Two weeks ago, President Joe Biden announced that he is running for reelection in 2024, promising to “finish the job”. What exactly does he want to finish, other than American exceptionalism as we know it?

America is rapidly imploding on many fronts – financial and economic, cultural, safety, and our place in the world. Does finishing the job mean erasing every achievement of former President Donald Trump? Or is he completing former President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign promise, "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America"?

Biden’s presidency is actually Obama’s third term, exactly as Obama described in a 2020 interview with Stephen Colbert, “He joked that he would be willing to sit 'in my basement' and 'deliver the lines' to a 'frontman or frontwoman' with an earpiece.”

Biden is the front man while Obama transforms the country. Biden is now expendable, having served his role. Can America even recover from Obama’s third term? The left can’t let Trump anywhere near the White House and need another leftist in office to cement America’s “fundamental transformation.”

Was Biden’s reelection announcement serious or just a response to Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s announced candidacy? Is Sleepy Joe a placeholder for someone else to jump into the race as the Democrat candidate?

On paper, this should be another Trump victory. On May 3, Rasmussen Reports’ presidential tracking poll of likely US voters noted that Trump’s total approval was 50% compared to Biden’s at 46%.

What about in a head-to-head matchup? “The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that, if the 2024 presidential election were between Biden and former President Donald Trump, 47% of Likely U.S. voters would vote for Trump, while 40% would vote for Biden.”

Trump must first win the GOP nomination, which a year and a half before the election, is a longshot, despite the polls.

A recent CBS News/YouGov survey noted that among Republican primary voters, 58% plan on voting for Trump compared to 22% for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, almost a 3-fold difference. The few remaining contenders are in the low to mid-single digits.

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Polls aren’t elections and this is where Trump’s challenges begin.

Can he even win the nomination? Expect an endless stream of lawsuits and indictments tying up Trump in depositions and a barrage of negative press from Big Tech and the corporate media. Expect far left judges to rule that Trump is ineligible to appear on the ballot, with Soros-funded state secretaries of state eager to keep his name off their state ballots.

These trials will all be timed to begin next year when primary season heats up. How can Trump run a campaign and hold rallies when he is tied up in depositions and court? There will be Fulton County, Alvin Bragg, and Special Counsel Jack Smith all planning their big trials for campaign season next year.

Expect scores of women to accuse Trump of rape, even if they have no recollection of when or where it happened. Trials will be held in Trump-hating NYC or other deep blue jurisdictions before leftist judges that will ensure that the trial is stacked against Trump. That will be enough for lawfare to ensnarl Trump as the Lilliputians tied down Gulliver.

Expect the weaponized judicial and intelligence agencies to manufacture scandals against Trump, as they did with “Russian collusion” and hide or ignore scandals of his opponents, as with Hunter Biden’s laptop.

If Trump somehow prevails and wins the nomination, his troubles are far from over.

Without serious election reform, what’s to stop a handful of swing states from stopping vote counting on Election Night at 10 PM, with Trump in the lead, only to resume in the morning, with his opponent now ahead? What’s to stop voting machine malfunctions in heavily GOP districts? Will there be scores of ballots from a single small apartment, with unverified signatures, and no chain of custody? Will a senile Biden again receive millions more votes than a far more popular candidate Obama?

Have any of the problems from the 2020 election been fixed? If not, then Trump could run against Mickey Mouse and lose, and Fox News will call the election midafternoon on Election Day with voting still going on. If the ruling class is “selecting” the president, rather than we the people “electing” our president, the result will be a foregone conclusion.

Who might Trump’s general election opponent be? RFK Jr, while appealing to old-school traditional Democrats as he is the heir to Camelot and the only remaining serious politician from the most famous Democrat family, has his own uphill battle.

The Democrat establishment will give Kennedy the Bernie treatment, making sure their preferred candidate wins the nomination, not some upstart threatening to upset the “big club”.

Gavin Newsom is too male and white. Hillary Clinton is already a two-time loser who has not grown any more likeable than she was in 2016. The real dark horse candidate to watch out for is Michelle Obama.

Filmmaker Joel Gilbert makes a compelling case for this scenario in his recent book and film. Mrs. Obama hits the triple crown of intersectionality – black, female, and first combination of both in the Oval Office. She is following her husband’s pathway from 2008, including books and tours, and replacing Iowa with Democrat-friendly South Carolina for the first primary. The Democrat convention will conveniently be held in her former hometown of Chicago.

Newt Gingrich agrees, telling Fox News, “The former First Lady has already kicked off the soft launch of her presidential campaign.” Roger Stone concurs.

Imagine the media coverage of a Trump-Obama campaign. Anything and everything Trump utters will be either racist or sexist. Mrs. Obama has no record for judgement or criticism. She will be the Oprah candidate, appealing to the new Democrat base of single, middle-aged, college educated white women who abhor the toxic masculinity and mean tweets of the Orange Man.

Are we watching a movie play out with a predetermined ending? Is the ruling class telling Trump and his supporters, George Carlin style, “It’s a big club and you ain’t in it”? Are elections relevant anymore, reflecting the will of the elites, not the hoi polloi?

Trump is taking the slings and arrows, as he proclaimed during the 2016 campaign. He undoubtedly knows what’s happening and is prepared for the myriad forces working against him. He prevailed in 2016 but the enemy is stronger and won’t get fooled again as they did in 2016.

Does Trump have a few aces up his sleeve or is his campaign a fool’s errand?

Brian C Joondeph, MD, is a physician and writer.

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