rolling “Trump is gonna win” containment thread

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/17/upshot/they-supported-biden-in-2020-what-made-them-change-their-minds-in-2024.html

There are a lot of people who are a) unhappy with the state of the country and the economy, and b) perceive Biden as weak/incompetent/in over his head. They may not personally like Trump (or even hold conservative beliefs), but they view him as strong and able to shake things up.

Cool.

I mean, he will shake things up. The people who voted for him, he'll shake them up as bad as most.

It's possible we're going to see a lot of one-term turnover in the White House as the new norm in the U.S.

That story isn't saying anything we haven't heard repeatedly.

Oh, for sure, I just feel like it crystallizes things. Like, forget about everything else: This is what the election is going to come down to.

I still don't understand how someone who is not insane can look at Trump and see him as "competent".

Shaking things up is always a net positive, just ask any infant

I've not been borderline obsessive w/ the polls like I was in 2012, 2016, and 2020, but shit still isn't looking good. I don't believe the polls are 'fake', and though I think there's probably still some noise from Kennedy's run, frankly it ain't good.

but....lot of time left, and a whole bunch of unexpected shit will probably happen. some recent state polling has been favorable to Biden, but barely, but the amount of state polling is going to ratchet up after the conventions and whatnot.

new chotiner interview: https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/is-the-biden-campaign-running-on-false-hope

this guy does not exactly fill me with hope

yeah, the 'they're wrong, the polls were wrong in 2020 and 2022 rawwwwr' people are living in delusionland. first of all, in the PRESIDENTIAL elections of 2016 and 2020, they underestimated Trump support, so they weren't wrong in the direction you want them to have been wrong in.

we don't need our own Unskewed Polls guy, really we don't.

look the polls right now freak me out too but there are reasons for hope

one, and probably the most important thing, we're still six months away, the conventions and debates having happened yet, historically polls haven't been very accurate this far out

two, this guy is right that polls have been underestimating Dem support for the last few years, all the races that polls have as toss-ups seem to go the Dems' way, sometimes by fairly large margins. Dobbs really did shake things up and I am sure the Dems are gonna campaign hard on it

three, Trump is probably going to be convicted of a bunch of felonies next week. there's a possibility of a hung jury I guess but it really does seem like the trial went very poorly for him. despite what Republicans will tell you, being a convicted felon is not going to play well for him.

four, there's still a pretty big disrepency in funding here. Biden is raising way more cash and they've already bought a ton of the cheap fall airtime. Trump's fundraising is accelerating but he's also blowing through a ton of cash with his legal expenses. given the campaigns haven't really "started" yet this seems like a big problem for Republicans.

five, while I think this guy is wrong in the idea that the opinions of the Bushes or Mike Pence or Mitt Romney matter at all, it does beg the question of who exactly Trump's surrogates are right now, and they're all people even more annoying and less well-liked than him.

six, on a similar point, while this polling does look good for Trump it also looks really bad for a lot of the downballot candidates. there's really nobody else in the Republican party who's even remotely popular. you have to think this will dampen enthusiasm, in 2016 you had a lot of "I don't like Trump but I'm a conservative and I want a Republican administration/Congress"...well guess what, they're all Trumpy now. even if he wins they may get their ass kicked in Congress which is gonna hamper his ability to do any of the shit he's promising.

seven, while it is concerning that Trump's approval rating has slowly been ticking up, I don't think the conclusion to be drawn there is that people are cool with the insurrection now, in fact polling has shown a lot of moderates still really really do not like the dictator shit, but Trump himself has been out of the news for a while, so I think it's more that people aren't being reminded of how horrible Trump is every single day anymore. but once things really kick up they sure will.

eight, this guy is right that Trump himself isn't the same as he was in 2016, or even 2020, he's just so fucking boring and whiny right now, his political instincts are also really fucking bad, I mean one day he posts a video with an overt reference to Nazi Germany, the next he starts talking about American hostages in Russia that will only be released if he wins, again I think all of this is gonna play really poorly amongst the people he needs to win over (namely the independants/swing voters who went 2:1 for him in 2016 but 2:1 for Biden in 2020)

nine, I don't think Trump himself has a very good handle of issues driving the Republican party right now, it used to be he would say "build the wall" and the entire party would make that the #1 issue, now the whole party is a lot weirder and focused on culture war issues that I don't think Trump himself really understands, and again this is gonna come down to turnout and enthusiasm and I don't think Republican voters are really enthusiastic about anything Trump is selling right now (other than getting Biden out of the WH)

ten, one guy who DOES seem to understand the freakiness of the average Republican voter is RFK, and while I don't think he's gonna crack 1% it does seem like he's gonna siphon off a lot more Republican votes than Democrat. its probably more likely that he doesn't matter at all but Trump's recent freakouts about him imply that internal polling is showing him something else.

one, and probably the most important thing, we're still six months away, the conventions and debates having happened yet, historically polls haven't been very accurate this far out

honestly this is the most important one, I mean it's not as if races end up where they started

well, the thing about that is that usually this far out people are not already super familiar with both candidates.

