The 2024 presidential campaign has been one for the books, and it's only halftime.
From the political weaponization of courtrooms, and former President Donald Trump wrapping up the nomination in record time, to Democrats not allowing anyone to run against President Biden, and the earliest presidential debate in history, to an assassination attempt and an incumbent presidential campaign withdrawal, it's been a roller-coaster ride.
I feel like I need to put some money down on the South Carolina Gamecocks to win the national championship in football this year. Stranger things have happened.
Trump literally took a bullet for the campaign — and then got up calling on his supporters to "fight!," instilling Republicans all across the country with a newfound sense of unity and resolve.
The Republican Party is now as unified as it's ever been in modern history.
I've been a state party chairman for almost eight years and have worked in politics for over 35 years. I'll take an enthusiastic voter over just a voter any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Enthusiastic people don't just vote, they work. They make calls, knock on doors, give money and get the guy sitting next to them at church or at work to vote too.
As Napoleon once said, "Moral is to the physical as three is to one."
Enthusiasm is a force multiplier. You can't put a price on it. And who would have thought that Republicans would be financially competitive with Democrats, but here we are, complete with the world's richest man pledging to invest $45 million per month until Election Day in a third-party effort to focus on voter turnout in battleground states.
Democrats, on the other hand, proceeded to wet the bed again and again over the course of the year with each new poll showing Biden losing to Trump both nationally and in battleground states.
So much so that they threw him overboard for a candidate that not one single person in America has ever voted for president who actually has lower poll numbers than Biden.
No serious person suggests that Vice President Kamala Harris would have been the Democrat nominee in any kind of open, competitive political process. She's a decidedly ungifted politician that had so little success as a presidential candidate that she dropped out of the 2020 Democrat nomination fight before the first vote was cast in Iowa.
Since then, the Biden team has largely kept her under wraps, only to see her occasional appearances punctuated by nonsensical "word salads."
But now that the wagons have circled around her, the question is how long does it take for the Democrats with the most to lose to begin howling in despair again, demanding another change in cast?
Meanwhile, the Democrats' message has been blown apart in a hail of hypocrisy. The party that assured Americans that Trump is a would-be dictator and a threat to democracy, first refused to allow anyone to challenge Biden for the nomination, and then decided that 14 million Democrat votes should be ignored and a "more electable" nominee should be installed.
How's that for protecting democracy?
And we haven't even gotten to the Democrats' convention in Chicago where they'll try to make this anti-democratic coronation official. In the same city where they convened in 1968 to replace an unpopular incumbent presidential candidate while the streets were filled with protesters, they'll convene again this August to replace another unpopular incumbent presidential candidate while the streets will be filled with antisemitic, pro-Hamas protesters.
But events aside, the issues on the ground have not changed, and, as the late Lee
Atwater loved to say, "Issues win campaigns."
On most every issue that tops the minds of American voters, Republicans have the edge. From illegal immigration and the border, to crime, the economy, housing and inflation, Harris owns Biden's record of failure.
When people aren't buying what you're selling, it doesn't make much difference who the salesman is or what the ad budget may be.
What Biden's political demise and Harris' rise represent is the Democratic Party's final break with working-class Americans.
It's a break that's been building for years, starting with the Obama administration, but Biden was the last fig-leaf for the old New Deal Democrat coalition.
It's the "Californication" of the Democratic Party: an abandonment of working-class Americans in favor of cultural, bureaucratic and academic elites, complete with the mixed nuts of the antisemitic and radical woke left, and a common disdain for anything traditional or overtly American.
It represents an incredible opportunity for the GOP to demonstrate relevance and win over a new generation of working-class Americans, and to build a winning and enduring political coalition.
It's been a wild ride so far, and who knows where it goes from here. But I think I'd better check those odds on the Gamecocks.
Drew McKissick is the Republican state chairman of South Carolina and a past co-chairman of the Republican National Committee.
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