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| The President at a rally Wednesday (CBS) |
For those who think Donald Trump will be a one term President, I must caution against being smug about that.
If there is anyone that hasn’t noticed what the Presidency under Trump has been like so far, they must be living on Mars. His Presidency has been everything it
promised to be by his behavior on the campaign trail in 2016. I need
not go into detail about just how unconventional the President’s behavior has
been. Nor need I remind people about his terrible rhetoric. Mostly by tweet but
often enough by mouth. (e.g. at an impromptu interview by a reporter, a news conference,
and certainly at a campaign rally.)
The conventional wisdom seems to be matched by what the polls
are saying. which is that the President will get a drubbing in the election. No matter who his opponent will be.
It is true that a lot of people that weren’t sure about how
he would behave once in office, are now painfully aware of the reality. To say Trump isn’t ‘Presidential’ is
not only an understatement, he is the opposite of that term. He dishonors the high
office he holds and is an embarrassment to the country.
In 2016 he won the election by a comfortable electoral college margin. Even though it was
evident from the start that he was a man whose very persona is the antithesis
of the American values of honor, decency, and humility. He is a narcissistic bully; an ego-maniacal
bombast who believes in winning at all costs. Even allowing racists to perceive
him as a kindred spirit via comments he makes that are easily
interpreted their way. He relishes smearing his opponents with innuendo, exaggeration,
and outright lies! Or smearing an unsympathetic media - which he has painted as the enemy of the people!
The electronic media has not been reticent to point all of this
out in nearly every newscast. And virtually every column written in the mainstream press that has
anything to do with the President has had a negative spin – whether he deserved
it on a particular issue or not. Unfortunately the President has made it all too easy for them to do that.
The media has been doing their level best to do that every single day since he has been
elected. One particular ploy is, however, particularly
annoying to me. Whenever the media interviews a Trump opponent they are usually an
articulate educated liberal - often an academic - who makes a seemingly cogent presentation of his anti
Trumpian views. The interviewer always seems to nod in agreement because it is their views being articulated.
When they interview a Trump supporter, they find the most
inarticulate individual they can - whose level of education seems to hardly goes
beyond sixth grade with an IQ to match. And if they are bigoted,
even better. By using this tactic they imply that only ignorant fools or
racists could support a man like this. Which is of course a lie. Unless you
think that tens (or possibly even hundreds) of millions of Americans are ignorant fools or racists.
Have the American people had enough of a man like this? Are the polls right? I am not so sure.
I realize that most of the time polls do get things right. They
take the ‘pulse’ of the nation at a given moment in time. If done right using a
large enough scientifically selected sample they are more often right than wrong - within the margin of error. And if multiple polls of
this type produce the same or similar results, you would think they would
be right every time.
Well… they usually are. But not always. That was made
glaringly obvious in 2016. As far as I
know every reliable poll of that sort predicted the President would lose. Some of
them saying it would be by big margins. The question is will they be wrong again? The odds
are they will not. But as I said, I’m not so sure.
Here are some of the things mitigating this.
First, people can change their minds between now and the election.
Meanwhile, Trump’s base has
never been more energized. They will be out in force. Their numbers are huge
even if they are not a majority. The more the media attacks their man, the more energized they will be.
Democrats have moved to the left of mainstream
America on a variety of issues. The swing voters that usually decide elections may
very well vote for Trump – not so much because they support him but because they consider
the alternative worse.
It is also very possible that there are a lot of closet
supporters who might say one thing to pollsters and say something else in the
privacy of the voting booth.
And then there are Trump’s conservative polices to consider.
There are a lot of conservative voters (…people that have been called the ‘silent
majority’) whose values are in concert with Trump’s conservative policies and
are appalled by what the left intends to do if they win the election. They will simply vote for the lesser of two
evils while holding their nose.
I’m not making any predictions. Nor am I indicating support
for anyone. Just analyzing the realities of what I see now.
