Trump can live in denial all he wants. He can call all of the negative polling out there “FAKE NEWS!” all he wants. He can pull imaginary numbers out of his ass, and he can fire his pollsters, who brought dire tidings. He can flog his staff hourly if it gets him through the night.
But there’s one thing that he can’t do, no matter how hard he may try. He can’t con himself. In the deepest corner of his amoeba sized mind, there is a “no bullshit” zone, and it’s been breached. Trump already admitted that he knows the truth, and he probably doesn’t even realize it, and so far, neither does anybody else. In one breath Trump decries his terrible polling numbers as “fake news,” and in the very next breath angrily states that his numbers should be 10-15 point higher, if it weren’t for that damn Mueller “witch hunt!” The fact that Trump says that his poll numbers should be higher is an overt admission that they are what the polls say they are.
So, Trump knows that he is in fact that filthiest of words, a loser! But if I’m Trump or his campaign, I’m not most worried about Joe Biden, or Bernie Sanders, or even Pete Buttigies or Cory Booker. because he has a strategy in place to deal with them, even with strong women like Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris. But there is no strategy to deal with “The most dangerous man alive.”
Here’s the strategy, the same one he used with Hillary Clinton. Trump knows he’s never going to climb over 46%, so the secret is to drag his opponent down lower than himself. That will be harder this time. Because Trump’s 46% is now more like 42%. Trump turned ff a lot of voters who “took a chance” on him in 2016, about 4%. His only hope is to make his Democratic opponent so noxious that enough of that 3-4% will hold their noses and put him over the top again, rather than vote for a Democrat.
And that’s where a dude by the name of Justin Amash can fuck Trump six ways from Sunday. Amash is already a thorn in Trump’s side. As the only GOP member of congress to support opening impeachment hearings against Trump, he is numero uno on Trump’s shit list. But if Amash takes the next step, he could become a ninja assassin to Trump’s chances for reelection.
Justin Amash is not a “traditional” Republican, he’s actually much more of a libertarian, and freely admits it. In that he is akin to GOP Senator Rand Paul, except that Amash truly believes in libertarian principles, as opposed to cravenly paying lip service to it for political advantage. Amash’s reelection after endorsing impeaching the Mango Messiah is being seen as a test of whether or not a traditional Republican can survive in the party of Trump. But what if Amash dropping the hammer on Trump is more of a sign that he’s fed up with the Republican party’s craven cowardice with Trump, and isn’t interested in running for another term in the Trump snake pit?
Justin Amash would be the dream candidate for the Libertarian party on their 2020 ticket. Amash brings to the table legitimate libertarian street creds, and with his mutiny against Trump, he brings national name recognition that the Libertarian party could never in a million years hope to create from the ground up. The Libertarian party is already on the ballot in all 50 states, due to their showing in 2016. And if Amash decides to take that step, he could be pulling the rope that sounds the death knell for Trump’s reelection chances.
Trump is going to need to regain a sizable portion of that 3-4% that he has thrown away if he hopes to squeak out another electoral college victory. Whether or not Trump could make his eventual Democratic opponent toxic enough to get the majority of those people to come out and hold their noses long enough to vote for him again is an open question, but it is a worrisome threat on the Democrats flank.
Justin Amash changes that calculus entirely. Voters left with only a binary choice between a horrible Trump, and in their minds an equally horrible Democratic candidate, may choose the known evil. But i they have a recognized Libertarian candidate, whose name they know, and who espouses ideas and values that they share more than they do any Democratic beliefs, then they could well be induced to show up and punch a hole for Amash, much in the same way that disaffected Bernie voters and independents did for Stein and Johnson in 2016, pitching their votes into the Libertarian and Green party dumpsters, rather than give Clinton the nod. And if that happens, Trump is sunk.
