It is understandable, given Trump's first and only win in a Presidential election coming as the surprise that it did, over Hillary Clinton. But even though Trump had high negative numbers, so did she. And she brought several other disadvantages to her Presidential campaign. For one thing, she was a woman, and while it is the twenty-first century and all that, the fact of the matter is that our culture and society in the United States has not yet come to the point where being a woman is no longer a disadvantage. We've come a very long way, but not quite that far.
Hillary Clinton was not only a woman, but she was an accomplished, self-assured, confident, successful and competent woman. And the only way a woman like that gets ahead of a man in the same field is if she knows how to make money and get it in his pocket without him being intimidated by it.
That has been Trump's single electoral success, and it was not a popular one. He got 81% of the white, Evangelical vote in 2016, but while scoring a similar percentage of white Evangelicals in 2020, their actual numbers were down by several million. He lost the popular vote by 8 million. And I believe 2020 was when he reached his peak. He lost the support of millions of voters with his incitement of the insurrection and his behavior at the end of his first term who will either vote for Biden, or not turn up to support him. And that's been a fact that exit polling from Republican primaries has documented.
The Issue That's Always Been There Has Been Biden's Age
Biden's age was an issue that came up very early in the last campaign, mentioned by the group of challengers in the primaries as his most significant disqualification. There wasn't really much about which they could challenge him, when it came to issues, most of what they were running on and supporting had originated with him, or had been helped along through the legislative process by him. It was the only way most of them could distinguish themselves from him, so it came up a lot.
The Democratic National Committee is a pretty politically savvy outfit. I can't imagine that when the time came to discuss whether or not Joe Biden would be the nominee of the Democratic party one more time, his age didn't factor into the discussion There's not been much doubt that Trump would not make another try at it, and I can't imagine that the committee didn't run through all of the possibilities, such as an open primary, or giving their endorsement to Vice-President Harris as a candidate who would energize and expand a potentially huge group of voters who are anxious to see this country have a progressive, black female President.
And if that decision was made when the President first announced that he would run again, wouldn't that have been the time to bring up his age, and demonstrate some concern over whether that might become a disadvantage in winning what it seems most Democrats consider a vitally important election, one that must be won to prevent an existential threat to American democracy from gaining Presidential powers?
I'm not a political scientist, or analyst, but I'm pretty observant, I've been watching politics for decades and I do get it right quite a bit. I am of the opinion that any one of a dozen leading Democrats could easily defeat Trump. It seems that people expressing the idea of having someone new, and younger, run for President this time around doesn't just apply to Biden. About 65% of the voters would also like to see someone on the GOP side besides Trump.
Perhaps, if a candidate had emerged from a field of potential candidates on the Democratic side, had Biden not been running, we would have someone who, against Trump, would be an easy winner. But there's no way to know that for sure, and I think we've got a winner with the President, his record of accomplishments, and the long list of negatives with which Trump and Vance must now campaign.
What We've Got vs. What They've Got
I think we have talked ourselves into believing that people have become so desensitized to Trump that his evil manipulations, lies, and his criminal behavior is meaningless when it comes to people deciding who they're going to support for President. There are a lot of people who are blind to Trump and are not capable of seeing the truth, or who have been deceived beyond rescue. I'm reminded of a couple of bible verses when I hear this, in 2 Corinthians 11:14, where Paul says, "for Satan himself disguises himself as an angel of light," and another one in Matthew 24:24, quoting Jesus, "For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect."
But it seems that what still counts in politics, enough to push aside the flotsam and debris, is a genuine record of achievement and a solid plan for the future, both of which the Biden Administration has done in a way that the Trump administration visibly failed. Trump and the Republicans are campaigning with cliches and playing to a base that is not large enough, by a long shot, to win a Presidential election. They've lost a fair share of their own party, and while it remains to be seen exactly how many of those people will vote Republican out of habit, and how many of them will drift away, or not vote, Trump didn't get to 80% of a primary vote in which he was the only candidate for three fourths of the time.
President Biden can run on a record of success that can be fact checked and proven. Every economic indicator, GNP, job growth, the stock market, are all strong and soaring. Everything they've done in combating inflation has worked. Yeah, it took time, as the President said it would, but he can also make the case that not all the high prices are due to inflation. There's a lot of profit margin in there, and there's a lot of healthy wage growth. The crime rate is provably down, and the only thing Trump has when it comes to securing the border is a record of turning it into a political issue that resulted in the President having to go around an obstructionist House and issue an executive order to get done what the Repubicans wanted done, but failed to do.
On the negative side, Trump and the Republicans have no plan, only off the top of his head rantings about the last election, and tired themes that cause even his hard core MAGA crowds to pick up their chairs and leave his rallies. I haven't had the stomach to watch the convention, but I've heard it's been pretty bad.
And the biggest vote getters for Democrats include the continued publicity surrounding Project 2025, which is going to be a bigger disaster for Republicans than they ever realized. In fact, it already has been. When some of the provisions of this plan are revealed to the electorate, I think Trump loses the clear majority of the women's vote, and any ethnic or racial minority voters who were thinking about taking a look at what he's offering will run the other direction pretty quickly. And of course, Democrats are pushing for legislation that will establish the provisions of Roe v. Wade permanently, something that over 65% of the electorate wants to see. Those issues are glass ceilings on any potential growth in Trump support.
I also tend to think that Trump's continued harping on having the 2020 election stolen from him is his biggest liability. Given the number of Americans who clearly believe this is a lie, combined with his attempted coup on January 6th, I see no reason to think that the electorate will do anything but return President Biden to the White House.
I've watched this fradulent, lying cheat since he first started running for office. We've become desensitized to his shenanigans so that when he does something that would cost any other candidate thousands of votes, we don't pay much attention any more. But he's past his prime. And before the election cycle is over, he's going to provide voters with more than one reason to get off his train.
The Opportinity For Democrats to Control the Narrative
We are fighting not only media bias, but media competition for ratings with sensational headlines and attention-grabbing sound bytes. Since the debate, the effort that the Biden campaign has made to get control of the narrative, and push it forward has been remarkable. While some party leaders were expecting crushing news in poll numbers, the exact opposite has occurred. As of today, post-debate, post-Trump shooting, pre-GOP convention, 538 gives Biden a 53-47% chance to win 277 electoral votes. That's actually a 4% increase over a week ago, when it was 51-49.
There's no issue or character liability for either of the Democratic candidates and their positions on the issues are crystal clear, unlike the duplicitous Republicans, who are trying to hide an unpopular agenda. The job will be more one of motivating a segment of voters who are independent, moderate Republican, Green party and even a few libertarians, to cast votes for Biden instead of staying home. The age issue is the biggest liability he has now, and placing an emphasis on factually attacking the GOP and Trump and the danger that poses to Constitutional democracy is the other end of the message. I have every confidence that a seasoned politician like President Biden, who is far more popular personally than polling data shows, can do this with relative ease.
Democrats have President Biden, Vice-President Harris and a plan, Republicans have Trump, and now the flip flopping opportunistic J. D. Vance. They also have election officials in red states who will do their dead level best to cheat Joe, so there's more than just getting voters to the polls to be done.
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