Donald Trump would be on track to win a historic landslide in November — if so many US voters didn’t find him personally repugnant.
Roughly 53 percent of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of the former president. And yet, when asked about Trump’s ability to handle key issues — or the impact of his policies — voters routinely give the Republican candidate higher marks than President Biden.
In a YouGov survey released this month, Trump boasted an advantage over Biden on 10 of the 15 issues polled. On the three issues that voters routinely name as top priorities — the economy, immigration, and inflation — respondents said that Trump would do a better job by double-digit margins.
Meanwhile, in a recent New York Times/Siena College poll, 40 percent of voters said that Trump’s policies had helped them personally, while just 18 percent said the same of Biden. If Americans could elect a normal human being with Trump’s reputation for being “tough” on immigration and good at economics, they would almost certainly do so.
Biden is fortunate that voters do not have that option. But to erase Trump’s small but stubborn lead in the polls, the president needs to erode his GOP rival’s advantage on the issues.
Can we please stop with the whole “if the Republicans make the country terrible enough, they will start losing!”
No. That’s a terrible strategy. It worked once, with the repeal of abortion protections, and even then it didn’t work super well. And the tradeoff was not worth it. Women are dying.
Voters, especially Republican voters, are so stupid and brainwashed that they will believe the GOP when the GOP tells them that it’s actually Democrats (and immigrants etc etc) who have made their lives worse.
Accelerationists come in two flavors: bad actors and morons.