The only election Lyndon Johnson ever lost was due to it being stolen. It was stolen for his rival Pappy O’Daniel not by O’Daniel’s allies but by his enemies because they wanted Pappy, the sitting governor of Texas gone. So when the chance came to steal that senate seat after Johnson made a rare mistake in reporting a key district early they jumped in with both feet and Johnson would have to wait six years to steal that senate seat back from Pappy’s successor Coke Stevenson.
And that brings me to something a friend of mine said in conversation yesterday that frankly I didn’t think of.
As you all know by now Kamala ended up picking the rather incompetent governor of Minnesota Tim Walz over the VERY competent governor of Pennsylvania Josh Shapiro as her running mate. This was likely because a pick of Shapiro might disturb the vital “death to Israel” and “death to Jews” vote that has been very vocal lately.
My friend noted that Shapiro is one of those rare things, a competent Democrat who has not driven his state into the ground. Furthermore he has ambitions for higher things and there is one thing we can be sure of: If Kamala Harris somehow wins in 2024, he wont be running for president until 2032.
BUT if Trump is elected he is instantly a lame duck meaning that he can run in 2028 against a J.D. Vance who will likely be bloodied in some tough primaries as there is actually a pretty deep GOP bench.
Do I think Shapiro would try to steal Pennsylvania FOR Trump? Nope, that would be an unforgivable sin for too many Democrat voters, but he might choose to do the next best thing, not allow them to steal it for Kamala.
Not only does preventing such a steal raise his cred with swing voters within the state when his re-election comes around but would allow him to co-operate with a Trump administration on energy which would produce a boom there that he could take credit for. It would be a powerful contrast to California the disaster where his chief rival Gavin Newsom is presiding over.
I must confess none of this had occurred to me but it DID occur to my friend who also notes that with the woke currently in retreat Shapiro might be able to marginalize that wing of the party, blame them for any Trump victory and in a sense use that to purge them from their place of power.
The one fly in the ointment is that simple demographics says to me that he can’t purge the “death to the Jews” wing but you might recall when he was being considered for the VP slot he was already hinting at compromises to appease them and of course in four years there might not be a Hamas or Hezbollah for them to support.
Will it work out this way? I don’t know but I do find the argument credible and thus has given me real hope, because the only way the steal worked last time was because everybody was on board. If Pennsylvania doesn’t play along the likelihood of successfully stealing the national election is low and the risk of an investigation from a crusading Trump AG and Justice department who would be highly motivated to investigate any steal in Arizona, or Michigan or Wisconsin is just too dangerous for a party that can’t stand scrutiny.
And frankly for all their anti Trump furor the Democrat party and the media didn’t want Kamala and were talking about her as a liability right up until Biden forced her on them.
In the old days when a party was facing a bad loss they basically took the hit and started planning on their comeback, if my friend is right the Democrats might actually be forced to play it on the up and up, not because they love Trump but because of the ambitions of a key Democrat in a key spot who might just decide to force them to do the right thing (and the smart thing in the long run) to satisfy his own personal agenda.
It’s so crazy it just might work.
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