.