First of all, let me point out that the opinion writer of this piece, Douglas MacKinnon, was a writer in the White House for Presidents Reagan and H. W. Bush, and a former special policy and communications assistant at the Pentagon during the last three years of the Bush administration. So that puts a clear context on how he's reading the "signs" that are telling him Democrats have a problem that will require replacing Biden on the ticket in order to win the election in 2024.
This is more of the same theme of "younger, more progressive voters are abandoning Biden," and "his age is a problem," and "RFK Jr.'s challenge is a big problem," and "even though he won by 7 million votes in 2020, it was actually less than 50,000 when you count what he won in the swing states," and "the uncommitted vote is a sign of a bigger problem," that we've seen from Republican commentators for a while now. I've included it here because it can give us a look at what the other side is thinking, in terms of how they see the election shaping up, or because putting out this kind of deliberately misleading information that runs along some of the theme lines that we've seen in the media up to this point might affect some election campaign strategy.
My guess is that The Hill included this for a few laughs, or for a few talking points, given the rest of the content that appears there daily. I think it's just worth looking at how MacKinnon labels "one problem" by breaking it down into three problems, and tackles each one with misinformation and incorrect assumptions.
What should we expect, from an old fashioned, outdated Republican commentator from five Presidential administrations back? And if the sign of an uncommitted vote in Democratic primaries is a problem that should require Biden to step down, then shouldn't the sign of a much larger percentage of Republican primary votes going to candidates besides Trump require him to step down?
A "New, Improved, Highly Focused Trump Campaign"
Yes, the author seriously used these words to describe the current state of the Trump campaign, which is obviously in disarray (yes, I did use that media term on purpose!), suffering financial deprivation and which bears no resemblance in any wa to any of the terms used to describe it, except, perhaps, highly focused. Trump's theme is not new, nor is it improved. He harps, for hours on end, about the big lie, the proven falsehood that the election of 2020 was "stolen from him." That's where most of his rally speeches go, in their rambling, infused with moments of confusion and dementia, such as confusing Nikki Haley for Nancy Pelosi, sounding like he is running against Obama instead of Biden, and a new one that I noticed in the media a couple of weeks ago, seemingly forgetting his geographic location when he makes his rally speech.
This week, more confusion on an issue that is predictably going to cost the GOP seats in the House and Senate, and very likely all of the electoral votes of the battleground states they need to win, along with those of several other red states. We got a rambling, incoherent version of his perspective on abortion, that contradicts the position the GOP has taken since Roe v. Wade was issued by the Supreme Court. If that's "highly focused," then the GOP is in an incredible amount of trouble on this issue.
And in fact, they are.
I hope a lot of Republicans who are involved in their party's campaign strategy are satisfied that what they are seeing from Trump is "new, improved, and highly focused." I strongly encourage them to keep this up, and continue to run their campaigns this way, especially the Trump presidential campaign. Don't change a thing, please continue this strategy right up until the convention, and then really come out with more improvements and high focus along these exact same lines.
"The Populist, Independent Campaign of Robert F. Kennedy Jr."
So far, aside from an initial sort of "flash in the pan," RFK Jr., and I'm going to call him that, hasn't picked up much in the way of traction. In fact, his campaign is having difficulty meeting the minimum requirements to get on state ballots, having landed on seven, at this point, well behind their goal of being on all 50 by now. This has been a gaffe-fest from the very beginning, and it doesn't appear that will get under control any time soon. Apparently, he does not have anyone helping him avoid putting his foot in his mouth.
Openly stating that the purpose of his campaign is to try and stop Biden from getting re-elected, which is admitting he's not in it to win it, is not exactly the way to excite potential voters and move them to the polls in November. And indeed, voter enthusiasm is not one of the higher numbers some of our more illustrious and confused pollsters are finding in data that is all over the place when it comes to RFK Jr. What they have found is that he's not really taking very many voters, if any, away from Biden, but looking at both primary election turnout, and vote totals on the GOP side, he does seem to be cutting into Trump's support.
Let's use Wisconsin as an example. As MacKinnon points out, Wisconsin is a very important swing state, and one which Biden only narrowly won by just over 20,000 votes in 2020. So, of course, if RFK Jr. can cut into that margin, it potentially could swing the state to Trump. But, let's look at the numbers and see what they tell us.
