In The Dash
Rather infamous Kaplan Strategies (2.0) is measuring our candidates for President nationally and finds … oh, you don’t know why they’re infamous? As I noted here, Kaplan’s reliability is dubious:
[Kaplan is] the pollsters who gave Nevada Republican Senate nominee candidate Jeffrey Gunter, the sponsor of the particular poll, a 1 point lead [in the primary], while other pollsters gave Sam Brown a 38 point lead; Brown won by 40+ points.
So assessing the reliability of this poll is problematic, but also interesting. Why? Here’s RedState.com’s report on the poll, and they get kudos on putting the bad news right up front.
President Donald J. Trump trailed his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, 45 percent to 52 percent with Likely Voters, and then among Registered Voters, Trump trailed Harris with 46 percent to her 50 percent, according to the Kaplan Strategies poll put in the field Aug. 23 through Aug. 24.
As I prefer the likely voter scenario over the registered voter scenario, and that’s what I report in my Senate Campaign Updates, I’ll go with the seven point lead among likely voters.
Surveying FiveThirtyEight’s list of recent Presidential polls, Kaplan Strategies has no sponsor listed, so it’s difficult to say if this poll should be considered skewed, at least for folks like you and me. That same list shows this poll as giving Harris the biggest lead as of this writing, so perhaps it’s not skewed.
That said, the balance of Redstate’s report is rather interesting in that it attempts to obscure the import of Harris’ lead. This bit is particularly funny in view of the fact that a Vice President having to replace their President late in the race might be considered to be at a disadvantage against a former President, and yet …
“This is a very close race, and the Trump campaign is absorbing the full-on assault of Harris campaign—and yet, Harris, with everything going in her favor, is still not pulling away from Trump,” said Doug Kaplan, whose Florida-based political consulting firm conducted the poll, full details of which may be viewed below.
… Harris, with everything in her favor … really? Did he really think he could slip that phrase of indictment in there? Is he saying Mr. Trump is sub-standard, that he’s inferior?
I suspect that, by November 1st, we’re going to see polls giving Harris larger advantages, of 15 points, of 20 points. And if Mr Trump tries to leave the contest, Mr Vance will fare no better.
In short, we’re seeing what happens when a Party is dominated by fourth-raters whose main skill is shrieking RINO!, the base being constituted of folks who don’t consider competency or compromise or deep thinking to be legitimate political skills, and ruled by the Gingrichian diktats concerning inter-Party warfare. This has been a major theme of this blog, and I and long-term readers are now observing a nadir of the Republican Party, shepherded by members of all the major institutions of our government, as in the names Trump, Thomas, Alito, McConnell, Scott (pick your Senator Scott, neither has distinguished themselves in the positive aspect), Graham, McCarthy, Gaetz, Greene, Gosar, and the beat goes on.
Oh, And This …
The DJT stock chart as of about 2:30 pm today:
The last time I published a post on DJT, it’s price was $33/share, and, from this chart, we can see the price going up and down over the last six month. Notice that the merger that took DJT public was in early April, and if Trump decides to dump his stock in order to make money, DJT will plunge.
I suspect DJT will be heading downhill until November, at which point it may disappear completely. In this, it’ll act as a proxy for the popularity of Mr Trump, and as Mr Trump continues to exhibit the symptoms of narcissism and dementia, so the stock’s behavior will reflect. The one counter to this will be the attempts of outside parties to manipulate the price. Whether it works or not remains to be seen.
