Napoleon Bonparte, Russia, and why a liberal Democrat like me is rooting for Trump to win the Republican nomination

Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated when his

Russian enemies followed his advice. My 

fellow Democrats should follow it, too.

It all boils down to something Napoleon Bonparte once said:

“Never interrupt the enemy when he is making a grave mistake."

Today, Super Tuesday, March 1, 2016, at 4:30 in the afternoon, it looks very much as if Donald Trump will emerge from today's voting with enough strength to win the Republican nomination.

Some of my fellow Democrats are tearing their hair out in despair. I say, let Trump win.  In fact, I sincerely hope he wins.

Trump seems to be hitting his head against the ceiling at roughly 49 percent of the Republican vote. The other half of Republicans support Cruz, Rubio, Carson, and Kasich.

No doubt, if  Trump wins the nomination, he’ll pull in even more Republicans. But most of these will be grudging Republicans. Let’s say he gets half of the balance. That brings him to 75 percent of people who call themselves Republicans.

Only 39 percent of Americans say they are either Republicans or lean toward  voting Republican. So if Trump wins 75 percent of those 39 percent, he gets the votes of less than 30 percent of the people. 

And that leaves slightly over 69 percent for the Democratic nominee. Which means it will be the most disastrous thing that happened to the Republican party in its history — a triumph of arithmetic over political insanity.

P.S. A little over  200 years ago, Napoleon’s enemies followed his advice, and destroyed him by failing to interrupt him. Early in the 19th Century, he marched bravely into Russia. The Russians had neither the army, nor the military skills, not the ordnance that Napoleon had. They couldn't interrupt him.

But they did have winters like Napoleon had never seen.

So when Napoleon marched into Russia, they let him come. Well, not literally. They initially fought fierce battles with him and lost every one of them, which turned out to be a good thing.  What the Russians couldn’t defeat, the weather and the vastness of Russia did.

And so Napoleon marched on while the Russians pulled back. Napoleon took Vilna. He took Vitebsk. He took Smolensk. After a bloody battle, the Russians abandoned Borodino, which Napoleon also took. Next he took Moscow, which the Russians set fired to before they fled, leaving him with a burned out shell of a city. Then it began to snow.

I skip over many subsequent details, but what it boils down to is this: Napoleon’s army, starved for supplies, freezing, sick, hampered by impossibly long supply lines, and harassed by Russian guerilla actions, was nearly wiped out.

From there on it was all downhill for him. Not long afterward he was an exile on Elba.

Go Trump, go!