Trump won the Iowa primary yesterday by a historic margin. His victory speech was gracious, and his underlying theme was the inevitability of him getting the Republican nomination. He’s already started to reach out to unify the party.

President Biden has already started campaigning against Trump. His entire strategy at this point seems to be to compare Trump to Hitler.

Within hours, the campaign released a statement attacking Trump for having “channeled his role models as he parroted Adolf Hitler, praised Kim Jong Un, and quoted Vladimir Putin while running for president on a promise to rule as a dictator and threaten American democracy.”

Biden’s Valley Forge speech echoed the red speech he gave in 2022.

In remarks that cast the future of the country in stark and dire terms — focusing more tightly on his predecessor than perhaps in any other speech in his presidency — Biden framed his campaign in sweeping language. “Today we’re here to answer the most important of questions: Is democracy still America’s sacred cause?” he said. “It’s what the 2024 election is all about.”

Why is Biden starting with Trump=Hitler and “if Trump wins, democracy will end?” Clearly, he’s trying to rally a base that is less than enthusiastic about supporting an octogenarian for a second term. Trump hatred is red meat for his base. But there’s also something much more insidious going on.

Biden’s rhetoric is also meant to rile up Trump’s base.

The 2020 “I’m not Trump” strategy won’t work for Biden in 2024. It worked in 2020 when people really had no idea what Biden was proposing other than a “return to normalcy” and “no more mean tweets.” He told us exactly what he was going to do on the border and that he would end fossil fuels, but everyone now acts like his actions were a surprise. He can call Trump a dictator, but that won’t be persuasive to the majority because we lived through an entire term of Trump. Aside from the black swan of Covid-19, those Trump years gave us a great economy and none of the dire predictions about his presidency came true. This time around, Biden can’t win with just “I’m not Trump.” He may be able to win the vote of the 40% of people who will crawl across broken glass to vote against Trump, but he had those votes already. So why take this strategy if it won’t get him enough votes to win this time?

Biden needs to change the game. He wants Trump’s base to be angry and irrational. If he can get right wing violence to break out across the country, the great middle will beg to just make it stop. They’ll not only vote for Biden, they’ll let him do anything it takes just to get things back to normal.

I wrote a post back in August 2023 that said Trump would be convicted and the consequences would be used to ban guns. Unfortunately, everything is proceeding as I have foreseen it. Read that article and see how many predictions were made that have since come to pass. The mugshot. Why did Gavin Newsom debate DeSantis? I got the part about the Jan 6 trial starting first wrong, but that just makes the Manhattan case the first one.

Most Republicans still are not considering the consequences of Trump facing criminal trials as soon as March. The two federal cases are currently delayed awaiting rulings from higher courts on various issues. The Georgia case is uncertain. But the Manhattan case is moving forward and the next hearing is scheduled for February 15th. The Manhattan case is still set for March 25, 2025. There are 34 felony charges in that case.  Taken together, the charges carry a maximum of 136 years in prison under New York law. My August article explained why a Manhattan jury is extremely likely to convict on at least a few charges, regardless of how weak the case. Fair or unfair, Trump can expect convictions for multiple felonies in this case.

Republicans tend to wave their hands and say “He won’t be going to prison soon, the cases will be tied up in appeals for years.” Here’s the problem: In New York, an application for bail pending an appeal cannot be made until after sentencing. That application must convince the appeals court that the defendant is likely to win their appeal. If Trump is convicted of multiple felonies, at the minimum he will go into custody when he is sentenced. He could even go into custody immediately upon conviction because it could be argued that there is a high likelihood that he would flee the state of New York. The best he could hope for would be an ankle bracelet and being unable to leave Manhattan while awaiting sentencing.

This could happen as early as April. The trial will probably proceed on the March 25th schedule and could take three weeks. Super Tuesday is March 5, 2024. We could have the crisis of Trump being convicted and taken into custody after having already sealed the deal to be the Republican nominee.

What will be the reaction to that event? Will “radical MAGAs” who have been repeatedly vilified by Biden sit on their hands? We just got a taste of people coming out of the woodwork to conduct an armed protest in Virginia.

You can joke about those guys being “Meal Team Six,” but how many of those groups showing up in New York would it take to have a kinetic exchange? Right wing extremists have already been calling for civil war because of the indictments. They won’t fare well against the New York National Guard that will no doubt be called up to protect wherever and whatever is being protested. But what will be the response to that? And the response to that response?

The Summer of 2020 was pretty bad, and many people voted for Biden just to make it stop. It is clear that the Biden strategy this time is to get a repeat, but to be able to blame the violence on Trump and his supporters.

Why all the current proposals for an assault weapons ban now? It’s not popular. But the mainstream will find it very desirable once there is gunfire across our major cities. The current moves are just battlespace preparation. In fact, this will be what allows them to go for everything. By June we could have several Supreme Court decisions that are extremely pro gun rights. We’ll have chaos in the cities that will make the George Floyd riots look tame. A giant win for the Democrats in November would be just the ticket to pack the Supreme Court and get rid of Bruen, McDonald, and Heller. The Second Amendment would go back to only protecting the right of state militias to be armed. Even the Fudds will go along with that to get the violence to stop. Jon Tester, the Second Amendment zealot, will be giving impassioned speeches as to why we need to give up our guns for the good of the country during his next term.

There’s really only one way to stop this. The Republicans need to pick someone other than Trump.