I've said it before, I'll say it again: TRUMP IS NOT GOING TO BE THE NEXT U.S. PRESIDENT.

Get off of RCP, stop obsessively celebrating the latest pro-Trump poll, and grasp the hard-core reality: no Republican will win in 2024, certainly not Trump. Prime reason? Abortion.

I’d driven all the way from Omaha to Pleasantville to catch fellow Omaha Creighton Prep alum Alex Payne (The Holdovers) participate in an insightful Halloween Q & A with long-time New York Times film critic Janet Maslin at the Jacob Burns Center. It was the launch of a wonderful week of cinema––including the extraordinary Anatomy of a Fall (she did it) and The Killer (“stick to your plan; anticipate, don’t improvise”)––and food (get the toasted multigrain bagel with lox, capers, onion, and vegan cream cheese at Mt. Kisco Bagels). All of which was pointing to a resounding Nebraska Cornhuskers win on Saturday against the depleted, scandal-plagued Michigan State Wolverines.

Then reality hit. Our starting quarterback is no better than our benched quarterback. Same turnovers, same missed throws, same mediocrity. Nice guy? Sure. Hard-working? Yep. Nebraska-raised? Check. We still lost.

I tell you this because this is precisely the dynamic that will play out at the ballot box next November. Mark my words: Donald Trump will never be U.S. President again. Not because he is facing a series of politically-motivated indictments. Gimme a break: every New York City developer inflates the value of their real estate. New York is the carney capital of planet Earth. Is there an aggrieved party in Letitia James’ politically motivated civil lawsuit? Nope. Did the banks get paid? They did. So, why is this Democratic prosecutor not going after every other Gotham real estate tycoon? They don’t have the name Trump. James ran for New York Attorney General specifically on “getting Trump.”

While the 45th President might be found guilty in the Florida documents case or the Georgia election interference case, the remaining cases are transparently political and will likely fail on appeal, not least because, as in the New York City corporate fraud case, Trump is being prevented by rogue judges from advancing a full-throated defense.

Here’s the silver lining: all these cases redound to Trump, feeding his persecution complex and that of his supporters, who now exhibit Palm Beach Syndrome, in which their well-being is directly tied to that of a comedic, charismatic, and thin-skinned developer. These diehards are going to pull the lever for Trump hell or high water. If Trump does not stupidly dissuade them from mail-in voting or early voting, they will outperform their turnout in 2020.

Their problem is that there are not enough fellow MAGA travelers to put Trump over the top. He’s at least 10% short within his own GOP camp. That 10% is critical. Orange won them in 2016 because of their loathing of the corrupt Hillary Clinton, because of Trump’s disingenuous embrace of the religious right, his choice of the religious right’s guy, Mike Pence, and because the GOP was still a unified party that robotically backed its standard-bearer.

That unified GOP is gone––the selection of “MAGA Mike” Johnson as House Speaker notwithstanding––and it showed up in the recent tortuous Speaker drama, a sneak peek into what will happen at the polls in 2024. The 10% of country club Republicans, NeoCons, and even some Never Trumpers who held their noses in 2016 and mostly voted for Trump will not do so again. Right or wrong, hypocritical or not, far less destructive than the Democrat-supported Summer of Insurrection though it was, January 6 was their Rubicon. So, Trump will have to expand his base to win. While he is making headwinds with blacks and Hispanics, those gains are not sufficient to overcome the consummate hatred for Trump among many women, for whom Trump’s “grab ‘em by the …” line still resonates.

So, how do I explain Trump’s lead in recent swing state polls? That is a direct reflection of Joe Biden’s colossal missteps as President: his disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, his mixed messages leading to de facto war with Russia, the open border, the war on cops, the smash-and-grab epidemic, the politicization of justice, the policing of speech, Biden’s transparently criminal corruption as Vice President, his age, his enfeeblement, his general doofus-hack demeanor, his continued reckless spending and ensuing inflation, combined with a world at war on his watch. Joe Biden is an unmitigated disaster, as Obama chieftain David Axelrod recently intimated. But he can beat Trump, and likely any Republican.

