The Witness Chronicles, June 17, 2024
Shedding voters one by one
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Voter Attrition is Hitting Trump’s Numbers
He is losing more every day and it is just getting started
A new poll by Politico shows independents are twenty per cent less likely to vote for Trump since he has been convicted of 34 felonies. And nothing he is doing or saying is helping win them back. The reality is just the opposite.
And it is quite clear that he does not care. His recent statement that Milwaukee is a ‘horrible’ city is just one glaring example of this. The largest city in a state he lost in 2020, Wisconsin, and must win this year, and the site of the upcoming Republican National Convention, is now dealing with being publicly ridiculed by the presumptive Republican candidate.
Why? Because it has a large black population and Trump is a bigot, always has been and has never hidden the fact, except when he pretends otherwise. This past weekend his campaign staged an appearance at a black church in Detroit, a city which is 80% black, to try and bolster Trump’s support amongst African-American voters.
Photos provided by the campaign showed him with a group of black pastors, none of whom looked comfortable being used by a campaign to create a fake image of support. But photos of the crowd in the church told a very different story. They were white Trump/MAGA supporters recruited to fill the room.
Trump apologist Kellyanne Conway claimed there were 8000 attendees, a preposterous number considering the space only holds a few hundred and was not even full.
This kind of blatant fakery is typical of everything Trump is doing these days and the reason is a simple one that has nothing to do with getting elected. The campaign has devolved into simply serving his ego and his bottomless need for attention any way he can get it.
The Republican National Committee, under the leadership of Lara Trump, his daughter-in-law, has dissolved its entire get out the vote outreach and funneled all its money into three things: his insane legal bills, whatever his campaign is doing, and into Trump’s pockets.
Only this week he siphoned off $5 million for undefined expenses. In the meantime, Republican candidates down the ticket from state level to local can expect no support from the RNC, who no longer even has a local level operation anywhere in the US.
This is yet another example of attrition. It is well known that getting local candidates elected is a path to gaining votes for the entire ticket, as support at local levels tends to mean support across the board for a party.
But this would mean Trump sharing attention with others, which he is incapable of doing. Over recent years we have watched Trump loyalists who somehow maintained a modicum of self-respect leaving his circle in droves and turning on him. As a result, he is surrounded by the least talented, most fanatical sycophants, fascists like Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon, another convicted felon.
As a political observer all of this seems obvious but what doesn’t seem obvious is what the attraction is. The man has no virtues, may be cracking up mentally, and, in the words of a CEO who attended a recent meeting with him in DC, ‘knows nothing’.
At this point, the primary thing keeping this man in the limelight is the fact that he makes titillating daily news that the media cannot resist. There are two problems with this. First it is getting exhausting and finally boring. But the second problem is a big one.
American voters are not paying attention to most of it. The only events that get attention are the big stories like the recent felony convictions. And the big stories coming up are all likely to be negative. The debate with Joe Biden on June 27 is the next one. That will be followed by his sentencing on July 11.
It’s impossible to see how the debate will be anything but a debacle for Trump. There will be no audience for him to play to and mics will be muted when it is not his turn to speak, meaning he cannot talk over the President’s responses.
And, unlike his Hillary debate, there will be no threatening man looming over a small woman while she speaks, an image I cannot get out of my head as telling us everything we know about this man.
Personally I do not believe that debate will take place. Trump and his campaign have been frantically putting conditions out there as excuses to back out, including demanding a drug test and a cognitive test, which Trump himself would not take. If those demands are real, they back him into a corner should Biden accept them, as the Dems would certainly demand Trump be tested.
That’s simple logic but logic has long been discarded by the Republican Party, along with any sense of respect for our democracy.
The debate will be followed by the sentencing, which cannot help Trump’s cause with swing voters as it reinforces the reality that he is a convicted criminal. And then it is followed by the convention where we will undoubtedly witness a strange parade of Trump loyalists saying and doing insane things.
That would likely make some voters on the fence lean towards Biden as the least crazy option.
Finally, and yes, this rant is almost over, I do not believe Trump cares about being President and is only running in an attempt to get out from under the other major criminal trials he will inevitably face. And, unfortunately, we know he is laying the foundation for once again claiming the election was rigged if he loses.
But I’d like to think that we will not fall for that crap again. The man has cried wolf one too many times, but still learns nothing.
~ I write The Grasshopper, an occasional letter on the creative life and it’s sister, mostly daily publication The Witness Chronicles, a place for my articles on politics and climate. They share a free and paid subscription. I also write The Remarkable, a recovery letter, about my addiction and reentry experience. I don’t paywall any content in these, however this is how I live and I strongly believe all writers and creatives should get paid, if we provide value. Your support with a paid subscription helps make that happen.
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Believe me, it makes my day. M
I do not disagree that those persons are gone. They are also 'Woke' as hell and probably sick in the dang haid! There are a LOT of small-minded biased people but if these were persons who were considering voting for Trump I would be the surprised one. I think it is inevitable that Trump should, in the ordinary course of things, lose those people. I saw what a show trial we had, so did everyoone else. I see what it was. I think the U. S. is a totalitarian dictatorship and they are probing a way to get Trump. He needs to win in order to protect all of us from a very vibrant Democratic fascist strain now getting into power. These diabolical schemers have been runnng Germany. So I do not think you can let this crowd run the government, and the current crop of Democratic party activists are not letting go. These Democrats are the extremists and you are right that Trump can, and properly should, shed them.
And he will pick up as many from other segments of America as he loses from your target group, called the "independents."
It's a tough choice, who to vote for. The fact that he might get elected without spending his money on his campaign speaks volumes. The tracks have been laid; now the train rolls.
Yes, you are right, Martin, that Trump would optimally want the be strong: up and down the ticket. Maybe he does not care, so once he is elected he will deal with it. He won't be able to dictate shit. We will all be surprised how weak he is. He probabl will even care ---ha ha! Anyway, he will not have the cadre, or backing. He will lack the depth of support.
Trump is going to get elected, maybe a person like Martin Edic should get used to it.
You continue to maintain my sanity in this Chaos. Thank you