You’d know soon enough. If Amash decides to run on the Libertarian ticket, you could start to look at polling after the conventions. If Amash is running at 8-9% instead of 2-4%, Trump is in durance vile. Democrats are pretty solid in their desire to see Trump in the rear view mirror, electability is the #1 issue for Democrats as we speak. They will largely rally behind whomever the eventual candidate is, they saw what happened the last time they fucked around. If Amash has elevated numbers, they can only be coming from one place. That 3-4% that Trump desperately needs to give him a chance at survival. And if they start to break for Amash, it’s not because Justin Amash is so damn electable, it’s because they’re flipping double barrel birds at Trump without the stigma of voting for a Democrat attached to their choice. And frankly, I couldn’t care less what their logic is, results are all that matters.
Very true. I have a friend who was a long-time Republican ward leader here, and in the spring of 2016 he left the party because he felt Trump was racist and sexist (duh) and supported Gary Johnson. Since then, he has focused on reconstituting the Libertarian Party in our county. He endorsed Amash months ago, should Amash run.
What a lot of people don’t know about us here in Idiohio when they say “It’s a red state now” is that Trump only exceeded W’s percentage of the vote by one percentage point. The difference was that Hillary did much worse than John Kerry. But it wasn’t people who hated her so much they voted for Trump. It was about people who either heard so much shit about her they got discouraged and didn’t vote, or else they were zealot Bernie Bros (of whom we have a lot) who either skipped voting or voted for Jill Stein (sadly, I know several of these). I don’t see any hope for the zealot Bernie Bros but the others — all those black women I talked to when I canvassed who said they weren’t sure they liked Hillary because they kept hearing about her emails on TV — are much more likely to go vote for whoever opposes Trump.
“(Democrats)will largely rally behind whomever the eventual candidate is, they saw what happened the last time they fucked around.”
People voting their consciences is not “fuck(ing) around” – it is how democracy is supposed to work. And there are good reasons why people on either side of the partisan divide aren’t going to just shut up and line up behind Donald Trump and whoever the Democrats nominate.
Many in the Democratic Party are still angry about how the leadership of their party hijacked the process for Hilary Clinton in 2016 at the expense of Bernie Sanders. And after being disappointed by Obama, many will see whoever the Greens nominate as attractive if the party machine once again denies them a hardcore left-wing candidate like Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. But moderates in the party aren’t going to be happy with such a candidate. Probably few would be tempted to vote for Trump, but if Democrats nominate someone who is too far to the socialist left, a libertarian candidate like Justin Amash or a middle-of-the-roader like Bill Weld or Howard Schultz starts to look more appealing.
More interestingly, in an era of widespread and justified disillusionment with conventional politics, don’t count out Vermin Supreme.
I would agree with that completely, except for the fact that I think that there were a considerable number who voted NOT out of conscience, but out of spite, casting “protest votes” against a candidate that they thought had it in the bag…
I usually agree with you, but in this case not so much. The largest voting block in the US is ‘not voting’. There will always be people out on the fringe either for green or libertarian who will never vote for one of the two mainstream parties out of principle. Nader didn’t take votes from Gore, ‘not voting’ because of Clinton fatigue was a much bigger factor, and the same thing happened in 2016.
Bush fatigue also guaranteed Obama the win in 2008 BTW (and probably killed JEB! chances of winning). Trump knows he is behind, but he never goes to the center, he wants to keep his base energized so they show up. He does not care about middle of the road voters (at least as far as polls go) he just needs them not to show up.
Amash is a wash, he wont pull votes from trump, just give some people a motivation to show up. Ross Perot was the only candidate to really disrupt the elections, he had money, charisma, and slogans. Amash does not have that.
BTW democrats picked up four senate seats in 2000, which may be due to greens voting for democratic senators. Attacking people on the left only discourages voting. It doesn’t bring people to the table. So telling them they are dumpster voters does not encourage them to engage, it just tells them they are not wanted.
I agree with y0ou, there always WILL be a block of people out there that are against the “two party system,” or fee thsir values not represented by either major party, and will vote elsewhere…But I’m talking about a block of normally Democratic or Democratic leaning independents, who cast “protest votes” for third party candidates instead of a truly flawed Hillary Clinton, whom they couldn’t stand, but nonetheless felt had the election in the bag, o they could cater to their feelings…