Looking back, looking forward.
Former President Donald Trump, left, is joined by his attorney Todd Blanche while speaking to members of the media after arriving at Manhattan criminal court, Tuesday, May 7, 2024 in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, Pool)
Just for the exercise I looked back at where things stood at this point in 2016. I chose 2016 rather than 2020 because of the huge distortions in 2020 brought about by the COVID pandemic.
At this point in 2016, Texas senator Ted Cruz had just been crushed by Donald Trump in the Indiana primary. That blowout effectively clinched the nomination for Trump. Trump immediately pivoted to the general election and began lining up huge rallies in the battleground states.
For its part, the pundit class was all but unanimous in their belief that Trump had no chance against Hillary Clinton.
In other words, a non-conventional candidate like Donald Trump notwithstanding, we were busy covering a rather conventional campaign cycle.
Not this year.
Donald Trump isn’t holding arena-filling rallies. He is stuck in a lower Manhattan courtroom as he is being tried by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg for crimes that even Bragg is having a hard time explaining. Yesterday, former porn star Stormy Daniels testified against Trump. FOX New Radio’s Brooke Singman filed this report.
Attorneys for former President Trump requested a mistrial after the judge had to warn Stormy Daniels and the prosecution that her testimony gave irrelevant and unnecessary details about her alleged 2006 affair with Trump. But despite admitting the witness is hard to control, the judge still decided to proceed with the case. During her testimony, Stormy Daniels was clear on her feelings towards the former President Trump’s attorney, asking, “Am I correct that you hate President Trump?,” and Daniels responding, “Correct”. And when asked, “And you want him to go to jail?,” Daniels replied, “If he is found guilty, yes.”
The big story at this point in 2016 was the presidential race. But the big story in 2024 is the wave of anti-Israel – pro-Hama protests that is washing over the top college campuses across the country. The former president lost no time yesterday laying those protests at the feet of President Biden.
The country is on fire. There are protests all over the country. I’ve never seen anything like this. Many graduation ceremonies are being canceled. They canceled as you know in Columbia. They’re canceling a lot of them. And we have a president that just refuses to talk because he can’t talk. You know that.”
But the calendar is the calendar, and we are exactly six months from Election Day. As of today, Donald Trump leads in all seven battleground states of Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Nevada. He leads by greater than the margin of error in four of them.
So, six months out, there is one parallel to the 2016 election cycle that remains intact. Just as it did in 2016 and assuming the polls hold, the race comes down to Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. For Trump to win, he will need to take any two of the three. For Biden to win, he will have to run the table.