Biden got 87% of the Democratic vote, with 8% going to "uninstructed" and just 3% going to Dean Phillips from next door, the other "officially announced" Democratic candidate. MacKinnon says that the 12%, which adds up to about 60,000 Democratic votes, could be fatal to Biden's hopes of getting the state's electoral votes if he loses those voters in November.
But keep looking. Biden got 511,845 votes, quite a turnout from a party in which there was no contested race. Trump, in the Wisconsin primary, got 476,355 votes, from Republican voters, about 35,000 fewer than Biden got, an improvement, if you want to make a rought comparison, of 15,000 votes over the 2020 general election. A full 21% of Republican voters in Wisconsin cast a ballot for someone other than Trump. Clearly, Democrats in Wisconsin are more enthusiastic about supporting Biden than Republicans in Wisconsin are about supporting Trump, and there's a much larger pool of potential Republican voters for RFK Jr. to draw from than Democrats.
But RFK Jr. has one big problem MacKinnon doesn't mention here, and that is in order to continue his campaign, he must actually open his mouth, do interviews with reporters and make speeches and campaign appearances. And that, for him, appears to be a huge problem, since his support has done nothing but dwindle since reaching it's high point right after he announced he was running. By the time the nominating conventions roll around, at the rate he's been losing support, it will be zero percent.
"Biden is Seen as Yesterday's News to Far Left and Liberal Young Voters"
It is clear that the Biden campaign has expressed some concern about its progressive, liberal, young voter constituency. This is not a group that has ever turned out in high numbers for elections, especially mid-terms, though they sure did break their records during the 2022 mid-terms, on behalf of Democratic candidates. And there is some work to do to convince a larger number of these voters to turn out, get used to the political reality that candidates, even of the same party, don't always line right up with every single issue, and understand the danger that a second Trump presidency would pose to the United States, as well as to every single political position they value and consider essential.
There is no evidence provided anywhere by MacKinnon to support his claim that 10% of young, liberal, progressive voters have "turned their backs on Biden." And if that's the case, then I can conclude, and suppport with evidence, that far more conservatives, at least 25% if the exit polling is credible, have indeed turned their backs on Trump and will not vote for him in November, according to what they say. There is nothing anywhere close to that number among the young, liberal progressive constituency of the Democratic party. What these voters are doing, by casting an "uncommitted" or "uninstructed" ballot is giving the Biden campaign the issues it needs to adjust in order to win their vote.
I will also point out that neither Trump nor RFK Jr. have anything at all to attract these young, liberal progressive voters to their campaign. And in order to win, that's what they'd have to do. The two biggest issues for young, liberal progressives are reproductive rights and freedom for women, and a cease-fire and resolution of the Israel-Gaza war that involves freedom and self-determination for the Palestinians. They're not saying, "I disagree with Biden on these issues so I'm not voting for him," they're saying "Listen to us!" For a young liberal voter who believes reproductive freedom is a right, or who supports a peaceful, just, two-state solution for Palestinians and a cease-fire and end to the Gaza War, Trump offers absolutely nothing to earn their vote. Biden is able to offer everything.
Irrelevant Political Rhetoric From a Different Time and Place
Viewing the current political situation from the perspective of Republican politics of the Reagan-Bush era provides some amusing nostalgia, but it's not realistic, and it ignores the real issues of the politics of this time. If there's a candidate who should step down for the sake of his party's ability to get back in the White House in November, it's the one who is facing over 80 criminal indictments, most of them felonies, most of them identifying him as anti-democratic, anti-constitution and outright anti-American.
And if the leadership of the Republican party was genuinely interested in preserving American idealism, democracy and freedom, and conscientious when it comes to our reputation as the world's leading superpower, they would take the necessary steps to make sure that Donald J. Trump was removed from campaigning for election to the highest office in the land. If they cared about the future and prosperity of this country, and about average Americans who get up, and go to work each day to make sure that the freedom we have is preserved and kept for eternity, they would find another candidate, and prevent a single state from entering Trump's name on the ballot. They would become vocal in their apology to the American people for this criminal mistake they have perpetrated on all of us.
And because they are not doing this, we, the American people, will take this matter into our own hands. We will make sure Donald J. Trump never becomes President of the United States, or holds any elected office, ever again.
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