I’m not sure I quite follow Kevin Drum’s reaction to the Washington Post article on a private memo from the Republicans’ Senate Leadership Fund, a Super PAC responsible for flipping the U.S. Senate to GOP control. The memo discusses internal polling in all the states where there are competitive Senate races, which overlaps somewhat with the battleground states in the presidential race. The takeaway from their analysis is that Republican senate candidates are consistently running behind Donald Trump by several points, and sometimes more.
Drum says “This is nuts. Trump is more popular than conventional Republicans,” and asks, “Do any Republicans watch his rallies and understand just how far he’s melted down since he was president? Or do they really prefer lying, ignorant, whining, vengeful, and racist to ordinary?”
A close look at the individual Republican candidates reveals that they’re almost uniformly a shitty crop. The one kinda/sorta exception is in Maryland where ex-governor Larry Hogan is the Republican candidate, and he’s actually running better than Trump. But that is not because Maryland Republicans like him better than the disgraced ex-president. It’s certainly due to Hogan being more popular with non-Republicans.
And Drum knows his question is already answered by the results of the Republican primary and caucus elections which Trump won in a walk: “I guess we already knew this since Trump won the Republican primary handily, but still.”
So, why does Drum frame the situation by suggesting Trump is “more popular than conventional Republicans” due to Republican voter preference?
Again, the only Republican Senate candidate who is running ahead of Trump is Hogan, and that’s not because Republicans prefer him to Trump. Candidates like Ted Cruz in Texas and Bernie Moreno in Ohio are badly lagging behind Trump’s numbers in their respective states, and the explanation is probably the same. They are less popular than Trump with non-Republicans.
There seems to be a widespread reluctance in the reality-based community to face the reality that Trump is a stronger candidate than “conventional Republicans” because he does better with independents and Democrats. Based on an examination of my own psychology, I think the reason is that reaching this conclusion is just damn depressing and demoralizing, and it’s less painful to just blame Republican voters for the strength of the deplorable vote. I think this is why so many on the left are also fixated on blaming the mainstream media. It allows them to avoid the painful conclusion that the American electorate is on the verge of opting for fascism with the decisive help of independents and Democrats.
The mainstream media’s coverage has its flaws, to be sure, but they have covered Trump’s crimes and flaws relentlessly and no one can fairly accuse them of not providing the American people with more than enough good information to reject Trump and Trumpism with extreme prejudice. The fact that they have not done so is not the fault of the media, but of the American people themselves.
This is not an observation Democratic candidates can or should make if they want to win, because you don’t win votes by criticizing voters.
Yet, if you want to be less depressed, it is a good thing that Republicans not named Trump are very unappealing to the voters right now. This will be important to the results in November, but also going forward. If the only thing keeping the GOP competitive is Trump and Trump loses the election, where does that leave the GOP?
I’m a but confused. How can Trump be getting support from Democrats? I mean, maybe they are technically registered as Democrats, but if you support Trump in 2024 you are definitely not a Democrat.
I would say that the “decisive help from independents and Democrats” that is referenced in the post will not come from votes directly for Trump, but rather them not voting because of some bullshit, made-up reason that Harris supposedly didn’t satisfy for them during her campaign. All those, “She hasn’t shown me enough details yet” people who I guess really are out there. How they are still out there and saying this kind of shit, I simply cannot fathom.
that’s another problem, but not the one I was referencing.
Trump won in 2016 by winning over a huge number of midwestern Democrats, and all the articles you’re seeing now about how he’s doing better with blacks and latinos than in the past is another way of saying he’s winning over Democrats. Educational attainment is now a strong indicator of partisan preference, and that’s increasingly across all races. So you see tons of union workers crossing over to Trump. Lots and lots of Democrats and independents are going to vote for him. It’s why he’s competitive.
I think this is the correct conclusion but I’d argue that a lot of this support comes from people who probably wouldn’t vote at all if Trump wasn’t on the ballot. There are still a significant number of people who are just part of the Trump cult of personality but who don’t buy into anything the GOP is offering (whatever that is).
I don’t have any data to back this up, but it’s a slightly less demoralizing way to look at the situation.
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Wait a minute. You want to win? You get the media to do its job. (And, as a side note, I am the media.) You get them (us) to say, “Hey this guy is now acting like a crackpot and a facist and he’s bad for you and your little fee-fee’s,” and you say it fervently and you say it enough. And before long, everyone believes you. And people, yes, just like the independents and Democrats who have voted for him, will say, “Ya know somethin’? This guy is unhinged. He ain’t like me. Maybe I better vote for Brand X!” And that’s how you change the media narrative and that is how you win. Yes, the media is involved. They created the monster. Now, they need to slay the monster.
It’s possible another Republican would be blowing it out of the water whereas Trump is keeping it to a coin toss. There’s lots of evidence for this:
1. Nikki Haley was crushing in the polling during the primaries.
2. Other countries the incumbents are getting destroyed.
3. Trump is historically disliked and unpopular in general.
But I mostly reject this and it’s mainly for what you say. Maybe another candidate would be the beneficiary of world wide trends and we mistakenly attribute it to Trump…but I don’t think it’s true. Just look at all of Trump’s imitators who got destroyed during a Democratic midterm when inflation was at its peak!
Trump just has some sort of allure that fools millions. I don’t understand it, but then again, he fooled tons of rich people out of their money, too. He’s just the greatest conman who ever lived and ever will live. The Gretzky of conmen.