The Left wants Donald Trump on the ballot this fall – the Trump with no internal governor who wrote the mean tweets, the Trump of the (often dishonest or fabricated) media narratives, and especially of the “January 6” of fact, fiction and in between. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then, so does the GOP. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But which <\/em>Donald Trump? The business tycoon? The loose cannon that could rope-a-dope either world leaders into agreement, or his own cabinet into distraction? Or the person that focused the economic and social concerns of a whole lot of people – middle America, blue-collar “Red” America, and by the bye more Black and Latino voters than any Republican in two generations, into political action?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Virginia gubernatorial election showed us a hint: it’s #3. The first two camps barely registered in that fairly meat ‘n potatoes contest. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We’ve got a group of primaries coming up this month – Idaho, and later this month Georgia. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But it started last night, with Ohio’s primaries for Governor and Senate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And it saw the above-mentioned three camps squaring off<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Was it that voters wanted a businessman? Well, Mike Gibbons was a successful businessman.<\/p> Was it that Trump was \u201cthe craziest son of a b****<\/a>\u201d in the room, as Thomas Massie sometimes wondered? Then\u00a0Josh Mandel was your man<\/a>.<\/p> Or was it the \u201cAmerica First\u201d agenda on the immigration, trade, and foreign policy? If that\u2019s what you thought, then J. D. Vance was your candidate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n And the winner: Vance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Vance\u2019s advantage was that he campaigned on the politics he believes in. That\u2019s one of the reasons he was able to campaign so much more than his opponents; he doesn\u2019t need to read from cue cards. It\u2019s why he was able to\u00a0constantly reiterate his position on the Ukraine war with confidence<\/a>, even as his opponents got lost while searching for their own views. Much has been made of Vance\u2019s supposed transformation from the author of\u00a0Hillbilly Elegy<\/em>\u00a0to the Senate candidate endorsed by Marjorie Taylor Greene. He shifted his assessment of Trump, absolutely, but his politics have remained much the same. Even Vance\u2019s vengeful former roommate \u2014 who tried to harm his campaign by sharing a text showing that, years ago, Vance made an overheated comparison of Trump to Hitler \u2014 ended up proving the point. In that text exchange, Vance was saying that the Republican Party needed to deliver tangible benefits to working-class white people who have migrated into the party. That\u2019s the message\u00a0he had three years ago, too<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n I suspect this is at least part of the reason Big Left is trying to make they hay they are over the leaked Roe <\/em>decision; the GOP is running on the Trump legacy that’s least convenient to then. .<\/p>\n\n\n\n We’ll wait to see how Idaho and Georgia turn out. <\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Left wants Donald Trump on the ballot this fall – the Trump with no internal governor who wrote the mean tweets, the Trump of the (often dishonest or fabricated) media narratives, and especially of the “January 6” of fact, fiction and in between. But then, so does the GOP. But which Donald Trump? The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[321,427,425,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-left","category-campaign-22","category-campaign-24","category-republicans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=81935"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81936,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81935\/revisions\/81936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}