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No, It Is Not 2016 All Over Again,.. But That Dead Horse Still Needs a Media Beating [1]
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Date: 2023-09-05
The headline du jour is all about how all this polling being rolled out, well before even the first Primary vote has even been cast, that Trump is “neck and neck” with Joe Biden. GASP! Look at this poll! They’re both at 46% each! Clutch those pearls!
Here’s why this is distracting, discouraging, annoying and ultimately disingenuous clickbait: It’s now 2023.
Trump is no longer enjoying the luxury of being an ‘unknown quantity’ outsider in 2015, running against an unpopular opponent that had already lost the Democratic nomination for President in 2008. Hillary Clinton, for all her merits, lost the Democratic nomination when running for the Democratic nomination against then total long-shot Barack ‘two term’ Obama. In 2008, Hillary Clinton was considered the shoo-in candidate but her loss to Obama showed the field her weaknesses as a candidate long before going into the race in 2016.
This is in no way a slam on Hillary Clinton. Truly, the world would be a far better place had she beat Trump in the electoral college as soundly as she beat him in the popular vote. However, that is not the timeline we live in. How ridiculous does Trump sound now that he’s braying about being prosecuted by the DOJ and the Federal Government when throughout 2016 he was proclaiming far and wide that “Anyone being investigated by the FBI is not qualified to be President of the United States!” and that “In my administration, I’m going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information. No one will be above the law.” No one except him and his Mar-A-Lago box collection.
Only his faithful cult and right wing media pumps believe this hypocritical horse dung. As of today, “Trump has been indicted four times and stands charged with 91 felony counts, 44 federal and 47 state charges. He is a defendant in a civil suit brought by New York’s attorney general charging him with fraudulent overstatement of his assets. There will also be a separate phase in the defamation action brought by journalist E. Jean Carroll, who says Trump raped her in a department store dressing room many years ago (a jury already returned a verdict for Carroll in a prior incarnation of the case).”
When this stuff is playing out in real time and he is wracking up indictments along the way, and his goons are going down and ready to flip on him, this idea that he’s going to get reelected and skirt this all, is a pipe dream. Look to Brian Kemp‘s defense of Fani Willis in Georgia to read the tea leaves.
The truth is we had a lot of grace at play in 2016. We were coming out of eight years of stable leadership under Obama and the thought in everyone’s minds was seemingly “Not another Bush-Clinton election!” (As Jeb Bush was the seemingly obvious candidate of the GOP). There seemed to be a restlessness after we saw what the first Black president could accomplish to not slide back into the apathetic act of ignoring elections or just repeatedly picking from the political dynasties. Young people and minorities showed up to vote in numbers that got Obama elected twice, and somewhere in there, it seemed that would be the future. Surely a clown like Donald J. Trump, failed businessman, perpetual gadfly and hero of the deplorables didn’t have a chance in hell. But then, here we are. Back to the hand-wringing and poll shocks to get one hurriedly examining the numbers.
But aye, therein lies the rub…
Facts: Trump is facing down 91 felony indictments, and has been convicted of rape and defamation. In response to the fact we have a mugshot of our 45th President out of the state of Georgia, The GOP Has doubled down on their favorite failed real estate mogul who has declared bankruptcy repeatedly and buried his first wife on his golf course. But as scary as the idea of a second Trump term is to consider, the thought of Godzilla trampling his way through New York city is also a scary thing to imagine. That’s the thing about imagination, it can take you to dark places. One can ‘what-if’ until they’re curled into a ball under the bed. But Trump is not ‘winning’. No matter what he bleats out on his failing social network ironically named ‘Truth Social’, he is not raising funds faster than his legal bills are piling up, he is not going to be out there campaigning and his future is filled with nothing but court dates and legal battles, with third rate lawyers representing him as he goes through lawyers like they were tissues.
But who cares about all the planes that landed safely today? Let’s focus on the one that crashed!
TRUMP LOST: In 2016, with popular vote by a wide margin. In 2018 when the Senate and the congress returned to the Democrats. In 2020 when he lost the presidency. In 2022 when all his endorsed candidates failed to get elected. This is to say nothing about the fact that the GOP got their wish and the dog caught the car with Dobbs decision and Roe being overturned. Now, special elections in even deep red Trump territory are going pro-choice, because surprise! Even the majority of Republican voting women don’t want to live in a dystopian national nightmare where their twelve year old daughter might survive a rape only to be forced to carry the rapist’s baby to term. Where their sister might have a terminal pregnancy wherein carrying the sick fetus to term might actually kill her. Even Republican voting women want their doctors to make those calls, not religious fanatics pandering to their core base evangelical voters from Washington DC.
The media has a bad habit when discussing voters in polling as if nothing changed since 2020. Everyone saw Trump attempt a coup in our nation’s Capitol. Now he’s going to be tried for those crimes. The January 6th committee made the facts widely known using testimony and evidence provided by Trump’s own cabinet and fellow Republicans. But instead of drilling down on what may have shifted, there’s a rush to put a microphone and camera in the face of a clown in some super-MAGA costume all sequined and red, white and blue, spouting conspiracy theories. There are no mass demonstrations that we were all warned would occur if Trump were indicted. There is a rightful concern for individual safety, but there hasn’t been another JANUARY 6TH and those perpetrators are being put in prison in real time.
The media touts that half of Americans aren’t happy with how the economy is doing, and ignores the half that are. There’s a fantasy land being reported from that ignores that the economy struggled and then roared back after the previous President allowed our country to be hobbled by a pandemic that up-ended the world’s supply chain and took the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans that were being told by the leader of the free world that bleach and internal UV lights would rid them of Covid-19.
The number of self-identified Republicans has dropped sharply since the last election as many have become independent voters, which Joe Biden won by a wide margin, but somehow the ones that remain are all in on Trump,.. except for the nearly half that aren’t. Looking past the “TRUMP WILL WIN, NO MATTER WHAT” alarmist headlines, there is in truth, a picture of a Republican party divided in a way the Democrats simply aren’t. No one is seriously contesting Biden’s nomination for a second term, and in general, rational people can see we’re in better shape as a nation under the current non-indicted, not twice impeached Forty-Sixth president. Article after article admits that behind closed doors and spoken anonymously within the GOP, they know Trump is a clear loser in the general election. Whatever one thinks about Joe Biden, Trump has not gained in popularity since 2020.
One would have to believe that since 2020, all the independent voters, all the minority voters, all the surviving Covid voters, the LGBTQ voters, the pro-choice voters, all the young voters that have turned legal voting age since then, are all just going to sit out this next election, as if Trump, who is responsible for “Roe V Wade” being overturned and brags about it, is going to win those voters back with his campaign from courthouses and possibly prison?
That’s the stuff of fever dreams and wild fantasy. America has showed itself to be more sane than that, even if it seems a little crazy right now.
But ‘crazy’ gets the headlines.
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