The Other MAGOP Hurdle
As political analysts always note, elections tend to tighten as election day nears. And as they note, as well, polls are just a snapshot in time and can be wrong. All of which they note, as well, the Mid-Terms might be closer than the polls suggest right now.
And they're right, the race could be closer than the polls suggest. But as I've heard some other analysts suggest, the polls could be off...but in the other direction. The race could be wider for Democrats than polls show. And there are two strong arguments being offered to support this latter view.
One, that conservative analyst Sarah Longworth, founder of The Bullwork who is a focus group expert, explains -- people in Trump's party she talks to in focus groups are seriously angry at Trump and their party. Gas prices are high, consumer prices are higher, there's anger at Trump's Iran War and anger at his handling of immigration deportations, along with anger at being continually lied to by Trump, and corruption and much more, notably that he only has a 30-32% approval...which is dropping. And enthusiasm is high among Democrats and Independents, and low among the MAGOP. Trump's voters, she argues, are not "coming back" to the party.
The other was from David Plouffe, former campaign manager for Barack Obama. And he said he always distrusts polls on general principle because he always wants to assume races are close. But, he said, if you put polls aside and just look at what we actually, literally know, that tells an important story. And, he notes, we know that the MAGOP has been pulling money out of races in several, important purple or leans-Red states, and instead they're putting that money to shore up races in likely-Red states that should otherwise be safe for the party. And we also know what Trump's campaign schedule is -- and Trump is not going to where there are toss-up races, but rather he's speaking at what should be safe Red states and districts, but need shoring up.
Indeed, there are a great many hurdles that the MAGOP is facing in the Mid-Terms -- beyond just the aforementioned issues, but with big shifts among Hispanic voters and young voters, two groups the MAGOP have counted on this year. However, there's one other, big hurdle that's occurred to me that I think has been totally overlooked.
As we've seen, Trump has been going out to campaign in Red states and Red districts to get party members to show up to vote -- "pretend that I'm on the ballot!!," he enthusiastically exclaims.
And that is the overlooked problem.
First of all, the people who are most supportive of Trump are his diehard MAGA base. But those are the people who least follow politics and are least likely to vote when Trump is not on the ballot, whether or not he wants them to "pretend" he's running. He's not running, and they know he's not. So, that leaves the rest of the party and those who've voted for Trump three times. And I don't think Trump is even remotely as popular with them as he and party officials think. Consider --
Trump did win his second term in 2024 and had a plurality of the vote. However, he not only just barely squeaked by with 49.8% -- a minority of people voting -- but this was against a) an unpopular opponent, who b) was frail and had to drop out in the middle of the campaign, replaced by c) a candidate who had to support that unpopular opponent as his vice-president, and who was both d) a woman and e) black, and who f) only had a few months to campaign. That is a huge number of obstacles to get past -- and yet with that advantage, Trump only got 49.8% of the vote. But -- far more notable than that is, although Trump did win a second term... he was not running as the popular incumbent!
When Trump ran in 2024, it was as the previously-defeated candidate. The public who voted for him didn't do so as the returning conquering hero. They'd seen what he did in his first term, didn't like it and rejected him when he ran for re-election! When he ran again in 2024, he was, first, the alternative to someone who had a terrible 36% approval and then the alternative to the first-ever black woman to run for president. The public wasn't feeling the improving economy yet and were still hurting. There had been a problematic military withdrawal from Afghanistan. Gas prices and inflation had dropped, but people were still recovering from the once-high inflation and having had to pay for high gas. Trump was the option to all that. And he still only got 49.8% of the vote.
Further, it's not that he only had 49.8% of the vote in 2024 against a candidate with many barriers against her, and that he had lost four years earlier when his first term was repudiated, but also -- when he actually won in 2016...it was with fewer votes than his losing opponent! Trump won with a mere 46.3% of the vote. Hillary Clinton, who lost, got 48.3%. In fact, Trump got 3 million fewer votes when he won.
So, this is who the MAGOP is sending around the country, asking the party to "pretend" he's on the ballot, counting on him to rally their party to flock to the polls in the closing days of the election, as early voting has already started. Now, add to that skyrocketing gas prices, high consumer prices, an unnecessary war of choice with no end in sight, healthcare cuts, unpopular immigration brutality, massive corruption, the Epstein files, and more...including a base that feels burned for being lied to enough after voting for him three times, an approval as low as 30%, an awareness that he's having weird, cognitive issues (the polite term for dementia), and that he is not on the ballot.
The problem for the MAGOP is not convincing their party to "pretend" that Trump is on the ballot. It's pretending that he's as popular in the party as they think he is.
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