Forty-two percent of the electorate has a strongly unfavorable view of Donald Trump, and that just seems very unlikely to improve between now and Election Day. Coincidently, 42 percent seems to be close to Trump’s floor in national surveys. At times, he has slipped into the high thirties and at other times he’s even approached 50 percent approval, but most often he’s been stuck in the low forties. This appears to be the shape of the playing field.
As Harry Enten notes for CNN, this is unprecedented. Overall, 69 percent of voters hold strong opinions of Trump, which is the highest mark recorded for any presidential candidate since they started asking the favorable/unfavorable question in 1980. Unsurprisingly, in an average of polls since March, 27 percent have a strongly favorable view of the president, which happens to perfectly match the Alan Keyes Constant. It’s amazing that screenwriter John Rodgers was able to solve the Crazification Factor way back in 2005.
Twenty-seven percent isn’t Trump’s true floor, however, because plenty of people will vote for him despite their deep misgivings simply because they hate or fear the Democrats even more, or because they’re single-issue voters, most often on abortion or gun rights. A few will vote for Trump or a third party candidate simply out of spite for Joe Biden and the Democratic establishment, so Trump won’t need to get to 50 percent in any case.
Yet, with 90 percent of people who hold a negative opinion of Trump expressing a preference for Biden, it’s going to very difficult for Trump to win the popular vote, and almost as hard to win the Electoral College. His plan is to drive up Biden’s unfavorables, and he’ll get an assist on that from Bernie Dead Enders who want to convince you that Biden is some kind of serial rapist. As far-fetched and poorly documented as these charges are, they’re an easier sell than getting people to improve their opinion of Trump. Anyone who helps this effort through some misguided #MeToo reasoning is already dead to me.
Me, too.
Do you really think the BernieBros will make the same mistake twice? Certainly they can see that Trump is not just corrupt and incompetent but he is putting us all in real danger!
Some of them will. It’s about blowing up the “system”. Doesn’t matter to them if it’s from the left or the right. They want the chaos and opportunity to one-up other people “holding them back”.
Adding: there is and will be a large and sophisticated Russian (at least, perhaps other countries too) effort via bots and human agents/trolls to amplify the “BernieBro” dead-enders.
One of the challenges Dems face is to react-but-not-overreact to these efforts.
For the point about dragging the Reade allegations out, that reopens Trump to the same thing. I don’t think that line of attack will work on Biden given how the #MeToo movement has become a part of public consciousness, how her story keeps changing, and how Trump has 24 women telling substantially the same story about his predatory behavior.
The other thing is that Biden merely needs to hold up the metaphorical mirror to Trump and his abysmal record. For health care, “I helped craft Obamacare. You’ve said since 2015 you had a plan to replace it. It’s been five years. And still no plan, except get sick and die quickly.” On the economy, “I guided the country out of the, well now second biggest, recession since the Great Depression. We doubled the Dow, and had the longest streak of job gains in this country’s history. I’m ready to do it again.”
Biden has so many good accomplishments to run on. He also has a lot of bloopers, like the 1993 crime bill. Acknowledging he was wrong and will work to right those wrongs will also go far in defanging the attacks.
You can bet that the Trumpists are scouring the nations sewer system for anyone or anything that can be used to smear Biden. I expect a half dozen or so more accusations and swift boat maneuvers along the lines of Reade’s, that will do all sorts of damage to Biden’s standing with the credulous electorate, but that will magically evaporate on Nov. 5. I hope that this time people (I’m looking at YOU, NY Times) see through it for the sham it is (will be).
I think you are mistaken on this one. There is an egregious omission in paragraph 3, you left out the word ‘racism’. It’s not that they necessarily ‘fear and hate the Democrats even more’ than Trump….it’s that they hate POC, and enjoy their suffering. His basement of 40% is the number of Americans who will NEVER vote for a political party that represents POC. It’s now beyond all doubt that racism is THE driving force with republicans…they are not even pretending to hide it. To leave it out is pundit malpractice.
And their only hope, and what they will attempt is far more immoral than your title implies. They hope to get Biden out of his basement, goad him into no mask, so he dies.
That’s their plan.
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