That's why you could have Bill Clinton jumping from third place to first after his convention.

ten, one guy who DOES seem to understand the freakiness of the average Republican voter is RFK, and while I don't think he's gonna crack 1% it does seem like he's gonna siphon off a lot more Republican votes than Democrat. its probably more likely that he doesn't matter at all but Trump's recent freakouts about him imply that internal polling is showing him something else.

Apparently Karl Rove, of all people, has noticed this and is freaking out. This is from a piece he wrote in the Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Kennedy created the largest antivax group in the U.S. and has long argued that vaccines cause autism and needless deaths. On Sunday in Colorado, he offered 1,200 enthusiastic supporters enough weird theories to qualify as a QAnon convention keynoter. He asserted that the CIA is a bigger threat to America than China, that the Seventh Amendment right of trial by jury is routinely violated, and that a “war machine” is working with corrupt U.S. corporations and Washington to enrich itself at our expense.

He has plenty of other moonbat ideas that didn’t make the Sunday rally: Al Qaeda might not have been responsible for 9/11. Agribusiness is waging war on our health through the food pyramid and degrading our soil. The 2004 election was stolen. Wi-Fi and 5G cause cancer. Chemicals in our water may spread transgenderism. HIV may not cause AIDS. Sirhan Sirhan didn’t kill RFK Sr. Antidepressants may cause school shootings.

In a normal election, these wild ideas would devastate a campaign. But this isn’t a normal year. After stunts like Russiagate, decades of mainstream media bias, and years of QAnon nonsense, voters on the right are particularly prone to embrace conspiracies from fringe sources. Mr. Kennedy could use these outlandish claims to pry more than a few wackos off Mr. Trump, perhaps enough to hand the election to Mr. Biden.

The 2004 election was stolen.

Turd Blossom Signal

well, the thing about that is that usually this far out people are not already super familiar with both candidates.

― A So-Called Pulitzer price winner (President Keyes), Thursday, May 23, 2024 2:56 PM (thirty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

true, but even still that's probably not a bad thing. I mean Trump's fundamental polling trait is that everything he does is unpopular, and his ratings tank every time he's on national television. Biden on the other hand has done a lot of stuff that's polled well and generally seems to get more popular as he does more appearances, I mean the reason why things shifted after that first 2020 debate wasn't just Trump being annoying as shit it was the fact that Biden, a guy they spent years painting as senile and doddering, looked basically fine

It’s now 2024 and Biden often looks less fine, but imo Trump is now prone to ever more moments that, if you’re not already diehard MAGA, make you say “what?!”

curious what percentage of elections since 2018 where republicans have beaten democrats, and then again since the republican supreme court outlawed abortion

Karl Rove knows he can't lose the wacko vote

Karl Rove is not saying anything that hasn't been thoroughly discussed by ilxors here on the US Politics threads. He must be a lurker.

Sorry, I am Karl Rove.

I like your rapping

https://i.imgur.com/aDmzepv.jpg

"I am Karl Rove!"

Beginning to think the Trump trial is no slam dunk. It pretty much all hinges on the testimony from Cohen - self-confessed thug, liar, convicted felon who admitted on the stand to stealing thousands from his only client the defendant, who has made a whole career and a pot of money from denigrating the defendant... the defense just needs one wavering juror and the whole thing collapses.

I don't think a conviction would move the dial an awful lot - although maybe just enough to make a difference. But an acquittal or a mistrial would be an enormous boon to Trump, lending credence to all the crooked Joe witch hunt bullshit.

Cohen's not the one on trial though. they had piles and piles of evidence even before he took the stand

yeah, Cohen is slippery but they were mostly using him to bolster what had already been well demonstrated in the docs

it does not all hinge on cohen

Field Commander Cohen!

I have a hard time believing a mistrial would help Trump (an acquittal seems impossible), feel like most of the country has already internalized that Trump suffers no consequences ever

question is how much a conviction would hurt, if it happens and the polls don't shift in the following weeks all I can say is good luck USA

the docs case coulda touched him some i think but we will never know.

