There is a tide in the affairs of men, as Shakespeare said, and now, two weeks before election day, that tide has swung decisively toward Donald Trump. Forget the establishment polls. The betting sites show him leading by nearly thirty points. He’s ahead in every last battleground state, according to RCP. Embattled Democrat senatorial candidates, including Bob Casey, Sherrod Brown, Jon Tester, and Tammy Baldwin have abandoned Harris and allied themselves with Trump. Both the LA Times and WaPo have refused to endorse Harris. There are more registered GOP voters today than at any previous point in history.

As for Mrs. Harris-Emhoff… well, “collapse” is the polite word. She has lost the Teamsters, diehard donks since the days they actually drove horses, along with the firefighters and the border patrolmen. She has lost the male Hispanic vote, and is losing the male black vote. The southeastern U.S. is in a collective white-hot rage over her flippant response to the hurricanes. Lil’ Timmy Walz’s debate performance, intended to pull her out of her tailspin, was a debacle of historical proportions. She can’t open her mouth without generating controversy and disgust. A week ago, she had four for four: four scandals in four days – missing the Al Smith dinner, producing a video insulting to Catholics (with the cardinal present, to boot), insulting religious believers at a rally, and her “I worked at Micky D’s” story being revealed as bogus. She’s even been blowing (can I say that?) the most supportive venues. As Joe Concha put it, she’s “the only Democrat on record who fumbled an interview on “The View.”

Trump’s chief challenge remains cheating. We’re not going to debate whether cheating in fact occurred in 2020 – the only ones who dispute that at this point are the bought, the braindead, and the comatose.

We see many claims that the big cheat will inevitably defeat Trump in the end. This is usually put as “They [otherwise unidentified] won’t allow him into the Oval Office ever again.” This is generally heard from doom and damnation types who can’t see a cloud in the sky without predicting the Deluge. But the question remains: if in 2020, why not in 2024?

There are a lot of factors arguing in favor of this thesis. We’re talking about the Democrats, who have been masters of the electoral cheat since the heyday of Boss Tweed. The apparatus is undoubtedly still in place, minus a few defections such as the newly “libertarian” Mark Zuckerberg. The Deep State also has not gone anywhere.

But overriding all that is the vast array of elements, social, political, psychological, what have you, that can only be termed “historical circumstances.” In hindsight, the overall conditions in 2020 seem primed for cheating. Today, not so much.

Politics -- particularly electoral politics – moves quickly. A week is a long time, and four years is an epoch. What was possible even last week is often unobtainable today -- a lesson that Madame Doritos is even now learning. It seems clear that the moment for massive electoral cheating on the 2020 model has passed … at least for now.

• First, there’s no COVID. The “pandemic” was the critical element in the Big Cheat of 2020, acting as a massive distraction and allowing blue states to illegally put in place elements such as absentee ballots with no oversight on the grounds that conditions required it. Looking back, it’s clear that while COVID was real enough, everything that accompanied it – including its origin, severity, death rates, and “treatments,” were fabricated, much of it by the Democrats and their allies in the bureaucracy and the media in order to manipulate the election. One of these days, we’ll get a Molly Ball who will reveal how this all went down – whose idea it was to inflate the epidemic, who came up with the idea of using it as a combined battering ram and shield, how it was all organized and financed. We may rest assured that no such circumstance exists at the moment.
• Eyes wide open. Mass naivety reigned in 2020. The theft of a presidential election was considered outside the realm of possibility, even though it has in fact been engineered several times, most notably in the 1960 Nixon/Kennedy faceoff. This state of mind governed the reaction to both the nearly open cheating on election night itself along with the post-election response. This is past history. A far more realistic attitude governs the GOP and MAGA movement this time around. Over 400 laws have been passed nationwide to curtail possible cheating. Numerous court cases have been filed to uncover and prevent such efforts, many of them successful. Attempts to set the stage for potential cheating have been publicly exposed. We can be certain of a much tougher stance when election day at last rolls around – no more shutting down the count and politely leaving when asked or allowing local law enforcement – which has no standing in these proceedings – to bully and menace election watchers. The Dems are not going to have free play this time around.
• The elites are truly frightened. It’s a characteristic of propaganda that those who produce it inevitably come to believe it. Any brief conversation with your average everyday lefty will reveal that they are one and all convinced that the MAGA movement is comprised of crazed Morlocks, each with his own private armory and an obsessive yearning to take a few blue-haired scalps. The mythology erected around the Jan. 6 protest, in which the only deaths were those of three innocent marchers, is commonly cited as “evidence” of such an outcome. And they may not be totally wrong. The three assassination attempts, each rife with unanswered questions, has drawn matters to a breaking point. There is a sense of tension surrounding this election absent from all previous ones, excepting that of 1860. Demonstrated or even suspected cheating could easily result in civil unrest, aimed not at third parties but directly at those suspected of chicanery. The elites are perfectly justified in being fearful. The best way to avoid being targeted by an outraged citizenry -- as they must know -- is not to trigger it in the first place.

The final factor, and perhaps most vital, is the nature of Donald J. Trump. No longer a flamboyant billionaire, an everyday politician, or even a mere ex-president, he is now a world-historical figure, a man who braved assassins, the Deep State, the military, and this country’s political and social elites on behalf of principles declared by many to be obsolete. His comeback over the past two years has been extraordinary, unparalleled in American history and possibly the historical record overall. Certainly, past comeback kings such as Santa Anna, Dost Mohammed, or even the great Winston Churchill would stand in awe of Trump’s achievement.

Just look at him at the Al Smith dinner. Cheerful, confident, energetic, tossing around quips and jokes like confetti. And the opposition? Nervous and cowering – Chuck Schumer with his shoulders hunched up around his ears, a fixed blank smile on his face, Letitia James in the back row, squatting in the dimness like a malignant gnome. No shrieks of “I will destroy him …” Not that night.

Trump has earned this. It was said that when Democrats approached 21st-century Bond villain George Soros to beg for aid during the 2004 election, Soros told them, “You cannot stop a tsunami.” As was true then, so it is today.

And that’s where it stands as Nov. 5 approaches like a freight train. Will there be cheating? Certainly. As we pointed out, they’re Democrats. They can’t stop themselves any more than a scorpion can desist from striking. But not on the level of 2020, and not enough to change the results. Cheating will only take you so far. It has taken the Dems about as far as they will ever get.

We must be alert, we must keep a close watch, and be ready to howl if that’s what’s called for. After 9/11, the slogan was “if you see something, say something.” Nothing has changed today, and the odds are just as high.

Image: AT via Magic Studio