In the latest ABC News poll, Trump’s unfavorable ratings among all Americans have hit 70 percent; and 77 percent of women view him unfavorably. His favorable rating among his base of white men is 46 percent, down from 54 percent in last month’s ABC News poll. Only 47 percent of self-identified conservatives view him favorably, down from 58 percent in May.
Some people take heart in the fact that while Trump’s still losing when the swing states are polled, he’s losing by a smaller margin. What they’ve failed to account for is that he is so incredibly unpopular that he puts a number of “gimmie” states for the GOP into play for the Democrats including Georgia, Missouri, Arizona, Utah and, yes, even Texas.
That’s bad.
What’s worse is that Ted Cruz dropped out May 3rd which effectively cleared the way for Donald Trump to focus on the general election. That’s an eternity in a presidential campaign, but what has Donald Trump done with his time?
Has he made any kind of significant effort to win over the Republicans who are skeptical about him? No. Has he done anything of significance to reach out to new demographics beyond his current base of supporters? No. Has he started building any kind of professional data operation that’s a necessity for campaigns these days? No. Has he cleaned up his act, stopped making gaffes and shown that he can be more presidential? No.
Trump recognizes this, too, which is why he’s floated the idea of funding his own campaign….which is also a bad joke.
“I’ll be honest, I think I could spend $50, $60, $70 million of my own money and run a wonderful campaign,” Trump told Muir. “Now, would I have as many ads as her? No.”
The fact that Donald Trump thinks that is enough to adequately fund a campaign shows he’s completely delusional and it could lead to the GOP being outspent by Clinton more than 10-to-1. Money isn’t everything in politics, but a candidate that has that kind of cash advantage will win 999 times out of 1,000.
Unbelievably, normally sensible people look at all this and think, “Sure, Trump has a lot of disadvantages, but nobody thought he’d win the primaries; so he’ll be fine.” What sort of “thinking” is this? In the NCAA Tournament, if a 15 seed pulls an upset, you don’t then pick it to win the whole tournament because no one expected it to win the first game. At this point, Trump’s in even worse shape than Republicans were in Missouri after Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape comments” not just because Trump is MORE UNPOPULAR than a politician whose name is synonymous with unlikability, but because that state is a more friendly playing field for the GOP than the country overall.
Well, there has been talk of a delegate revolt at the convention. Unfortunately, even if that were to happen and Trump were replaced with a more electable candidate (pretty much anyone with a pulse whose last name isn’t Bush), a block of people would refuse to vote in protest because Trump did win fair and square. Maybe those people would be hypocritical because they’re mostly the same ones who’ve been saying, “Anyone who doesn’t support Trump is backing Hillary,” but it’s reality. Additionally, even though Trump would probably be secretly relieved that he’s not going to go down in history as a historic loser, he’d be likely to do everything he could to undermine the GOP nominee and put “Crooked Hillary” in the White House out of revenge.
Could the GOP win if Trump just decided not to run? Absolutely. If Trump were replaced with almost anybody other than Jeb Bush, Hillary would go from being practically guaranteed to lose to a big underdog. Would Trump do that? It’s highly unlikely because it would require him to do what’s best for the country instead of parlaying this into a massive branding effort to benefit himself. That doesn’t seem to be in his character. It would be fantastic to be wrong about that, but unless Trump decides that he benefits personally from not running, it’s hard to see him stepping aside. Barring that, the only other thing people who care about their country can do is try to help candidates down ticket so we can limit the tremendous losses we’ll take with Trump at the top of the ticket.
Donald Trump is a dog who finally caught the bumper of a car and he has no idea what to do next. Sadly, the rest of the country is getting dragged along with him and it’s going to mean that Hillary Clinton will be our next president.
