Is It Déjà vu All Over Again?

In September 2016 I wrote an article entitled “Is it All Over?” which included this passage:

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“Well, I used to love [him], but it’s all over now…

“With apologies to the Stones, the song does seem to say it all – it’s sayonara for Mr. Trump. The entirely disinterested media have declared that The Orange Man was completely routed by Hillary Clinton in their Sept. 26th debate. In a next day editorial, The Washington Post declared that it was entirely clear that ‘only one of the candidates is fit to be president.’ Hint: they didn’t mean Mr. Trump, whom they (sadly) accused of having ‘…a warped view of reality, disqualifying himself with practically every overheated sentence.’ On the other hand, ‘Democrats have nominated a flawed but knowledgeable, confident, and even-tempered politician.’ (Just a few ‘flaws,’ like a case of acne. Nothing serious – let’s move along…) Others have pronounced Mr. Trump’s candidacy as dead as Jacob Marley.

“So he’s evidently done for. No need to waste time going to the polls in six weeks. There’s no way that this fool can win after this debacle. Really, who can vote for a guy who can’t even beat a woman in a debate, for heaven’s sake? He’s doomed. Kaput! Verkehrt! (‘E’s toast, is wot ‘e is…)

“Hara-kiri is a distinct possibly – or so Democrats fervently hope. (I hesitate to say they ‘pray’ for this, as that might be deemed ‘hostile speech’ by those hiding in their safe spaces.) But if the neutral media-judges say Mr. Trump lost the debate, and that his campaign will collapse because of it, it must be so.”

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At that time, media reporters, analysts and blabbermouths were proclaiming that a win for Hillary Clinton in November was “90% certain” – maybe as high as 94%, in some predictions. The polls were showing her comfortably ahead of the hated Donald Trump. No question, it was in the bag.

To settle the matter, President Obama blessed Mrs. Clinton as the “most qualified” candidate ever to run for the office. The celebratory marching bands were tuning up, and the dancers were practicing their moves. It was going to be a glorious kickoff for a visionary (slightly flawed) first-ever woman president. Hallelujah! What a great time to be alive.

This celebratory media-gusher continued through the final months of the campaign, right up to about 9 PM on election-day evening, when it became clear that the improbable – the impossible! – was really happening. The brash, lippy New York tycoon was going to defeat the “most qualified ever” woman for the nation’s highest office. After all the media’s exertions it simply couldn’t be true. But it was, and Dems and their Big Media allies (but I repeat myself) have never gotten over it. Indeed, Mrs. Clinton, herself, still hasn’t recovered from the shocking loss, as she repeatedly shows in her public statements.

After Mr. Trump’s unexpected win, the entire Democratic Party, including Obama administration officials still in office, made a last-ditch effort to discredit the president-elect. Before he was sworn in, they floated an invented Russian Dossier, commissioned (and financed) by the Clinton campaign, to prove that he had “colluded” with Russian agents to steal the election.

After Mr. Trump’s inauguration, those same opponents kept harassing his administration. Democrats evidently considered Mr. Trump so dangerous that they were justified in discarding our time-honored “governing compact,” which directs a presidential election’s losers to cease opposition and stand aside so the winners can govern. But instead of standing down, Democrats got a Special Prosecutor appointed whose wide-ranging investigations disrupted two full years of Mr. Trump’s term. No proof of Russian collusion was uncovered, but a new model – all war, all the time – was established for treatment of any Republican president.

Beyond the Special Prosecutor offensive, Democrat-leaning media ‘mau-maued” Mr. Trump unmercifully, with a steady drumbeat of “Collusion! Collusion! Collusion!” while downplaying (or ignoring) his strong economy, border-control, and effective foreign policy. Five years of unremitting media opposition, combined with racialist riots fomented by Black Lives Matter radicals, evidently convinced significant numbers of middle-of-the-road voters that the political climate would be “normalized” if they elected “moderate” Joe Biden.

Barack Obama’s vice-president ran his 2020 presidential campaign as a Good Old Boy Mystery Candidate from Scranton, PA. Joe stayed holed up in the basement of his Delaware home, emerging only occasionally to issue pithy 2-minute statements intended to assure voters that he was on top of things. Even so, the numbers on election-night still indicated a second term for Mr. Trump. But carloads of mail-in ballots of unknown veracity, materializing in days after the election in a few key states, pushed Lunch-bucket Joe over the finish line.

Four years on, we all know how “Good Old Normal Joe:” let millions of illegals stroll into the country; spent us into galloping inflation; and threw the economy into the dumpster. Things were so bad that even his own party had enough of Confused Joe’s normalcy. Just three months before the 2024 election they kicked him off the ticket. Or perhaps they made him “an offer he couldn’t refuse” to help him go quietly. Inner-circle Dems are mum on this. (They want no acts of vengeance…)

But Joe wasn’t finished with his faithless party. He agreed not to run for another term, but he replaced himself with the most liberal former senator in the country – his own vice-president, Kamala Harris. Insiders know that Kamala’s former staff members now occupy an entire wing at the DC Asylum for the Deranged because her maniacal laugh drove them nuts. If she beats Donald Trump, Joe Biden will have his revenge, because she’ll drive the entire country crazy, too, including the few sane members remaining in the once-serious party of FDR and JFK.

My readers might recall my frequent instruction that the media’s central question is: “Where’s the conflict?” This means that reporters and commentators of all political stripes will run breathlessly after any story that promises to answer that question – exactly like what is happening now.

Voila! We have another Democrat-candidate who promises to be a (truly) historic first woman president – and one with dark skin, too. It’s a miracle; she’s gaining everywhere. She and her Marxist running mate are drawing huge crowds. They’ve brought the “joy” back to politics. She’s 90% – maybe even 94% – certain to snatch the win from the hated Donald. She’s got it! It’s in the bag. No need for Trump-supporters to bother voting. It’s all over. Et cetera, et cetera…

Yogi Berra used to say, “It’s déjà vu all over again.” Haven’t we heard all this before? American voters have shown that they can be fooled once by a Mystery Candidate who spins a pleasing tale quite different from how he governs. But the “fool me” tactic doesn’t usually work a second time. From painful experience we learned how the Biden-Harris gang went about “saving democracy.” So it should be entirely clear where the (joyful) Harris-Walz bunch want to take the country.

My hope and prayer is that serious Americans will exert every possible effort to keep that gang from taking us down the pothole-filled road to nowhere. We can be a lot better than what they want to remake us into. We know who Mr. Trump is, and what he wants to do for us. The choice shouldn’t be that hard.