Thanks, Frederick, and I’m already doing what you recommend in a “purple” state.

I think this argument is fallacious, even if elections weren’t fortified. Only a tiny minority of people bother to follow national politics outside of Presidential election years. Trump is a known quantity to the general public, since he lived in the public eye for decades before he ever ran for President. The media can say what they want about Trump, and they do, but every man and woman in America already has an opinion about him.*

This is not true for anyone else who we’ve heard of as possibly running. The general public is never going to hear anything about any of those people, including DeSantis, that isn’t filtered through the Dem-controlled media. They started smearing DeSantis long ago.

*It’s Trump’s weakness as much as his strength. When he ran against Hillary Clinton, both candidates were people, famous for decades, about whom virtually everyone had an opinion. I’m convinced Trump was the only Republican who could have beaten Hillary Clinton, because the media would have defined that Republican in the way they did John McCain and Mitt Romney. And I’m convinced Hillary Clinton was the only Democrat Trump could have beaten, before he’d had a term as President by which people can judge him.

I’m indifferent to whether he’s the Republican nominee for President, just as I’m indifferent to who the D is: government, media, and big corporations working together are seeing to it that ballots are counted until the Dem will win. However, it is foolish to pretend there’s no downside or risk in throwing over Trump. But there’s no safe choices either…

No, it’s you who changed the terms. My argument has been with Yancey Ward, who states this:

And those who think the GOP can avoid these sorts of problems by dumping Trump and nominating someone else in 2024 are delusional. If it ever appears that DeSantis is going to be the nominee, he will be indicted somewhere for something, or have women spring forth from the woodwork to accuse him of rape, too.

My answer was that no one actually thinks other GOP candidates won’t be attacked, probably even in similar fashion. So the problem of vicious (and perhaps mendacious) attacks cannot be avoided, and I haven’t seen people claim that it could be. The argument I’ve seen made by the anti-Trump forces is that other candidates would be better able to resist and be more effective at fighting, because they don’t have quite the same personality or history as Trump.

(Kind of like a reverse Sam—the man—Brinton….)

I submit that you are changing the terms. I understood it to mean that Trump has so much baggage that he can’t win and we should support someone else.

I actually like this guy, if I could pronounce his name.

Obviously not. By all means Vote as Hard you want. It won’t help. I’m just the messenger, I’m not saying this the right way for things to be.

There are things you can focus on that will help, but focusing on the national news and the national narratives and the 2024 Presidential election is low-effort and will have no effect.

Is there anything you suggest can be done?

The same things I say over and over and over and over every time someone thinks they’re scoring a point by asking me that.

Move to a red state if you can and if you worry about what will happen to you as a result. Help consolidate power in the red states. Clean up their elections and laws, purge the leftists from those states’ government positions. When laws stand in the way of those efforts, change those laws. This will only happen in red states at first but it has to be done for these reasons:

The big cities in red states vote blue and can tip statewide elections.
Refugees from blue states are going to move to red states and tip them blue if these things are not done.
Government bureaucracies are overwhelmingly blue and sabotage all these efforts.

Over time, the balance in the Electoral College MAY shift and then Presidential elections can be competitive again. Over time, red states MAY send Congressmen and Senators who care about changing things and not playing in the Swamp. Over time, if red states are strong, things can turn around, because the blue states should get more and more dysfunctional and maybe less populous.

I say the same to you as I wrote to Mike K above: show me those comments that say other candidates won’t be attacked. All I’ve ever seen is comments saying those other candidates will be more resistant to the attacks they will sustain, because of their records or their character or their temperament or some such.

Nor have I seen people saying a candidate shouldn’t fight. The argument is, instead, over HOW to fight and what is the smartest and most effective way to fight.

By all means, be my guest and point out those ten comments that say “If we nominate someone other than Trump, the Democrats and the MSM won’t attack that person and won’t try to manufacture fake charges against them.”

Because that is what was claimed is in those comments by Yancey Ward. But I have never seen them. Every comment I’ve ever seen here has been of the variety “they would come up with similar accusations or other accusations but they wouldn’t be as likely to stick as they would with Trump.”

All that matters is, can Democrats get more ballots counted than Republicans?

All this other stuff is sideshow. In all the states that matter in the Electoral College, the Dems control which party will have its ballots preferentially counted.

The ballots the Dems harvest that push them over the top are not from engaged voters who follow issues and candidates and news media. There is no upper limit on how many ballots they can harvest, because the Dems control the process in the states that matter.

For example they can very strictly reject R ballots and wave through D ballots. Or send teams through apartment complexes and nursing homes to harvest only D ballots and mysteriously not collect the R ballots.