By Andrea Widburg | Am Thinker | October 22, 2024
Image: X screen grab.
Yesterday, Donald Trump joined Fox News host Lawrence Jones at a Bronx barbershop. Trump, a Queens native who spent a lot of time on construction sites, was clearly at home among these guys in a way that Kamala and Walz never could be. (JD Vance would be at home there, too.) There was no fakery. Trump may be a billionaire, but these are his people—and because Trump is real, he understood the pain the barber’s hyper-inflated energy bills are causing him. That pain and Trump’s recognition explains why he’s campaigning in New York, a place that ought to be a no-win for a Republican.
The last time a Republican won New York state was during the Reagan revolution. Trump, though, may be trying to break that dismal Republican record. That’s because Trump recognizes that four years of Biden’s policies—the money printing that’s destroyed the economy, the attack on fossil fuels, the broken border, the out-of-control violent crime, and the obsession with perverting childhood innocence—aren’t working for ordinary Americans, no matter their race or sex.
That’s why Trump is holding a rally in Madison Square Garden. And because Democrats recognize their weakening hold on ordinary Democrat voters (as opposed to the fanatic leftists that make up their base), that’s why Democrats are insisting that Trump is seeking to recreate the infamous pro-Hitler German Bund rally held there in February 1939. The fact that the Democrats have held two conventions at Madison Square Garden in recent history is irrelevant. If it’s Trump, it must be Hitler.
This fear also explains the Democrats’ hysteria that Trump did what once was a typical campaign stunt—he worked for 30 minutes at a McDonald’s. Somehow this, too, is the second coming of Hitler, only it’s a sign of dementia Hitler.
Frankly, Democrats are right to be worried. One of American Thinker’s readers wrote to say that, whenever he goes out wearing his MAGA hat, people slip up to him and whisper that they’re voting for Trump. In public, they’re not going to admit it out loud but in private—and in the voting booth—Trump is their guy. Heck, even the Steelworkers just endorsed Trump.
And that gets us to the Bronx. Except for the years from 1914-1938 and 1962-1966, the Bronx has been under Democrat control at the local level. It last voted for a Republican president in 1924. In 2020, it gave 83% of its votes to Joe Biden.
But under Biden, people have been hurt very badly, and nothing more clearly illustrates this than the plaint of a young Hispanic barbershop owner, Javier Rodriquez, Jr.:
Rodriquez, a registered Democrat, has already voted twice for Trump. This makes it easy to say that he’s already in the bag, so he can be discounted when looking at this coming November.
However, how can anyone discount the fact that Rodriquez’s energy bills have increased over 600% under the Harris-Biden administration? This is not a guy who can increase his prices by 600%. The neighborhood construction worker who comes in for his usual monthly $20 haircut is not suddenly going to cough up $120 for the same cut. (I had to do the math twice to make sure that I wasn’t imagining the increased price Rodriquez must charge to make up for his energy costs.) [See update below.]
Democrats were confident going into this election that it would break in their favor over core values, such as abortion, transgenderism, and supporting Hamas. And, of course, they had their key cards, which were that “Kamala equals joy,” while “the Orange Man is bad.”
But ultimately, people will always vote for the two most important things: security and the economy. No matter their ideology, seeing crime soaring, money devaluing, and jobs vanishing will drive voters to the candidate who has concrete solutions to fix those problems—and, in Trump’s case, has an actual track record of having done so.
UPDATE: I’m something of an innumerate. A mathematically literate friend helped me out, showing that haircuts will have to double, get multiplied by six, and explaining that, even under my math, they’d still have to be multiplied by seven:
1. Energy bills are a separate expense not necessarily in direct proportion to the haircut price. For example, if the haircut revenue before energy bill originally was ten times the original energy bill, that is, 10 x $2,100 = $21,000, for an after-energy bill profit of $21,000-$2,100 = $18,900, to offset the increased energy bill and stay even, he would now need to earn $21,000+$15,000-$2,100 = $33,900, which is less than twice $21,000, meaning he’d need only charge less than twice as much for haircuts.
2. Ignoring the above reservation, $120/$20 = 6 times the price, while the increase is ($120-$20)/$20 = 5 = 500%, so $120 is incorrect. Correct would be to charge 7x$20 = $140, so that the increase is ($140-$20)/$20 = 6 = 600%. So you should’ve done the math thrice to make sure.
I wish I’d gotten my numbers right in the first place, but those increased energy costs are still a heinous burden on a small business.
For the first time since 2008, LA Times will not endorse a candidate.