Is Donald Trump really winning…and winning big…on several fronts?
Respected Washington Monthly web editor and writer Martin Longman thinks Trump is – and that many are deluding themselves if they think he isn’t. On his blog Progress Pond Longman, in a post headlined “Donald Trump is Kicking Everyone’s Asses,” writes:
Trump is winning in Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin and Michigan. He’s winning the popular vote. Biden is winning nowhere. Biden is on a path to defeat. How do you feel about that?
Are you in denial? Are you questioning the polls? All of them which are all sending the same message? Do you think the pollsters are using bad samples?
I’ll tell you what. This isn’t a situation where things will change once voters get to know the candidates better. The electorate is very familiar with both these candidates. Hell, they’ve actually seem both in the office of the presidency, so they have a unique ability to do a side-by-side comparison. Right now, the voters want Donald Trump to be president and they don’t want Joe Biden to be president. That’s clear. It’s fairly narrow, but it’s uniform across all swing states and in the popular vote.
How is this possible considering everything we’ve seen and know about Trump both in and out of office?
I honestly do not know…But Trump is beating everyone. He’s beating Fani Willis and the media, and the Democrats and the too-late Justice Department and their special prosecutor. It’s true that he’s taken a massive half-billion dollar financial hit, but who cares when you’re about to be the most powerful man on Earth again?
Longman is making a point about political bubbles. It’s easy to be in one. Perception=reality and in a political bubble the inclination to discount data uncomfortable to your political inclinations is easy to do.
Being in a political bubble can lead to a certain amount of complacency thinking “this won’t happen” and bolstering that view/wish with cherry picked information. On election night anything can happen and election results aren’t cherry picked.
Simon Rosenberg, founder of New Democrat Network and the New Policy Institute, a liberal think tank and advocacy group based in Washington, D.C, has a different take on the election and Democrats’ prospect. His Hopium Chronicles website has a more optimistic take on Joe Biden’s chances. Here’s a bit from his latest:
GOP’s Attacks on Biden Are Evaporating – On Monday we talked about the strong Democratic party, unified, and winning elections across the US. Yesterday we talked about the success of the Biden Presidency, and how robust and remarkable the American economy is. Today we focus on one of the most consequential developments in the 2024 election over the past few weeks – the collapse of the GOP’s case against Joe Biden. Consider:
The economy is remarkably strong, not weak Inflation has come way down, not soaring Violent crime and murder rates are down across the US, not raging Domestic oil and renewable production is setting records, and US is more energy independent than in decades – there is no “war on energy” causing rising gas prices and loss of independence Democrats are for order at the border, they are for Trumpian chaos The “Biden crime family” narrative was a fake Russian info op, once again laundered by Republican useful idiots And now we see in the State of The Union Biden strong, smart and vigorous; and it turns out, of course, that Republican Special Counsel lied about Biden’s memory challenges Eight months out Republicans have nothing. But of course it’s really much worse than nothing. For they’ve rallied beyond 2024 Trump – degraded, diminished, disgraced, desperate and dangerous. They have their ridiculous agenda – fealty to Putin, ending of American democracy, national abortion ban, cutting Social Security and Medicare, stripping health care from tens of millions, 10% tariffs which raise prices on all goods/destroy the global economy/end American prosperity, more tax cuts for those who don’t need them and less for everyone else, more dead kids in schools, the planet to warm faster, mass arrests and deportations…
Caricature by DonkeyHotey/Flickr
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.