August 25, 2023

With the Republican Party primary debates, the 2024 U.S. presidential election is now underway.  Right out of the gate, like 2020 and 2022, American moderates and conservatives are living up to the low expectations they set for themselves.  Let’s start at the top, with Donald J. Trump, the putative frontrunner for Republicans.

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Put aside for a moment the overkill indictments produced by several partisan municipal, state, and federal agencies.  Clearly, the Deep State, right and left, is not going to leave Donald Trump’s fate up to the electorate in 2024.  There’s not much Trump can do about the legal blitz except play expensive defense and hope for less political bias in appellate or even Supreme Court reviews.

Beyond legal peril, team Trump is screwing the pooch in other venues.  Trumpsters in particular and Republicans in general have abandoned sympathetic, or reasonably fair, social platforms like Twitter.  

Subsequently, team Biden jumped into that Twitter vacuum with a blizzard of daily postings from White House, congressional, and DNC accounts.  “Bidenomics” propaganda is now a daily mantra on Twitter and other platforms.

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Republican responses are scarce to invisible so far on a platform that caters to the media and 450 million users worldwide.  Personal pique and ego are now handicaps in cyberspace, where information battles are won and lost.  Unchallenged repetition is the mother of belief.

The American Democrat party is funding a full court online propaganda press.

Trump’s Twitter surrender is also compounded by personal pique.  Trump skipped the first Republican primary debate for a Tucker Carlson sit-down.  All well and good if you believe that poking FOX, the RNC, and potential allies in the eye on the same night is a good tactic.

Political campaigns are won with a consistent strategy, not revenge politics.

Trump gains nothing by imitating Brandon’s “no debate” dodge.  Most folks are looking for something to vote for, not someone to vote against.  Revenge may be a comfort, but it’s not really a strategy.

Although nominally a Republican, Trump is uncomfortable with the nomenklatura of both major political parties.  Elected Republican leaders in Congress and the Republican National Committee