Trump’s Ace in the Hole

I only very barely remember the 1976 Bicentennial. I remember a parade and thinking that it was kinda boring. It was mostly cars and people waving. (I guess I expected something like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade with giant balloons or something. Not gonna happen in Chelsea!) I still have a 1976 Folgers coffee jar with a bunch of coins in it. Every now and again, I get a drummer boy quarter and cheer a little bit inside.

I guess I knew that, someday, I’d be around to watch the 250th birthday of our country but never gave it much thought beyond that.

Kinda like thinking about “THE YEAR 2000!!!!” when I had graduated high school. “Man, that’s just so far in the future!”

Well, it looks like 2026 is now months away. How did that happen? In any case, we’re going to have a Semiquincentennial coming down the pike and it’s going to be an opportunity for Trump to do the screaming eagle patriotism thing mere months away from an election.

Now, keep in mind, it’s not written in stone that this will necessarily help him instead of helping both parties: Carter won in 1976 and not Ford. That said, Carter had a handful of things going for him that the Democrats might not have going for them in the current year.

For one, the 1976 Bicentennial was *EXCEPTIONALLY* bipartisan. While there were certainly Republicans expressing mock surprise that Democrats were at the parades enjoying them too, the Democrats were fully at the parades enjoying them too. There might have been a handful of tweed-coated college professors talking about jingoism and the vulgarity of the display, but they were obvious outliers, easily mocked as not being representative of anything more than being out-of-touch.

Unfortunately, the 2026 Semiquincentennial lay of the land looks a little different. There will certainly be Republicans expressing mock surprise that Democrats might enjoy the 250th birthday of the United States, we’re also going to see jokes about “imagine what the 250th birthday would look like if Harris were president!” and, unfortunately, there will be a handful of folks out there who will be saying things that…

Well, if someone said “You know that the Democrats think” and then quoted, verbatim, what this handful of folks will say, it’d be a risible and unfair statement worthy of a full-throated “HOW DARE YOU”. But, unfortunately, it will be a direct quote.

And the democrats will have to pick between two options:

1. Explaining to republicans how Freedom of Speech means sometimes hearing stuff, even offensive stuff, that you don’t agree with.
2. A full-throated “HOW DARE YOU?” to the edgy lefty who is making the left look bad.

In 1976, the Democrats were every inch as patriotic as the Republicans.

Trump’s ace in the hole is not that there’s a Semiquincentennial coming up. That’s an opportunity for Democrats to prove that they’re just as Patriotic as Republicans.

Trump’s ace in the hole is, instead, that the left is going to effectively make ads for him, again, in the run up to what could well be the most important election of our lifetimes.

The Democrats need to start policing this stuff *YESTERDAY* if they hope to make any headwind against what’s coming.

Because Lee Greenwood will be here before you know it.