The Truscott Chronicles

Donald Trump is laying plans for this to be the last American election. He is telling his crowds that he’ll “fix it” so he is, like his friend Vladimir Putin, president for life.

Four days into the candidacy of Kamala Harris, we have a brand new presidential race, folks. It’s right there in today’s numbers, and the race is only a few days old.

Ooops. On the fourth day after Vance-a-mania at the Republican Convention, the Wise Man and Wise Woman behind the Trump campaign were already having second thoughts.

The themes of the Harris campaign haven’t even begun to sink in. Wait until you see the polls after she turns “We’re not going back” into the Democrats’ slogan for 2024.

It took more than three weeks for dissension to fracture the Democratic Party and less than 24 hours to bring it back together behind Harris.

The question is, can we as Democrats put our differences aside, dismiss the circular firing squad and come together now, before the convention, and put together the kind of unified, powerful campaign that is necessary to beat Donald Trump?

Here's the thing about political conventions: Apart from their actual purpose, they are ridiculous exercises in excess and what we now call identity signaling. The crowd in Milwaukee, as was the crowd in Miami in 1972, relentlessly white.

Whatever happens over the next few days, Democrats will have to unify and get down to the business of beating Donald Trump and the pool boy he has chosen as his running mate.

If you have black or brown skin, or you are attracted to your own sex, or you speak with an accent, or you have a womb in your body, you should be very, very worried. This Supreme Court is out to make the “Handmaid’s Tale” look like it describes a time of moderation and equality.

Whatever the public reaction turns out to be, the Republican Party will try to use the attempt on Trump’s life to turn him into a martyr and a hero. It’s kind of a hollow mission, but Republicans will do it anyway.

There is something deeply wrong with America right now. Trump was a victim today, but we are all the victims of the political violence that has proliferated in rhetoric and now, reality.

Democrats have got to stop the internecine warfare about who is going to be at the top of the ticket and start thinking about the actual warfare that will break out if Trump wins.

As out of control as things may seem now, they could be worse. The Republican Party stands as the best example we have of how worse things could be.

We are going to be studying what went wrong at the “newspaper of record” in its coverage of this election for a long time. This so-called editorial’s so-called criticism of Donald Trump will be a great place to start.

Who’s the scandal here? The man all the pundits thought should pull out of the race ten minutes into the debate on June 27? Or the convicted felon whom practically none of the pundits have called on to retire his candidacy.

To believe all the bullshit being cranked out by Trump and the Republicans, to believe they are all-powerful, to believe a Republican victory in November is inevitable, you’d have to believe that the Delaware River is running backwards. It’s not.