Election 2024: Halftime Report

by Roger L. Simon

It’s hard to say when halftime actually is for Election 2024—when did this all start?—but I’m going to go ahead and weigh in anyway. After all, it’s football season.

At the start, it has to be said that this election has morphed into what may be the most dangerous and cataclysmic ever.

Not only have the Democrats weaponized the justice system, they have withheld Secret Service protection from their own Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

This was justified by some obscure rules they could have easily overturned.

Meanwhile, RFK Jr. has already been under threat of some kind at Los Angeles’s Ebell Theater on Sept. 14 by an armed man claiming to be a U.S. marshal.

Whatever the case, a third Kennedy assassination would be an American disaster of untold proportions. The ramifications would be civilizational.

Get Secret Service protection for this man now!

Nevertheless, for both parties, the polls have been remarkably consistent for well over a year, more than I can recall they ever have been to this extent. That’s something.

For the Democrats, who only have three candidates at present, the Real Clear Politics Average of polls as of Sept. 17 shows President Joe Biden at 66.7 percent, Mr. Kennedy at 11.9 percent and Oprah Winfrey’s “spiritual advisor” Marianne Williamson at 8.4 percent.

The most recent polls (FOX and Harris) have Mr. Kennedy doing somewhat better at 17 percent and 15 percent, respectively, and Williamson fading. But President Biden is still trouncing them both with 71 percent in the FOX News poll.

How does that track with a CNN poll that says about 60 percent of Democrats are concerned that the president is too old to run for reelection?

It doesn’t.

And now, with former President Donald Trump beginning to top President Biden head-to-head, it’s obvious the Democrats’ worries are growing.

Apropos, in a “Meet the Press” broadcast on Sept. 17, President Trump said he didn’t think President Biden was “too old,” but rather “incompetent.” The former president supports intellectual competency tests for all presidential candidates.

Victor Davis Hanson, arguably the most esteemed of conservative pundits, has the chance of a President Biden nomination at 10 percent.

But who would replace him?

Mr. Kennedy isn’t loved by many Democrats because he doesn’t fall in line with their statist views on a variety of issues. To these people, he sounds suspiciously—oh, horrors—like Donald Trump on such matters as COVID-19 and the open border.

He has also advocated for serious reforms of the three-letter agencies, notably the CIA and FBI. His uncle once said he wished to “splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.”

The Democratic Party leadership has little interest in a return to the Kennedy-era Democratic Party. They will swallow all kinds of “woke” excesses to keep their power. (Trans men in women’s sports—no problem.)

So, what will the Democrats do, considering their “bench,” as it’s called, has been deemed weak by the punditocracy.

American politics too often operates through families. In the Democrats’ case, in recent years, it has been the Clinton family, followed by the Obama family and their entourage.

The Obama family has prevailed for now by working its will behind the scenes via the Biden presidency.

It won’t easily relinquish power. I therefore stand by my prediction that Michelle Obama will end up being the Democratic Party candidate in 2024.

This will happen very late in the process to avoid potential snafus and as much conflict as possible. Rules will be circumvented to accommodate this, but that should be done rather easily, in back rooms.

The Democrats have sufficient “superdelegates” to impose literally any candidate they wish at the convention.

It’s pretty hard to deny it. Trump has lapped the field easily for as long as 2024 polls have been conducted. He’s been doing this against the nine opponents (actually, there are even more) currently being listed by Real Clear Politics (RCP).