If you follow the news, you might believe that Trump’s political strength comes from a portion of the Republican Party that the left describes derisively as the MAGAs. Excluded from the MAGA faction are the GOP and conservative apostates who bolted from the party and the philosophy. That includes those who formed the Lincoln Project and took the once conservative Bulwark magazine to the other side. The personalities that fled to the left include former Republican National Chairman Michael Steele, former Congressmen Charlie Dent, Joe Walsh, Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney, and a number of so-called Republican strategists.
Now consider this. According to recent polls, Republicans are approximately 27 percent of the electorate. Democrats are also 27 percent and independents represent 43 percent. Even if Trump has 50 percent of Republicans – as the polls suggest – he will only have 13 percent of the national voting base. Trump would be trailing President Biden in the polls by up to 70 points if he only got the loyal Trump voters.
Trump is beating Biden in the polls because he is getting a LOT of support from non-MAGA Republicans, independents and even some registered Democrats. He is currently beating or tying Biden in every major poll. He is beating Biden with independents in some polls.
While Biden & Co. try to make Trump out to be some deranged and dangerous extremists, his amazing popularity suggests that he is in the mainstream of today’s American political culture. One can hardly claim that essentially half of American citizens are insurrection cultists ready to overthrow the Republic – although that appears to be the Biden campaign strategy. Trump has more support than Biden personally and on the issues. So, who is outside the mainstream?
The problem for Biden is that the Democrat leaders and their media friends have come to believe their own propaganda – and are determined to continue to campaign on it. They apparently believe there was an insurrection … that Trump is a deranged authoritarian who will make himself president for life … and that “democracy is on the ballot” – as Biden contends. That is why they cannot understand Trump’s political endurance. They do not understand that at least half the public does not see the monster Trump that they portray.
I personally believe that most Americans – with the MAGA faction as the exception — see Trump as a pugnacious loud mouth, with a propensity to say provocative things. He does foolish things on occasion. He is an egotistical jerk with the morals of … oh … I don’t know … let’s say Bill Clinton. He is inconsistent in his political philosophy. BUT … they do not see him as a threat to the Republic. They believe he will make things better. They believe he did a lot of good things while President even if the left has their partisan blinders on.
When measuring Biden and Trump, more voters believe they were better off under Trump than they are under Biden. When the Wall Street Journal asks which of them helped or hurt the voter “personally,” Trump trumps Biden. For Biden, it is helped (23%), hurt (53%) – for a negative 30 points. For Trump it is helped (49%), hurt (37%) – for a positive 12-point margin.
Polls indicate that on most issues – including the border, crime, international affairs and even the economy – voters think Trump would do a better job than Biden. Also, with age and vitality. Biden is seen as better on abortion and climate change – but they do not rank high as decisive issues for most voters.
An argument can be made – and I guess I am making it – that Democrats and the left created the political Trump we see today. From the day he was elected, they engaged in an obsessive hate campaign based on a strategy to never normalize Trump – the Resistance Movement. As a result, they demonized him every hour of every day’s news cycle with outrageous over-the-top accusations. That is no small accomplishment in view of many egregious things Trump has said and done. But they overdid it and caused a backlash against their own excesses.
In the past year, Trump has been hit with and unprecedented number of political career-ending issues, including, but not limited to, a seemingly unending number of court cases – civil, criminal and political. Instead of damaging his prospects for a second term they seem to have helped him. The correlation between bad news and improved polling numbers for Trump are so consistent that it seems to be more causal than coincidental.
One can draw four conclusions from those facts. First, that the public is not buying the Democrats’ and the news media’s extreme characterizations of Trump and his voters. Second, that they believe Trump is is the victim of excessive prosecution – and there are polling numbers that attest to that. Third, voters are focusing more on issues other than the Democrats’ all-about-Trump and the end of the world messaging. And fourth, that despite Trump’s personality and character issues, half the voters, including Republicans, Independents and democrats, dislike Biden even more – as seen in his poor favorability ratings.
Ironically, the level of Democrat panic increases each day as the actual voting looms larger on the horizon. In their desperation, Democrats are actually amping up the hyperbolic narratives — ignoring the fact that it has been their obsessive attacks on Trump that have kept him at the top of the news every day since he descended that escalator eight years ago.
I say all this as a person who will not vote from Trump in the primary – and wish the GOP would put of a different candidate. At this moment, my preference is Nikki Haley.
Apparently, those on the left actually believe Trump is the political monster that they describe. They do not seem to understand that they have played the role of Dr. Frankenstein. Of course, the monster they have proffered with ridiculous propaganda is as much a fiction as the one created by Mary Shelley
So, there ‘tis.