{"id":1016,"date":"2025-08-25T14:56:22","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T18:56:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/growpurpose.com\/skipjack\/?p=1016"},"modified":"2025-08-25T18:09:19","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T22:09:19","slug":"looking-back-and-ahead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/growpurpose.com\/skipjack\/2025\/08\/25\/looking-back-and-ahead\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking Back, and Ahead"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Sept. 11, 2023, I wrote a blog under this headline: \u201cGOP: Please Nominate Trump.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

I wanted Trump to be the Republicans\u2019 2024 presidential candidate because he would be so easy to defeat, and also because he would take down GOP House and Senate candidates with him. I predicted a blue tsunami \u2013 Democratic control of the presidency, House and Senate \u2013 and I kept on predicting it right up to Election Day.<\/p>\n

And obviously I was wrong. It didn\u2019t happen. The opposite did. Republicans won it all.<\/p>\n

But I stand by my reasoning for those predictions, and I\u2019ll use the same reasoning now to predict the same result for the 2026 midterm elections that I predicted for 2024: a blue tsunami with Democrats taking control of both houses, even if Trump\u2019s plan to rig the election by extreme gerrymandering works.<\/p>\n

The reasons that I was so far off with those predictions in 2023 are contained in the words I wrote then:<\/p>\n

\u201cI want people to be forced to look at him and see him clearly for what he is. Right now the news media is focusing on horserace stuff: who\u2019s winning, who\u2019s losing, who wants to be vice president, who has a chance, who doesn\u2019t, why\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cBut once we get down to a two-person race, the media will focus such an unmercifully bright spotlight on Trump that decent Republicans will have no choice but to face up to who he is, and what he is. When that happens the unfairness of the College of Electors will not matter. Americans will turn out in numbers more overwhelming than ever before to throw the bum out. \u2026 I have more faith in the American people than to believe they would even come close to electing a thug like Trump.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

But then they did, so what happened?<\/p>\n

Two things.<\/p>\n

First, I assumed the legacy press would do its job, but it didn\u2019t. Remember the Trump-Biden debate? Trump came across as vibrant while he filled the airways with a string of baldfaced lies, and Biden came across as old. That night, and long afterward, the press focused on Biden\u2019s weaknesses, and largely ignored Trump\u2019s constant barrage of provable lies, his growing affinity for fascism and a dictatorship, and, most importantly, Project 2025.<\/p>\n

About that project: The press had known for a long time that the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation and more than 50 similarly minded groups had spent years writing a plan designed to replace our democracy with a dictatorship. Trump said he had never heard of it, though, so the press pretty much left it alone after that, focusing instead on Biden\u2019s foibles. (Once elected, of course, Trump hired the project\u2019s lead authors to help him implement it.)<\/p>\n

Second, I assumed Democrats would be so outraged at Trump they would vote in droves, but they weren\u2019t outraged and they didn\u2019t vote. Harris lost the popular vote by nearly 2.3 million votes, but 9 million people who voted for Biden in 2020 did not vote in 2024. Had they voted, and assuming they would have remained Democrat voters, she would have won by nearly 8 million votes. That would have exceeded Biden\u2019s 7-million-vote victory over Trump, and Biden\u2019s victory was considered a \u201cstomp.\u201d<\/p>\n

And consider: Trump\u2019s opponent could hardly have been weaker. Harris had four strikes against her from the beginning. She is Black, she is a woman, she had no time at all to prepare for a race she did not expect to be in, and she was never a formidable candidate to begin with. When she was running against Biden for the Democratic nomination, she polled a steady 3 percent. Considering all that, she did well.<\/p>\n

My optimism for a blue tsunami is based on the plain-to-view fact that times are changing, and the reasons that allowed Trump to defeat Harris don\u2019t exist any longer. They have even reversed. The legacy press is showing signs that it is coming out of its slumber and beginning to report Trump as he really is, a corrupt, criminally mentally ill, democracy-destroying dictator who cares only about himself. We the People already see that, clearly and unmistakably, as evidenced by the millions of energized people who turn out all over the nation week after week to express their disgust with Trump and publicly oppose him.<\/p>\n

\n


\n