The reasons are Trump himself, abortion, and the Democratic ground game. I have already explained the inherent problems with Trump (and the Trump taint that will affect any other GOP contender).

Here’s what the GOP does not grasp about abortion. In the wake of the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs, which returned the abortion question to the states, the GOP should have gone quietly into that victorious night. No talk of draconian state bans or national abortion bans, which run counter to the GOP’s purported states-centric POV. But the GOP didn’t shut up––tone-deaf Lindsey Graham proposed a federal ban right when voters were making up their minds––which caused the GOP to lose the Senate, and almost the House, in 2022, even with the laundry list of Biden horribles.

Democratic women vote on abortion. They feel more strongly about their right to terminate a pregnancy up to the point of infanticide than they do about any other issue. Jewish Democrats, however, have gotten a harsh wake-up call since the diabolical October 7 Hamas terrorist attack. The outrageous level of anti-semitism embedded within leftist causes, institutions, and representatives they otherwise support––BLM, Ivy League universities, and various feminist groups, including the Woke sirens of The Squad––have caused them to question their longstanding Democratic allegiance. They are ripe for the electoral plucking.

But when these women turn on Fox News for the first time in seven years to see honest coverage of the Hamas atrocities, they also see showy fundamentalist Christian female anchors wearing crucifixes and endlessly pontificating in Biblical, even apocalyptic, terms. No surprise, they get turned off. They see a new Speaker who secured government funding for an anti-evolution theme park and opposed gay marriage, and they think these Republicans are either stupid, crazy, or theocratic. Politics makes strange bedfellows, but not these bedfellows, reason female Dems.

There is just no home for the disaffected female Democratic centrist, liberal, or Zionist inside today’s GOP. It’s too extreme around abortion. Not long ago, I heard the rhetorically challenged governor of Nebraska––a pig farmer, veterinarian, and former Nebraska defensive back named Jim Pillen––opine that the main reason he got into politics was to stop abortion. With all the problems in the world and his state, abortion was the governor’s signature issue. Pillen’s guest of honor that night, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, is cut from the same cloth and said as much in her far more eloquent address.

Pillen and Reynolds have a right to those positions. I grasp their logic. We are on a slippery slope towards dehumanization in this country, and abortion on demand––anytime, anywhere, at any age, for whatever reason––is part of that. But banning abortion at six weeks, or pushing for a national abortion ban, is political suicide––not in ruby-red districts, but statewide and nationwide, in which the majority of voters support some form of pro-choice position. Liberal and centrist Democratic women, poised to make a switch to the GOP on the border, crime, Israel, spending, and inflation see the GOP’s abortion extremism and turn away. As last night’s pro-abortion votes in reliably Republican Kentucky and Ohio, and purple Virginia, confirmed, that extremism will crush the GOP in critical swing suburban districts––and cost them Congressional seats, plus the Presidency––no matter how badly Biden performs on other issues.

Virginia GOP Governor Glen Youngkin’s more reasonable “compromise”––banning abortion at 15 weeks, allowing for exceptions like rape and incest––made no difference with female voters last night, who by and large want zero restrictions over what they do with their bodies. The astute, nuanced, and bipartisan Care for Her Act––which places our societal obligation back on protecting mothers, whatever their circumstance or “choice”––launched by my former boss, Congressman Jeff Fortenberry, went nowhere due to Democratic intransigence. Biden can release all criminals from jail, shutter ICE and Border Patrol, engender WWIII, and STILL Democratic women will vote Democrat based on abortion rights. Just as Nebraska can’t reliably move the gridiron pigskin, this is where we are as a nation in the sport of political football.

Finally, the vaunted Democratic ground game. It’s real. I’ve talked endlessly about this in previous posts. It comes down to this: regardless of their standard-bearer’s popularity, Democrats turn out the vote. Republicans were far more motivated than Democrats in 2012, but Democrats knew how to get out their low-motivated voters. Despite a series of poor debate performances and weak poll numbers, Obama cruised to victory over Romney. Absent some Odyssean sea change in how the game is played, this exact same phenomenon will play out in 2024. Gird yourself.