I Am Not a Witch

If you want four more years of Joe Biden, nominate the Republican who'll be spending 2024 publicly proclaiming, "I am not a criminal."

Christine O’Donnell is a nice lady and a Tea Party favorite who, in Delaware’s 2010 Senate race, is best remembered for arguing, fervently and correctly, “I am not a witch.” She lost by 17 points to a quite Leftish candidate, Chris Coons, in a blue but not crazy state.

Ms. O’Donnell has a lesson for Republicans that we ignore at our and the nation’s peril: If the campaign is about you and your negatives, you lose. If it’s about the other guy and his negatives, you win. It’s not a lot more complicated than that. And this lesson is true in spades when you have lots of negatives and your opponent does too, creating a wonderfully fertile field for the electorate to reject whichever indigestible personality is busiest occupying its exasperated attention.

So the name of the game is to occupy the electorate’s attention as little as possible, and let your less-than-captivating opponent have the merciless spotlight to himself. Joe Biden, not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, knew this last time around. As has been widely remarked upon, he campaigned — to the extent he campaigned at all — from the basement. He won by 7,000,000 votes. He did this because he was running against a blowhard egomaniac, who, even though he had by-and-large a successful presidency, and strengthened the country, insisted on making himself the issue — on grabbing that spotlight. The leftwing press was more than delighted to help him. After he lost, he spent what feels like every waking minute alternately denying the reality of his defeat and blaming everyone else for it. He blamed not just his enemies in the MSM, which he correctly nails for its viciousness and dishonesty, but his friends as well, good men of integrity like Jeff Sessions, Bill Barr and many, many more.

OK, denying one’s own responsibility and instead acting like a bratty child is bad enough. Now think about next year. You don’t have to be a genius to know that it will feature a campaign like none the country has ever seen, with an unpopular, aging, doddering incumbent squaring off — unless things change — against The Donald, who will spend a huge chunk of his time inside federal court and outside, focusing on a roiled past rather than the country’s future, and insisting “I am not a criminal.” He will make this “pitch” talking about, and being forced to talk about, his very worst moments rather than his achievements. 2024 will feel like a “Groundhog Day” daily re-run of January 6.

“I am not a criminal.” Does this strike you as a stirring campaign theme?

I guess, “I am not a criminal” is better than “I am not a witch,” but not by much. And I can tell you this: It’s a sure loser. This would be true in any event, but especially so when, while Ms. O’Donnell in fact was not a witch, Donald Trump is likely to be found to be a criminal, at least in the misappropriated documents/obstruction case, as Paul has explained, and quite possibly in the more recent January 6 conspiracy case as well. And even if he gets acquitted in both (which isn’t going to happen), the headline news, every day and every night for weeks if not months, will feature a courtroom defense that will go like, “While my actions may have been misguided and imprudent, they didn’t cross the line into illegality.”

Does that strike you as a winning campaign? To be the leader of the Free World?

It’s worth noting here that Trump’s political defenses — they’re piling on me, it’s a two-tiered justice system, Merrick Garland is corrupt, etc. — are not legal defenses. They won’t be allowed at trial , and even if they were allowed, they won’t do Trump any good either legally or politically. They won’t work legally because, once you get past the motions stage and into trial, the question becomes whether the defendant did what the indictment says he did — the part of all this on which Jack Smith is at his strongest and Trump is at his weakest. They won’t work politically because, for that slice of voters still undecided about the presidential election — in other words, the ones likely to determine the outcome in a closely divided country — the dominant question coming up to the election is likely to be, “Who is best and strongest for my future and America’s future?” Is there any less appealing answer to that question than Trump’s incessantly painting himself as the victim of a receding past?

I want to emphasize here that I am not and never have been a Never Trumper. I voted for him twice. If forced to by the Democrats’ increasingly rabid extremism, race-huckstering toxins, and totalitarian bent, I may well again. And I understand that he’s been pilloried and handicapped by malign forces in the culture and the press, forces that are at least as much in dishonest denial about the dangers they pose to America as Trump is in denial about his failures.

But the next election is not about vindicating Trump, to whatever extent one may think he deserves vindication, or about getting revenge. It’s about making sure that Joe Biden (or Kamala Harris or Gavin Newsome) don’t do four more years of damage. As I’m sure the great majority of Ringside readers would agree, the country can’t afford it.

If we make the campaign about sagging incumbent Joe Biden, his persona and his incompetence, we’re going to win. He’s way underwater in job approval polling; the electorate correctly thinks the country is headed in the wrong direction; and he’s too old for the job, as essentially everyone knows. But if it’s about (almost equally old) Donald Trump, every day pounding the table about his victimhood and about how “I am not a criminal,” we’re going to lose.

Whether it’s DeSantis or Pence or Haley or Scott (or maybe, with luck, Youngkin if Trump can be forced out of the race in time) is something that will sort itself out over the next few months. But, in order to avoid four more years of what we’ve been seeing for the last two and a-half, it can’t be the second coming of Christine O’Donnell.