Future historians, psephologists, and political analysts, searching for the day and time that Joe Biden’s 2024 campaign imploded beyond recovery, are likely to settle on Thursday May 23, 2024, at approximately 7 p.m. It was then that Trump’s surprising rally in Crotona Park in the South Bronx really got underway. I didn’t hear any actual bells tolling, but if you listened carefully you could discern the mournful obligato that signaled the end of Joe Biden’s hopes in New York — and therefore the country.
No Republican has taken New York since Ronald Reagan’s great landslide in 1984. Why then would Trump waste time coming to the South Bronx? Because, to adapt Bob Dylan, “The Times They Are A Changin’.” Joe Biden won New York in 2020 by twenty-three points. A recent poll had Donald Trump trailing by only nine points. After the Bronx rally, who knows what the polls will say? As Trump himself put it, “You live in a blue city, but it is going red very, very quickly.”
I haven’t seen definitive numbers yet, but Trump’s rally was was planned to accommodate up to 3,500 people. As the event got underway, many outlets were reporting that the crowd numbered 25,000 or more.
Whatever the tally, the love was palpable. One brilliant moment occurred when Trump called former City Councilman Ruben Diaz Sr., a black Puerto Rican Democrat, up to the stage. In broken but heartfelt English, Diaz enthusiastically endorsed Trump for president. I didn’t note the exact time, but I’d wager that was the moment that Trump sealed the deal for New York for 2024.
It was a masterly speech. Trump hit all the sore spots: the migrant crime wave, the transsexual insanity, Biden’s economic chaos, the insecurity of American elections. In what is sure to be a major new slogan, Trump reminded the crowd that his victory in 2024 must be “too big to rig.”
New York was once the greatest, most dynamic city in the world. “By the muscle and backbone and genius of the people of New York,” Trump said, “we built this city into a towering forest of iron, aluminum, concrete and steel. We made this city and state into the capital of global commerce. We turned our hometown into the bustling center of a confident, glamorous American culture. And we inspired the entire world.”
Now New York is a shambles of its former self. How did that happen? Democrats. They made it a “sanctuary city” for violent illegal immigrants. They clamored to “defund the police.” They opposed bail. They attacked schools. They ignored the thugs who defaced property, harassed innocent city dwellers and otherwise helped transform New York into a Third World redoubt.
Trump noted all those things. But at the end of the day his speech was a rousing, affirmative paean to unity. At bottom, Donald Trump is a problem solver. He is an apostle of common sense. He promised to return to New York and sort out the anarchy. He to reach across aisles and put ideology to one side. He was looking for constructive partners. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, “whether they’re Democrats or Republicans — because this is about our city and our country, and it’s about the people. It’s about our success. It’s about our greatness.”
Are you listening yet? “It doesn’t matter whether you are black or brown or white, we are all Americans. We all want better opportunity — and I’m not just going to promise it, I’m going to deliver it, as I did against all odds for four straight years.”
I know that there are a lot of very smart people who would simply laugh if I told them that I think that the state of New York is in play for Donald Trump. I am not — not quite, not yet — willing to predict that he will win New York in 2024. But I believe that he could. And I am confident that he will do much, much better in New York in 2024 than he did in 2020. Which means, as the Nate Silvers of the world will recognize, that he is very likely to win back the presidency as well. Trump had to win “beyond the margin of fraud.” I like his formulation better: “too big to rig.” That’s the margin that Trump requires. If his extraordinary tally in the South Bronx Thursday was any indication, his chances are far better than most of us in the lanyard class have yet twigged.
