Trump at the Track

Allen

Dateline February 16th 2020: To the roar of a 100,000-strong crowd chanting “USA! USA! USA!,” Air Force One performed a very low altitude flyover of the Daytona International Speedway shortly before the start of the 62nd running of the famous Daytona 500 NASCAR race.

Shortly thereafter, the presidential limousine known as The Beast entered the infield at the track and at 3:07 P.M. EST, President Donald J. Trump gave the order “Gentlemen, start your engines!” He then climbed back into The Beast with the First Lady and led the field in the initial lap around the famous circuit.

Almost immediately, outrage and criticism from the usual suspects began to surface on social media. Writers from Politico, New York Times, PoliticusUSA, CNN, and many others took to their Twitter accounts to deride the president and anyone cheering for him. As has become the media’s custom, they were all petty and childish in their tirades. What they tried to ignore, however, was the uncomfortable fact that President Trump pulled off a political boost that Democrats can only dream of at this point: Showing up in high style at a world-famous gathering of 100,000-plus people, most of whom support you and your policies. Trump showed them that he cares about them, their lives, their sport, and their support. Condemned for turning the Daytona 500 into a now-famous ‘Trump Rally,’ the president did what every Democrat in the 2020 primary race should be doing, but can’t seem to pull off: He connected with large quantities of his voting base.

What got Donald Trump to the Oval Office in 2016 was his simple message of Make America Great Again along with his willingness to put himself at his supporters’ level both physically and verbally. Instead of berating Americans and pointing out how horrible this nation’s current situation was because of all the alleged injustices, Trump spent 2016 telling his supporters that America can return to her former glory and be a better place for everyone here legally. As crude as his speeches were (and are) at times, this basic message resonated with hard working Americans looking to escape the constant condescending negativity heaped upon them from the elites during the Obama years.

Trump is still finding large crowds eager to support him while he pushes his next simple message in 2020: Keep America Great. This should terrify the Democrat candidates trying to unseat him in 2020. None of the current Democrat hopefuls seems to be able to pull more than a few hundred people together at any given time, let alone twenty or thirty thousand cheering supporters filling a concert hall with hundreds standing outside in the cold watching a big screen presentation of the event. Likewise, enthusiasm in the Democratic Party is noticeably low, replaced with the self-flagellation of social justice causes and climate change panic. The constant infighting between hard left socialist / communists, wealthy establishment Democrats, and big union leaders has also left the party without a clear direction and void of a simple message. Finally, the current field of Democrat primary candidates are much too focused on what they should ban, restrict, and control to worry about basic American values like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They smell of oppression and the average independent voter is picking up the stench.

President Trump’s best strategy is to keep mingling with the masses, pushing his simple message of American greatness and ignoring the snorting intellectual elites who cannot seem to grasp the obvious voter revolution that occurred against D.C.’s ‘swamp’ in 2016. Showing up matters, both in venues like the Daytona 500 and in policies that have pulled this nation out of the tailspin it was in for the eight years of Obama's reign. The Democrats are several laps down, and the checkered flag is coming into view.