Democrats are scared. And not just because Joe Biden is a vegetable. They are scared because it looks like Republicans may finally wake up and fight to win. Charlie Kirk will fight like hell for one electoral vote in Nebraska. My new column at Real Clear Politics.

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By FRANK MIELE

One incident last week showed the dynamic of the 2024 presidential election campaign better than anything else yet, and what it reveals is that the Democrats have good reason to panic, and it has nothing to do with the obvious weakness of their candidate.

What matters even more is that the Republican Party is showing signs of waking up from its long uniparty slumber and recognizing that fighting back is the best way to win an election.

You saw elements of this renewed engagement last month when the new leadership of the GOP opted to partner with community activist Scott Presler to increase voter registration and legal ballot harvesting in battleground states. Presler, the co-founder of Gays for Trump, goes by the handle #ThePersistence on social media, and his support for Donald Trump and MAGA has seen him travel tirelessly in pursuit of every legal Republican vote he can find. Last month, he was registering members of the Amish community in Pennsylvania. Brilliant!

But it was Charlie Kirk’s campaign to change how Nebraska allocates its six electoral votes that brought into sharp focus how this is no longer Ronna Romney McDaniels’ Republican Party. Last week, Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, used his podcast to push for passage of legislation that would give all of the state’s electoral votes to the statewide winner in presidential elections. Currently, the state allocates some of its votes based on the winner in congressional districts, allowing Democrats to pick up one elector in the Omaha district despite Nebraska being a solidly red state overall.

Within hours after Kirk proposed the change, President Trump had endorsed it and more importantly, the Republican governor of Nebraska (Jim Pillen) had agreed to sign the bill if it made it to his desk.

But that’s not the end of the story. Even though Republicans now hold a 33-16 majority in Nebraska’s unicameral legislature, the fact that there are only two weeks left in the session means that Kirk and his supporters have a very narrow window to bring the bill to a vote. As of this writing, it looks like the effort may fail.

But I am much less interested in the fate of one electoral vote in Nebraska than I am in the changing perspective of grassroots Republicans, who see themselves becoming empowered by people like Presler and Kirk, and by the Precinct Strategy program that is taking leadership of the Republican Party away from the Old Guard.

No wonder Democrats are panicking. If they lose their upper hand in recruiting new voters, turning out the early vote and seizing every opportunity to improve their chances for victory in battleground states, then the electoral map could very possibly transform into a landslide victory for Trump and the Republicans.

It was almost laughable watching Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign chairman Jim Messina panicking last week over that one electoral vote when confronted with the math that shows Joe Biden having only a very narrow path to victory in 2024.

Of course, when Democrats panic they will say or do anything to try to regain the upper hand. That’s why they turn out a new anti-Trump hoax every week, such as “The Bloodbath Hoax,” “The Immigrants are Animals Hoax,” and “The Trump Thinks He Is God Hoax.”

Worst of all may be the claim that Trump maliciously attacked a judge’s daughter out of spite when he was actually raising a serious issue of conflict of interest. The daughter of the judge in the so-called hush money case has raised millions of dollars for Democrats by painting Trump as a danger to democracy, but the judge refuses to recuse himself. Instead he put a gag order on Trump and told him to stop telling the truth.

What we really need is a judge to tell Democrats to start telling the truth. But that will never happen. They have no problem making up facts to fit their winning-is-everything agenda. Just ask Jim Messina.

In talking to Politico’s Jonathan Lemire on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” about the effort to change how Nebraska allocates its electoral votes, Messina lamented the possibility of losing that single vote, but then he went further and suggested that it was inappropriate for Republicans to change the rules during an election year. That went from laughable to downright hypocritical:

“I think this is what the moderate Republican Party has become. They are changing the rules in the middle, trying to benefit themselves. This is the hell Donald Trump has wrought. It’s ridiculous.”

No, Jim, what’s ridiculous is pretending that the 2020 election didn’t exist. Whether you call it rigged, illegitimate, or stolen, there is no doubt that the 2020 election of Joe Biden was made possible by Democratic operatives and lawyers changing the rules in multiple battleground states, sometimes within weeks of votes being cast.

Fortunately, facts are stubborn things. Six weeks before the 2020 election, the Republican minority in the House of Representatives issued a report that detailed the many efforts of Democrats to change the rules for mail-in ballots, ballot harvesting, voter ID, and various deadlines.

The report began this way:

“Democrats are seeking to change state election laws and procedures at the last minute to advantage themselves in the 2020 election cycle. These late changes will only increase the likelihood for potential election-related crime and errors, and put at risk the integrity of the nation’s electoral process. The result of these Democrat initiatives could be lingering uncertainty about the results of the elections for several days or weeks after Election Day. If they are successful, Democrats could be sowing the seeds for an unprecedented constitutional crisis.”

Wow! That proved to be prophetic. The lingering uncertainty came to pass, and so did the constitutional crisis when millions of Americans rejected the legitimacy of the election. Democrats have used that crisis to their advantage, as they use every crisis to their advantage, but Republicans may finally be wising up.

The lesson? Don’t put yourself in the position of challenging an election after the fact; change the rules legally beforehand, and give yourself every advantage you can. It worked for Democrats in 2020, and it can work for Republicans in 2024.

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About Heartland Diary USA

Heartland Diary is solely operated by Frank Miele, the retired editor of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Montana. If you enjoy reading these daily essays, I hope you will SUBSCRIBE to www.HeartlandDiaryUSA.com by leaving your email address on the home page. Also please consider purchasing one of my books. They are available through the following Amazon links. My new book is “What Matters Most: God, Country, Family and Friends” and is a collection of personal essays that transcend politics. My earlier books include “How We Got Here: The Left’s Assault on the Constitution,”  “The Media Matrix: What if everything you know is fake?” and the “Why We Needed Trump” trilogy. Part 1 is subtitled “Bush’s Global Failure: Half Right.” Part 2 is “Obama’s Fundamental Transformation: Far Left.” Part 3 is “Trump’s American Vision: Just Right.” As an Amazon Associate, I may earn referral fees for qualifying purchases through links on my website.