This week Trump won the Iowa caucuses handily. However, while his margin was plenty comfortable, getting 50% for the de facto incumbent is pretty weak. In 1968, when Eugene McCarthy kept Lyndon Johnson around 50% in New Hampshire, Johnson was so shook, he dropped out of the race. Trump has rigged the primary process to be mostly "winner take all" so unless is quickly become a Trump-Haley race, he's still going to cruise to the nomination. He will cruise, however, with significant discontent within his party. Yes, Cult 45 will crawl through broken glass and then swim through lemon juice to support him, but there are a LOT of Republicans who are muttering "Christ, not this asshole again."
Secondly, Paul Campos notes that your average voter - someone who really pays almost no attention to politics until after Labor Day of an election year - is still reluctant to accept that Trump is going to be the nominee. Once that reality lands, a lot of people will refuse to vote for him again, just as they refused to vote for him in 2016 and 2020.
This is especially going to be true as Trump's legal woes compound. Trump's narcissistic bluster notwithstanding - I love how he claims he's still going to win the NY fraud case when he has, in fact, already lost it - the losses are piling up. The fraud case is in damages phase and so is the E. Jean Carroll defamation case. Again, Trump was found in a court of law to have sexually assaulted Carroll. Since Trump can't help but continue to defame Carroll, the jury settlement could be huge.
Pundits had a certain denial that the GOP was going to re-nominate Trump. A critical swath of the electorate has a similar denial. Once he's the nominee - around the time Jack Smith hopefully brings him to trial - more than a few people are going to be horrified and act accordingly.
No comments:
Post a Comment