It has always been my contention, drawn from long experience along with wide reading, that the American Left is fundamentally stupid. This is both in a general and particular sense. You have to be a little dense – more than a little – to accept left-wing ideas in the first place. But even among the Left in general, American leftists have a thickheadedness all their own. European leftists have often been true intellectuals – people who do the reading, who are open to debate, who believe in ideas. But American lefties are simply punks. They think only in terms of slogans. They can’t reconcile experience and ideas. They can’t read or understand the historical record, or even grasp why it has any connection to the current situation – which strongly argues for a lack of understanding of simple cause and effect. They can’t come up with any kind of rational program. They almost always wind up sabotaging themselves. They are their own worst enemies.

Which brings us to Alvin Bragg, the dumbest attorney in the United States of America.

Bragg has always been clear that his major goal is the destruction, both political and personal, of Donald Trump. With the April 4 indictment, he has thrown down the gauntlet, pinning his own career on the outcome.

And there Bragg has a problem, one that, as is true of most leftists, can be defined as a reality issue. Because Donald Trump is not who Bragg, and the rest of the American Left, thinks he is. On the surface, Trump is the man that your parents, teachers, and authorities all warn you against. Loud, blustery, and boastful, the consummate carnival barker, the guy who hides bottomless corruption under a flamboyant façade. But in fact, Trump embodies a paradox, because that façade hides not deep corruption, but a unique brand of personal virtue. Yes, Trump likes his babes, perhaps almost as much (hard to believe as it might be) as Big Bill Clinton. But hit on an intern? Never happen. Donald Trump dallies with big girls, ladies of experience who hold no illusions. Unlike the characterization of Clinton by one Arkansas businessman, you could trust your daughter with him.

For eight years now, the fierce spotlight of the media, the power of the Department of Justice, the might of the Deep State, have been turned against Trump. They have examined his entire record. They have turned over every stone, and they have found nothing. The accusations of political and business corruption have ended with the accusers themselves discredited or in prison. This is a process that no other visible political figure could have endured – with the exception of Mike Pence. Looking at Ron DeSantis, for instance, we find strange entanglements with the WEF and other globalists that will, sooner or later, need to be followed up. But Donald Trump is sui generis.

We know how Alvin Bragg has sought to overcome this -- by piling up misdemeanors (some allegedly committed while Trump wasn’t even present) one atop the other in the belief that after a certain point, they turn into felonies. This is moronic enough as it is, and won’t survive the first encounter with an unbiased judge. But then we come to Bragg’s strategy.

That strategy is easily divined from the date of the next court appearance, as arranged by the prosecutor himself: December 6, 2023.

Now that is mere weeks before the commencement of the 2024 presidential campaign, a campaign in which Trump will almost certainly be representing the GOP. And what happens on December 6, you ask? I can tell you. In plain fact, anybody can. Bragg will lurch into court and address the bench: your honor, the prosecution will require a little more time. Say, a month, maybe six weeks. We thank the court.

Because, of course, this has nothing to do with traditional juridical agendas – of correcting wrongs, doing justice, or punishing the guilty. Bragg knows his case is going nowhere, that as soon as it reaches an appellate court, it goes down in flames. But all that is beside the point, which is to put Trump on trial through the 2024 campaign season. With luck, and the standard incompetence of New York City’s legal system, all the way through, straight to election day. By that means, Bragg keeps DJT out of the White House and earns the adulation and adoration of the entire American Left for the balance of his days.  

But in truth, this case is unlikely to get even as far as December.

The reasons are clear enough. Donald Trump has always been at his best when he was up against it. This is true of his business career and it’s true today. For Trump, the walls are always closing in, and he’s always outside when they finally do. All that he has ever needed is a microphone and a place to stand.

So what has Bragg gone and done? He has given Donald Trump both, and then some. He set up a stage, dusted it off, and pointed all the spotlights at the one individual in current American politics who can overcome adversity by sheer force of personality.

Bragg has made Trump a martyr, underlining his basic message of “They’re after you – I’m just in the way.” He has provided him with months – two-thirds of a year, in fact – to hone it, to work it, to bring it home.

As a prosecutor, Bragg has painted himself into a corner. His beau geste was to indict Trump. What can he do to top that? Anything else would be an anticlimax. What’s he going to do – indict him again?

Add to that the fact that the GOP has suddenly discovered that the blade of lawfare cuts both ways. Jim Jordan’s plan to hold hearings on Bragg’s tenure as DA – and in New York City itself -- is a masterstroke, putting Bragg on the defensive while providing him with next to no room to maneuver. His only alternative was to run to the courts with all the gravitas of a six-year-old wailing, “They’re all picking on me!” And this is only the beginning.

Bragg should have studied his target more closely. This is far from the first time anybody has used the courts to take down Donald Trump. And where today is Michael Avenatti? Where is Julie Swetnick?

The Left believes in Bragg because they believe that Donald Trump is what they see in their nightmares. He must be a criminal. He must be a racist. He must be a Nazi. Because if he is no such thing, then what are they?

But it’s all too little and too late. Bragg’s grand gesture has fizzled out. He didn’t dare defy the Secret Service to put a president in cuffs, and make him do the perp walk. Deprived of its spectacle, the news cycle is moving on.

The U.S. District Court’s refusal to grant a restraining order against Jim Jordan has left Bragg humiliated. There will be others, as often as they can be prepared and rolled out. Never eager to associate with failure, leftists will begin unwinding themselves from him, as they did with Avenatti, Mueller, Kinzinger, and others.  

As for our squad -- if Alvin Bragg didn’t exist, we’d have to invent him.

Image: Lamerie