At least if he doesn’t stop to think about being locked up for the rest of his miserable life, Traitor Tot loves being indicted. He avows his love for indictments for two reasons. First, every indictment gives him a bump in the GOP primary polls. Second, every indictment brings a sudden surge in fundraising for his faux campaign/legal shush fund.
The first is most likely true. Trump has in fact gotten poll bumps after each indictment, but who cares? What’s the difference between a 30 point lead and a 40 point lead? The race is Trump’s to lose. As for his fundraising boost, that may be creative accounting. After Trump’s first New York indictment, his campaign reported a $3 million haul in 24 hours. After the Mar-A-Lago indictment that haul shrank to $1.5 million. Interesting that in the last three weeks since the DC indictments and the new Fulton County indictments, the campaign hasn’t announced a fundraising boost. Maybe the bloom is off of that particular rose.
Look, forget about the GOP primary race, barring a calamity it’s over. Covering the GOP primaries is like driving your Porsche out to the race track to watch the tour bus races. My beloved Cubbies spent a century looking good coming out of spring training. That and $2 will get you a Starbucks, but it tastes better with just the $2.
Here I must indulge in a little math, and I beg you to forgive me, but what I’ve found makes a serious point. In 2020 there were some 155,000,000 votes cast nationwide. President Joe Biden got some 81 million votes, and Traitor Tot got a lousy 74 million. This is known as setting the table.
Now let’s look at some recent polling, and extrapolate. back in 2016, Traitor Tot had something like a 93% approval rating in the GOP. Those are exactly the kind of polling numbers you want. But going into 2020 Trump’s national GOP polling numbers had dropped to 82%.
Former RNC Chair Michael Steele told the story this way on MSNBC. Going into a general election you want a dead bare minimum of 90% support from your base. Then you pick up what you need from soft and independent voters to get you over the finish line. Trump is sitting at 82%. If that number hits 80%, red lights should flash and horns go off, because you’re writing your political obituary.
Now for a poll. A new AP poll released today showed that 74% of registered GOP voters are still firmly planning on voting for Trump. 74%? Trump got some 74 million votes in 2020, and still lost by 7 million. 74% would be a loss of some 18.3 million votes, 60% turnout numbers. And it’s not likely that 2024 is going to be a low turnout election. Which is why some GOP strategists and mega donors are seriously considering jettisoning the presidential race and concentrating with local donations retaking the Senate and strengthening their hold on the House.
But it gets worse the closer you look, and the deeper you dig. Trump can con himself with the notion that his vaunted base is indestructible and loyal, and that may be true, but a base does not a presidential election make. And while Trump’s endless indictments and legal problems may thrall his slobbering Trombie base, in the rest of the population it’s killing him.
In the same poll, it shows that 51% of voters would not vote for Trump in 2024, and another 11% more are unsure. While this might seem like a direct contradiction, it’s actually quite simple. Trump has 74% support from registered GOP voters, while his 53-64% disapproval rating is among all registered voters. This is the pool of voters that a candidate with 90% support would have to dip into to get over the top, and today Trump is only at 74% of GOP voters.
You really have to admire the GOP on a purely philosophical lever for obsessive long term stupidity. In the 2013 2012 GOP Presidential Election Report, an independent, for once no bullsh*t panel advised the GOP to prepare for eight years in the wilderness, gently separate themselves from the racists and far right Jesus wheezers, and make the national platform more friendly to young voters, minorities, and alternate lifestyle voters. Then RNC Chair Reince Priebus was enthusiastic, and even tried to set the plan in motion. The RNC instead showed Priebus the door.
And in 2020, once again not only the national vote, but the GOP vote was against Trump. He only won 46.8% of the vote. The simple fact that the GOP picked up more than 20 seats in the House showed in bright flashing letters that the majority of the GOP was so over Trump. But the fact that Trump used his four years in power to make the RNC Chair a lap poodle on a choker chain, maintained a rock solid 32% base, without which the GOP couldn’t hope to win a national election, had a 40 or so seat bloc of Freedom Caucus flamethrowers ready to make GOP House governance impossible, the die was cast. And when Dorito Trumpellini sent his unruly mob to invade the Capitol, and threaten GOP members who were not sufficiently pure, The rest was a foregone conclusion.
And now we have a twice impeached, civilly convicted sexual predator, four times indicted street rat running for President of the United States, and a dead lock for the GOP nomination. From where I’m sitting, these gutless, soulless sycophants deserve to reap what they sowed. Yesterday historian Jon Meacham told MSNBC that the problem is that the GOP hasn’t lost enough yet. They won’t aban don Trump until the unsung majority of the base rebels at the constant losing. Hell, I’m perfectly fine with a permanent Democratic majority until these morons get their sh*t together.
A man who can’t discern the difference between the woman he raped, and his second wife in a photo, isn’t someone I worry about analyzing anything. Add in he lies everytime air passes his lips, and voila!, you have a permanent pass to never never land. General election? I don’t need no stinking general election. Where are the federales to get this bandit out of our misery? Oh yeah…they’re on the way. Hey baby huey…be sure to take your poll numbers with you to show how popular you were when you weren’t in the joint.
The problem isn’t with Don John’s support in the GQP tanking – it’s still possible that he could win the elction.