Yea sucks that’ll never get prosecuted it’s such an open and shut case

Karl Rove is not saying anything that hasn't been thoroughly discussed by ilxors here on the US Politics threads. He must be a lurker.

RFK JR seems like a pretty big war machine fan to me: https://www.timesofisrael.com/2024-dark-horse-rfk-jr-questions-gaza-ceasefire-defends-israeli-offensive/

i am not a fan of RFK Jr., just noting that the (obviously mistaken) point that Rove was trying to pin to him is objectively correct

I know its dumb to speculate on this but something to keep an eye on is the fact that something seems kinda up with Trump right now. I mean if you can stomach to watch maybe go back and see some 2015 or 2016 footage, he didn't appear smart exactly but he was at least kinda sharp and funny when he wasn't having to bullshit through his answers. but he isn't that guy anymore, in fact you could argue he hasn't really been fully coherent at all since Covid. he just repeats the same shit over and over and has no real train of thought, he keeps saying he's running against Obama, he's confusing Jimmy Kimmel with Al Pacino, he's whining about the courtroom being an "icebox" when it's 79 degrees and he's wearing a suit, maybe he's in really bad health. I mean come on he famously doesn't exercise and eats like shit, he's probably been on stimulents for decades, he doesn't sleep much, he's angry literally always, how many 77 year old men do you see who are like that

of course you could argue he's just getting Trumpier, fair point, but idk imagine if like Nikki Haley said "never fight uphill, me boys", it would be the defining moment of her life. she'd be the next Howard Dean.

Trump's voters might notice, but I don't think they'd care. So long as there is not drastic change the election outcome likely won't hinge on Trump's health or mental acuity. Further down the road it might possibly mean we get a JD Vance administration (assuming Trump prevails in November, ofc).

right, obviously Reagan sounded pretty bad when he was re-elected, but things are way more hyperpartisan now, he needs to improve on 2020 somehow and if the entire country gets sick of hearing him talk that's probably a big problem

As things stand now I'd be surprised if Trump could improve on his 2020 results. My hunch is that Trump's best hope to win would be Biden's turnout slipping below 2020 levels in several critical swing states, for example Michigan. In many ways it feels like this will be a contest decided by who loses the fewest of their 2020 voters come November.

From my vantage Biden's student loan cancellation efforts had better advance by leaps and bounds asap. He badly needs the 18-30 demographic and those abortion rights measures in various states is the best he has going for him atm and it's better to have more than one arrow in your quiver.

don’t forget the weed

Dank Brandon

interesting analysis from an actual pollster

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/24/upshot/trump-biden-polls-voters.html

The Shaky Foundation of Trump’s Lead: Disengaged Voters

The polls have shown Donald J. Trump with an edge for eight straight months, but there’s one big flashing warning sign suggesting that his advantage might not be quite as stable as it looks.

That warning sign: His narrow lead is built on gains among voters who aren’t paying close attention to politics, who don’t follow traditional news and who don’t regularly vote.

To an extent that hasn’t been true in New York Times/Siena College polling in the last eight years, disengaged voters are driving the overall polling results and the story line about the election.

President Biden has actually led the last three Times/Siena national polls among those who voted in the 2020 election, even as he has trailed among registered voters overall. And looking back over the last few years, almost all of Mr. Trump’s gains have come from these less engaged voters.

Importantly, these disengaged low-turnout voters are often from predominantly Democratic constituencies. Many continue to identify as Democratic-leaning and still back Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate, but they nonetheless are backing away from Mr. Biden in startling numbers. In our polling, Mr. Biden wins just three-quarters of Democratic-leaning voters who didn’t vote in the 2022 midterm election, even as almost all high-turnout Democratic-leaners continue to support him.

Mr. Trump’s strength among low-turnout and less engaged voters helps explain a lot of what’s strange about this election. It illustrates the disconnect between Mr. Trump’s lead in the polls and Democratic victories in lower-turnout special elections. And it helps explain Mr. Trump’s gains among young and nonwhite voters, who tend to be among the least engaged. His strength among young voters, in particular, is almost entirely found among those who did not vote in the midterms.

ah, so now the category "likely voters," which puzzled me, makes sense.

how's Trump doing amongst smelly voters

“You know simple people, people of the land… morons.”

Probably quite well.

