I wish Democrats would think more carefully when they talk about MAGA – people voting for Trump – and just be honest. He’s kind of right about NATO, kind of right about immigration. He grew the economy quite well, tax reform worked.
Jamie Dimon (on CNBC)
Down to lowest-ever 33% approval, Biden’s campaign message is Joe Biden. Defense of Democracy. That’s as bad as Uzbekistan Airways. Good Luck. The president is betting on January 6 to re-enlist 81 million Trump-phobic voters, a strategy that even liberal observers question.
Wall Street wunderkind Jamie Dimon (quote above) scolded his party for demonizing Trump voters on CNBC. New York’s Jonathan Chait says Biden’s “normalcy feels spent, and the anti-Trump coalition [has] forgotten how awful he is.” Mitt Romney says Biden’s “threat to democracy pitch is a bust. Jan. 6 will be four years old by the election. People have processed it, one way or another.”
The Democrat problem is they actually believe Trump voters are “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic – you name it” – and their followers have. For supporting Trump, Larry Elder became the “black face of white supremacy.” Riley Gaines is “transphobic” because she doesn’t want once-men to compete in her sport. You get the idea.
You and I know many church-going, good-parenting, law-abiding, tax-paying – you name it – Americans who support Trump for the reasons he outlined in Iowa last Sunday:
“We’re going to come together – it’s going to happen soon – to score the ultimate victory over all of the liars, cheaters, thugs, frauds, crooks, creeps, and other quite nice people, the Washington Swamp [that’s] done everything in its power to take away your voice. But tomorrow is your time to turn on them, speak your mind, and to vote.”
That speech is the “new talk” that gets Trump in trouble with liberals, but it’s how today’s America – where rap lyrics are award-winning – communicates. Jamie Dimon urged liberals to “actually grow up and treat other people respectfully and listen to them” – and admit foreigners should enter the US legally, Trump’s economy was better than Biden’s, and being conservative is not a character flaw.
I’m a Niki Haley fanboy because I think she will put an end to identity politics – not because I think Donald Trump will destroy our democracy. If Haley doesn’t win the nomination, I’ll unapologetically vote for Trump (a third time) because I’m 100% ABB (Anybody But Biden). I am not alone.
The Real Clear Politics (RCP) betting average has Trump with 61.5% of GOP support and 11.5 points ahead of Biden head-to-head. Does that mean the US electorate is mostly deplorable? Of course not, but Biden dumps on Trump and MAGA Republicans to avoid defending a record that’s hollowed out his 2020 base. Are those lost voters now threats to democracy? No, they’re leaning toward “voting against” Joe Biden’s record.
Polls find Trump’s Black support between 14% and 30% (source: Bloomberg). Newsweek reports this is the result of the “prices of basic needs, small business owners [recalling] under Trump it was easier for them to get federal loans, backlash against police accountability measures, and older Black women seeing Trump as the lesser of two evils” (meaning Biden is “the greater of two evils”).
Trump now has a 5-point lead over Biden with Hispanic voters (source: CNBC). CNN reports that Latino voters now believe that “when Trump was the president we didn’t have high gas, inflation.” Democratic analyst Ruy Teixeira finds Trump’s tough immigration rhetoric seems less racist now: “Huge proportions of working-class Hispanics are actually pretty disturbed by illegal immigration.”
The New York Times reports Trump with a 6-point lead over Biden with voters under 30, which The Hill attributes to the young feeling “the effects of a struggling economy on their daily lives, a liking for Trump’s capacity for disruption, and a feeling that America has grown weaker and more divided under Biden.” One young now-Trump voter said, “what we’ve seen from this administration is not the outcome we want for America.”
The price for governing badly – and plummeting in the polls – is losing the presumption of being better for American democracy than those who disagree. This is why DeSantis won 58% of Florida’s Hispanic votes in 2022, Dave Chappelle has doubled down on transgender jokes, and college boys are drinking less Bud Light. The quantifiable cost to Biden for leading America into disarray is 67% of voters saying “their country is on the wrong track” (source: RCP average).
The numbers throughout this post suggest Never Biden has supplanted Never Trump – and Iowa’s caucus added an exclamation point. According to Fox News exit polls, immigration topped the issues list, 80% felt Trump’s legal woes were political attempts to undermine his re-election, and 89% want either “substantial change” or “complete and total upheaval” in how America’s governed.
The idea of “complete and total upheaval” bothered me until Tuesday, when the DOJ confirmed it knew Hunter’s laptop was real in 2019. Then, I recalled October 2020, when Joe proclaimed it was “Russian disinformation” and “a smear campaign.” Maybe Iowans were onto something.
If Joe Biden (and his cronies) would say anything to get elected, what would he do to get re-elected? Probably something deplorable.