NOT that anyone actually wants him but enough Republican voters will vote ‘No Labels’ and split votes that would, in a two way race, go to Joe Biden (or whomsoever the Democratic Party will field as a candidate).
The sooner the USofA gets its collective head round the sheer injustice of the ‘electoral college’ (and, yes, I do know that will require a constitutional amendment and there are enough vested interestets in maintaining that farce to keep it going) and simply award the job to the person who got the most votes in acordance with the wishes of the majority of voters.
Well, there is a scheme (and that’s all it is) out there that would maintain the Electoral College but that it would automatically just award each state’s votes to the nationwide winner of the popular vote (of course, there was no such person in 1992, 1996 or 2016, as all three elections resulted in the leading candidate below 50% of the vote; currently, the states allow their electoral votes to go to the candidate with the most votes because the STATES have that right–there is no such consideration for a candidate with less than 50% of the nationwide popular vote to simply declare themselves the winner nor any mechanism that determines the winner of the nationwide popular vote when no candidate has reached the 50% mark). The big problem with this scheme is that, so far, the only states that have agreed to this proposal are all “blue” states which could effectively render their own Democratic-majority voters null and void if a GOP candidate should manage to pull off 50% of the national popular vote. I mean, the GOP hasn’t managed to attract even 45% of the statewide vote in California’s presidential contests since 1988, yet the state’s participation in this scheme would mean more than 55% of California voters (barring some incredibly popular GOP candidate’s run) would have their votes rendered meaningless since California supports the scheme. The scheme hasn’t gone into effect because the “compact” requires the support of enough states that would comprise at least 270 electoral votes.
As I noted above, the only states that have agreed to this “compact” are “blue” states (the year in parentheses is the start of their Democratic voting streak): DC (1964); MN (1976); MA, NY, RI (1988); CA, CT, DE, HI, IL, MD, NJ, OR, VT, WA (1992); CO, NM (2004). The states that agreed to this scheme had a total of 210 electoral votes when the compact was developed though it wasn’t adopted by any state until 2007 and, as of the end of 2014, it had only been adopted by a mere 10 states and DC (the electoral vote total for those areas at the end of 2014 was just 165 while the EV total for all current signatories of the compact in 2014 was just 206 electoral votes–already a “loss” of 4 electoral votes). The compact picked up speed during the Trump years with 5 states joining in 2018 and 2019 (for the 2020 election, that gave compact signatory states an electoral vote total of 196). Minnesota signed the compact earlier this year but, due to redistricting, the current EV total of the signatory states and DC is just 205. Without the accession of states like Texas, Florida and Georgia (the first two alone would put the compact into “effect” though there’s not really any mechanism that would seemingly compel any member state into following through with awarding their electoral votes to the nationwide winner (there are some “rules” but nothing to penalize a “faithless state”). Also, here’s an interesting provision of the compact: “In event of a tie for the national popular vote winner, the presidential elector certifying official of each member state shall certify the appointment of the elector slate nominated in association with the presidential slate receiving the largest number of popular votes within that official’s own state.” (Also, of interest, the compact’s text makes no provision for a “winner” whose victory is with less than 50% of the popular vote.)
You can read the full text of the compact at https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/bill-text (be advised that there’s also a set of “explanations” below the text which, when expanded, more than triples the size of the page but those “explanations” hold some significant warnings).
Personally, a much easier thing to do would be to get the House to increase the number of members in the House, something which used to happen on a fairly regular basis until the 1920s–and has been stuck at the current 435 since 1961. This is an embarrassment when you consider that the UK–which has roughly 1/5 the US’s population–has a House of Commons with 650 members. Canada, with a population roughly 1/10 the US’s population has a House of Commons with 338 members (a little more than 3/4 the size of the US House of Representatives). Even Germany with roughly 1/4 the US’s population has a Bundestag with 736 members.
Hell, the State of New Hampshire has a House of Representatives with 400 members–a single state with barely 4/10 of 1% of the country’s total population has a lower house that’s almost 92% that of the whole country’s lower house.
It might be physically impossible (or just impractical) to seat a number of House members that would better suit the current US population (when the House size was set at 435 members in 1929, allowing for temporary expansion upon the admission of new states, the US population was less than 122 million; we’ve got more than 2 1/2 times that population now–using the same population ratio would mean nearly 1200 members of the House –but certainly the House could be enlarged to accommodate another 100 or 150 members, especially as the President gives his State of the Union before a joint assembly of Congress).
Murf, former guy’s poll numbers are almost meaningless if there is an even half-way viable third party candidate. Beside the usual spoiler wannabes, I’ve been hearing an ad for some write-in candidate who thinks a selling point is that in a close, three-way, presidential race, 34% is enough to get enough “electorial” (that’s how he pronounces it) votes to win. Oh, and he promises to fix everything that ails our lives and make our severely developmentally disabled citizens into genius super models. Point is, spoiler candidates, don’t care who, can mess up any and all polls.
As far as the fundraising goes the Indians have expressed concern that the campaign funds are going to the legal funds. The way it’s looking the legal problems are going to suck the campaign accounts dry. And all these donors are getting tired of constantly bailing the fat pig out.