Likely Trump voters:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8XQV0PYf3c

His strength among young voters, in particular, is almost entirely found among those who did not vote in the midterms.

Too busy getting MAGA neck tats, perhaps.

An email I received this morning (published by the Bulwark):

What If Trump Is Right About America?
It's time to ask some hard questions about ourselves.

Donny from the Bronx
One of the Trump campaign’s beliefs about 2024 is that the the former president’s criminal indictments will help him with black voters. The theory is, since Trump is an (alleged) criminal, many black people who are also criminals(?), will begin to support him.

This may sound racist, but we know that Trump believes it because he’s said it explicitly. But we also know it because yesterday he held a rally in the Bronx where his campaign handed out posters of his mugshot and welcomed onto the stage two black (alleged) gang members who are currently indicted as part of a criminal conspiracy for crimes that include murder, attempted murder, and a dozen shootings.

These two (alleged) gang members endorsed Trump.

I can’t tell you why Sheff G and Sleepy Hallow endorsed the former president. Maybe they have strong feelings on tariffs. Maybe they believe that NATO membership represents a dangerous entanglement for American interests. Maybe they think that the family separation policy from Trump’s first term was misunderstood and actually represented a reasonable deterrent to undocumented immigrants.

Or maybe they just like Trump because he’s an (alleged) criminal, too. He’s just like them.

What if Trump is right about the black vote? Not that he’ll win a majority, but if he were to take 20 percent—or even 15 percent—of the African-American vote it will hurt Biden. He’s currently polling in the low 20s with blacks.

But more than that, what if Trump is right about America?

Because as unpleasant as it is to acknowledge, Trump has been right about a great many things.

(1) Republican voters. For 40 years it was dogma that Republican voters wanted a president who blended social and fiscal conservatism and waited his turn to run.

In 2016, Trump understood that Republican voters no longer wanted any of those things. They wanted the craziest son-of-a-bitch available.

(2) The Republican party. The GOP looked like a formidable, disciplined gatekeeper. Trump understood that it was weak and would go along with whatever a man of pure will demanded of it.

(3) The Conservative movement. For three generations conservatives pretended that they cared about policy ideas, such as restrained spending, small government, free trade, and robust foreign policy. Trump understood that the Conservative movement only cared about triggering libs and that so long as he made liberals unhappy, conservatives would take whatever he gave them.

(4) Presidential politics. National politics has long been forward-looking and results oriented. Voters liked and rewarded presidents who passed legislation and talked about the future instead of re-litigating the past. As president, Trump was indifferent to legislating—his major accomplishments were a tax cut and criminal justice reform. As a 2024 candidate, Trump has basically no legislative proposals and spends most of his time talking about his personal grievances.

What’s more, Joe Biden dedicated his term to passing a string of bills, all of which were popular and many of which were bi-partisan.¹ Voters seem not to care about any of this governing. At all.

Trump understood that American politics had transformed into an attention economy.

(5) COVID. You really aren’t going to like this, but Trump was right about the politics of COVID. At the end of the day, people cared more about the economy than the deaths.

It amazes me that today when people complain about what went wrong during COVID, they talk about business closures, travel restrictions, remote schooling, and sometimes having to wear masks in public parks.

They never talk about the 1 million Americans who died from COVID during the pandemic.

Trump understood that the living do not care about the dead.²

(6) Taiwan. America has long adhered to a policy of strategic ambiguity on whether or not it would defend Taiwan militarily. In 2019, Trump told a Republican senator, “Taiwan is like two feet from China. . . . We are eight thousand miles away. If they invade, there isn’t a f-—ing thing we can do about it.”

The war in Ukraine suggests that this is almost certainly correct: The American political system can barely do the minimum required to keep Ukraine in the fight and even that aid could end permanently after November.

There is no question that our country lacks the political will to defend Taiwan. I suspect do not even have the political will to give them military aid, should China move against the Taiwanese.

There are other things Trump understood. He figured out that impeachment was a constitutional dead-letter. He knew that criminal trials could be delayed or sabotaged by helpful judges. He pegged Nikki Haley the first moment he saw her on TV.

In each of these instances, Donald Trump understood reality better than most people—certainly better than I did. As Katherine Miller once put it, “Trump is the grinning skeleton in the crowd; what he reveals about other people is the most important thing about him.”

I wonder:

What if Trump isn’t gaming his way into minority rule? What if he’s not trying to draw to an inside straight, like he did in 2016 and almost did in 2020?

What if his theory about who Americans really are, about what this country really wants, is right?

Happy Memorial Day.