Polls may show a big lead for Biden, but the Republicans think they have this election in the bag:
By most conventional indicators, Donald Trump is in danger of becoming a one-term president. The economy is a wreck, the coronavirus persists, and his poll numbers have deteriorated.
But throughout the Republican Party’s vast organization in the states, the operational approach to Trump’s re-election campaign is hardening around a fundamentally different view.
Interviews with more than 50 state, district and county Republican Party chairs depict a version of the electoral landscape that is no worse for Trump than six months ago — and possibly even slightly better. According to this view, the coronavirus is on its way out and the economy is coming back. Polls are unreliable, Joe Biden is too frail to last, and the media still doesn’t get it.
“The more bad things happen in the country, it just solidifies support for Trump,” said Phillip Stephens, GOP chairman in Robeson County, N.C., one of several rural counties in that swing state that shifted from supporting Barack Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016. “We’re calling him ‘Teflon Trump.’ Nothing’s going to stick, because if anything, it’s getting more exciting than it was in 2016.”
This year, Stephens said, “We’re thinking landslide.” [Politico]
It’s an interesting view on things, and yet, it’s in sync with how Trump operates – disregard that which doesn’t please you. “Polls are unreliable,” is evidence of that; I recall waking up in a cold sweat the last Saturday before the 2016 elections, because it was clear that the elections were very, very close. I don’t agree that polls are unreliable.
To deny polls’ accuracy is a bit wishful, but not entirely out of the ballpark. But, per usual, they also blame the Beltway, i.e., D.C., for living in delusion land. That’s not a bad assertion in itself,, but I think we can point at a much more important result than polls or the opinion in Washington, DC.
Wisconsin.
Yes, Wisconsin, right here in the heartland, saw the Democrats come storming out and attend the polling places despite the dangers to their health and lives, back in mid-April, and resulted in a shocking upset of an incumbent Republican in a Wisconsin Supreme Court campaign. This is a poll of the most basic and accurate sort, and the Republicans got the short end of the stick.
And it’s important to remember that the Republicans, by themselves, cannot win an election. Nor can the Democrats. The key group is people like me, the independents. I have no idea how other independents are going to vote, but they must be the target of the Democrats and the Republicans; anyone who simply tries to firm up the base is deluding themselves.
So we’ll see in November who gets egg all over their faces, these GOP officials who’ve made Trump their husband, or the progressives who think Trump’s ad buys in Ohio are a signal of failure.
