DAN HODGES: If Trump had commissioned Dr Frankenstein to build the opponent he could beat most easily, Kamala would have been the result

I could have warned Kamala Harris. On January 6 of this year — the third anniversary of the mob storming the U.S. Capitol — I stood in line in a chilly parking lot outside Clinton Middle School in Iowa to hear Donald Trump speak.

The people next to me weren’t wearing Make America Great Again hats or mumbling darkly about a “stolen” election. They were ordinary men and women, concerned about their families, their jobs and the direction of their country.

“I’m not a Trump cult member,” Richard, an Iraq war veteran, told me. ‘I know the problems with him. But I served my country. If I believed he was guilty of insurrection, I wouldn’t vote for him.”

Harris would not have listened to Richard. Nor would most of her Democratic colleagues. Because they never do. Trump is not returning to the White House because he ran a brilliant campaign. Or because America has decided to embrace ‘fascism’. He won – as I predicted – because the voters of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and the other swing states who voted for him en masse are tired of being patronized, infantilized and treated like fools.

In 2016, ordinary Americans refused to play the role that Hillary Clinton and the liberal establishment had assigned them in perpetuating the Clinton/Bush dynasty. They said to the Democratic and Republican elites: ‘Enough!’ And they voted for Trump by the millions.

For a brief period, as the magnitude of the rejection became clear, it seemed that the right lessons had been learned. Joe Biden, that old Irish journeyman, put aside the politically correct malarkey and allowed an army of workers to carry him back to the Oval Office in the 2020 election.

But then the liberal elite tried again. With Trump weakened and tarnished after his supporters’ lame “coup attempt” in January 2021, his enemies chose to torture him. After reprimanding him for threatening to “lock her up,” they tried to lock him up it with a series of increasingly bizarre accusations.

After warning anyone who would listen that Trump was “a threat to democracy,” they tried to get him out of the vote in a series of Democratic-leaning states. At that moment, the American people began to stir.

And what did the elite do? When Biden wavered and it became clear they would need a different candidate, who did they turn to? Another “average Joe” who could mobilize working America?

No. They were looking for another liberal woman to use as a battering ram against that frustratingly persistent “glass ceiling.”

So when Trump ran amok and stoked fears that immigrants would eat Americans’ pet cats, Democrats opted for the candidate who had promised to implement amnesty for illegal immigrants. While voters – both men and women – told every pollster that the most important issues to them were the cost of living and the economy, the liberal establishment fielded a contender that based its entire strategy on telling them they were wrong, and what really happened mattered to them. most of it concerned ‘reproductive rights’.

While Trump wrapped up his campaign by visiting McDonald’s and jumping – or tripping – into the cab of a dump truck, Harris flew to New York to appear with her liberal luvvie friends in a skit on the long-running TV show Saturday Night Live. .

If Donald Trump had instructed Dr. Frankenstein to go into his laboratory and build the opponent he could most easily defeat in this election, the result would have been Kamala Harris.

When she was selected, her liberal allies descended with vengeful fury on anyone who suggested she was a “DEI mercenary”: selected based on politically correct “diversity, equity and inclusion” criteria.

But that is how she was seen – not least by many black Americans.

The Harris campaign had dreamed of a “Late Surge,” a “Wall of Women” and a “Youthquake” to bring her to the Oval Office. It was all just a liberal fantasy

They watched as Harris became Biden’s 2020 vice presidential nominee following demands from his liberal base for a Black woman to “balance the ticket.” When Barack Obama lectured black Americans and told them to vote for Harris out of racial solidarity, they knew full well that the only reason she was selected was because the old white man didn’t know what day of the week it was.

None of it worked. The Harris campaign had dreamed of a “Late Surge,” a “Wall of Women” and a “Youthquake” to bring her to the Oval Office. It was all just a liberal fantasy.

Now Trump has won again. And we must all brace ourselves for what will follow. But whatever comes next, his victory was handed to him by a self-proclaimed progressive elite who refuse to learn their lesson. Maybe this time they’ll learn. Or maybe it’s too late.