Trump has a Republican problem
The public wants a winner. FJB and Republican senators are losers
Philip Bump of the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post reported, “Why Biden is underperforming Democratic Senate candidates.”
Of course he got the story bass-ackwards. He wouldn’t be at the Bezos Post if he got the story right. Biden isn’t underperforming. Republican senators and congressmen are.
Inflation is at 40-year highs. Millions of drug mules, child sex traffickers, murderers, spies and terrorists have infiltrated the country. We’ve had to take shots that we were told were vaccines but aren’t. We’ve lost wars in Afghanistan and Niger — yes, Niger kicked us out and took over a brand-new military base we built. We’ve backed terrorists who raped and killed Israelis. We’ve thrown billions to that loser Zelensky.
Republicans have a rock star presidential candidate who is peeling black and Hispanic votes from Democrats. They should be enjoying wide leads in Senate races.
Nope.
In state after state, Trump is up and the Republican Senate candidate is down.
In Arizona, it is Trump +6, the Republican Senate candidate -13.
In Nevada, it is Trump +13, a tie in the Senate race.
In Pennsylvania, it is Trump +3, the Republican Senate candidate -3.
In Wisconsin, it is Trump +1, the Republican Senate candidate -7.
The problem for Trump is that the down ballot may bring him down because most Republicans are seen as incompetent among independents and untrustworthy among conservatives.
Most Republicans in DC are unworthy of our trust. We sent them to repeal Obamacare. 14 years later, it is still standing.
We sent them to build the wall. They didn’t.
We sent them to support Trump and some of them voted to impeach him.
Bump stumbled across a salient point in his column about that Arizona Senate race between Democrat Ruben Gallego and Republican Kari Lake:
Biden and Gallego get about the same level of support across the state. Biden is at 47 percent and Gallego is at 49%. The difference is on the Republican side, where Trump gets 52% to Lake’s 36%.
Trump cannot carry Lake because, well, she has become a McCain Republican who backed banning abortion until it hurt her in the polls.
And yes, abortion is hurting Republicans because the fear of a national ban on abortion (which we’ve never had) is real. Dobbs turned the issue back over to states like it was in 1973, but Republicans failed to realize that after 50 years of calling abortion a right, people started believing that. The easiest way to deal with abortion is to support letting states decide, which Trump is saying..
Thus, abortion is not hurting Donald Trump, whose trio of justices made Dobbs reality. The main difference between him and most Republican candidates is that he actually accomplished something in politics. The economy was better under him and not only did we have peace, we had an absence of fear.
By that I mean, we were not headed to World War III. Muslim nations signed the Abraham Accords with Israel. Putin was not bothering his neighbors as he was under Obama. Trump met with Kim Jong Un.
Bump’s fear about Trump carrying the party was encouraging. Bump wrote:
As Election Day gets closer, they’re more likely to catch up to Trump’s levels of support than Trump is to descend to theirs.
In other words, while it’s still fair to say that the CBS poll offers good news and bad news for Democrats, the bad news seems a lot more stable than the good news. There and in the other swing states, it seems more likely that the good news for Democrats will flip than it does that the bad news will.
Trump helped save a Republican Senate majority in 2018’s midterm election. The party actually had a net gain of two seats. I hope for his sake he not only carries Arizona, Minnesota, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin but that he carries the Republican losers in their Senate races to victory because I still hold out the hope that conservatives can wrest control of the Republican caucus in the Capitol from the RINOs.
The New York Times though believes Democrat Senate candidates can save FJB.
NYT, reporting on its polling in 6 states, said, “The results in the presidential race would have been surprising a year ago, but it’s hard to call them surprising anymore. Donald J. Trump leads in five of the six states among likely voters, with Mr. Biden squeaking out a lead among likely voters in Michigan. Mr. Trump’s strength is largely thanks to gains among young, black and Hispanic voters.
“What’s more surprising is the U.S. Senate results. This is the first time we’ve asked about Senate races this year, and the Democratic candidates led in all four of the states we tested: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada.
“Not only do Democrats lead, but they also seem to do so in an entirely customary way, with ordinary levels of support from young and nonwhite voters, even as Mr. Biden struggles at the top of the ticket.”
The reality is, Biden is as big a drag on Democrats as Carter was in 1980. Not only did Reagan win in a landslide, Republicans gained 12 Senate seats.
Samantha-Jo Roth of the Washington Examiner reported, “Democratic Senate candidates in critical swing states are running well ahead of President Joe Biden and lead their Republican rivals, but Pennsylvania Senate Republican candidate Dave McCormick believes he’s got a plan to ensure the commonwealth turns red for both himself and former President Donald Trump.”
McCormick said, “Bob Casey has been the status quo; he’s voted with Biden 98% of the time. I’ve made huge progress on people getting to know me and that is being reflected in the polls.”
Republicans need to do that and they also need to show support for Trump. Otherwise it is 1972 all over again when Nixon took 49 states and Republicans had a net loss of two Senate seats. That was the year Biden first got elected by ousting a Republican incumbent senator.
The simple truth is that we currently have three political parties here in the (formerly) United States: democrats, republicans and Trump. Trump actually far outnumbers the republicans, and is pretty close to the democrats, but he needs to convert more republicans in order to implement his policies once elected. The sad truth is that republicans don't want Trump to usurp their positions in government, which has long afforded them with lavish lifestyles and perquisites of power that we mere citizens do not share. I am not the first, nor will I be the last to say that republicans prefer being the party out-of-power, since that enables them to vacuum up and distribute to their friends and supporters their share of all the tax money the the democrats are happy to raise but claim not to be responsible. They cry, "See, we didn't want to raise your taxes, but those nasty democrats made us to it. So please send us more contributions so we can fight those rascals!" I have a friend who sits in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. When I ask him why he never seems to get any meaningful legislation into the hopper, he laughs and says it is because he can't raise enough money for the party leaders to pay attention to him. It's that simple; money is power. And power enables the raising and distribution of money. A very circular phenomenon, and the circle is forever closed to anyone not already in power. These republicans hate Trump because the Trump Party means to dislodge them from their sinecures and replace them. The questions are whether it is possible, and if possible, will it make any real difference or will Lord Acton's dictum hold sway?
In Arizona, Lake is a wanna be politician. She comes across as the weather girl at the end of the news. She is dead meat. However, I believe Trump is so popular that Republican voters will vote straight tickets. Just look at the massive rally attendance. Those people would elect Howdy Doody if Trump tells them to. Besides, voters know that Trump needs congress to back his policies and fund his programs. Get ready, we are in for the ride of our lives in 2025.