A new Ipsos poll released by Reuters shows Trump losing badly, with just 38% of registered voters saying they intend to back him in November. Not exactly newsworthy. But what is is how undecideds and third-party backers split.
Reuters/Ipsos polling in 2016 found that support was evenly split that summer between Trump and then Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton among registered voters who had not backed a major party candidate. On Election Day, Trump won a majority of voters who said they decided in the final week.This year, the poll found that 61% of undecided or third-party registered voters said they would support Biden if they had to choose, while 39% would vote for Trump.Seventy percent of undecided or third-party registered voters say they disapprove of Trump’s performance in office and the same number said they think the country is headed on the wrong track. And 62% said they thought the U.S. economy was headed in the wrong direction.
Trump's response has been desperate, all about deceitful fear-mongering-- and dangerous for national unity, willing to rip apart the fabric of the country to try to persuade a few voters that Biden is an anarchist-backing socialist.Yesterday, on Joe Madison's Sirius XM morning show, Bobby Rush (D-IL) responded to a question about Department iff Homeland Security thugs occupying Portland by telling Madison he believes Trump's reelection gameplay is "to instigate a race war. He wants to have black folks fighting white folks. So he can rise up and say, 'I'm the real Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan and I'm the President. Re-elect me. That's what he's trying to do. He's trying to play to the fears, to the racial animus that exists among certain white people, and he will do everything and anything to do that, because he wants to be re-elected at all costs."A day earlier Peter Wehner penned an essay for The Atlantic, Donald Trump is a Broken Man that everyone should read, especially people who missed the disastrous Fox News interview Trump did with Chris Wallace last Sunday. "At the conclusion of the interview," Wehner wrote, "Wallace asked Trump how he will regard his years as president. 'I think I was very unfairly treated,' Trump responded. 'From before I even won, I was under investigation by a bunch of thieves, crooks. It was an illegal investigation.' When Wallace interrupted, trying to get Trump to focus on the positive achievements of his presidency-- 'What about the good parts, sir?'-- Trump brushed the question aside, responding, 'Russia, Russia, Russia.' The president then complained about the Flynn investigation, the 'Russia hoax,' the 'Mueller scam' and the recusal by his then–attorney general, Jeff Sessions. ('Now I feel good because he lost overwhelmingly in the great state of Alabama,' Trump said about the first senator to endorse him in the 2016 Republican primary.)" What a small, sick, ugly man!
Trump is a psychologically broken, embittered, and deeply unhappy man. He is so gripped by his grievances, such a prisoner of his resentments, that even the most benevolent question from an interviewer-- what good parts of your presidency would you like to be remembered for?-- triggered a gusher of discontent.But the president still wasn’t done. “Here’s the bottom line,” he said. “I’ve been very unfairly treated, and I don’t say that as paranoid. I’ve been very-- everybody says it. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens. But there was tremendous evidence right now as to how unfairly treated I was. President Obama and Biden spied on my campaign. It’s never happened in history. If it were the other way around, the people would be in jail for 50 years right now.”Just in case his bitterness wasn’t coming through clearly enough, the president added this: “That would be Comey, that would be Brennan, that would be all of this-- the two lovers, Strzok and Page, they would be in jail now for many, many years. They would be in jail; it would’ve started two years ago, and they’d be there for 50 years. The fact is, they illegally spied on my campaign. Let’s see what happens. Despite that, I did more than any president in history in the first three and a half years.”With that, the interview ended....The fact that he is devoid of any moral sensibilities or admirable human qualities-- self-discipline, compassion, empathy, responsibility, courage, honesty, loyalty, prudence, temperance, a desire for justice-- means he has no internal moral check; the question Is this the right thing to do? never enters his mind. As a result, he not only nurses his grievances; he acts on them. He lives to exact revenge, to watch his opponents suffer, to inflict pain against those who don’t bend before him. Even former war heroes who have died can’t escape his wrath.So Donald Trump is a vindictive man who also happens to be commander in chief and head of the executive branch, which includes the Justice Department, and there is no one around the president who will stand up to him. He has surrounded himself with lapdogs.But the problem doesn’t end there. In a single term, Trump has reshaped the Republican Party through and through, and his dispositional imprint on the GOP is as great as any in modern history, including Ronald Reagan’s....There were certainly ugly elements on the American right during the Reagan presidency, and Reagan himself was not without flaws. But as president, he set the tone, and the tone was optimism, courtliness and elegance, joie de vivre.He has since been replaced by the crudest and cruelest man ever to be president. But not just that. One senses in Donald Trump no joy, no delight, no laughter. All the emotions that drive him are negative. There is something repugnant about Trump, yes, but there is also something quite sad about the man. He is a damaged soul.In another time, in a different circumstance, there would perhaps be room to pity such a person. But for now, it is best for the pity to wait. There are other things to which to attend. The American public faces one great and morally urgent task above all others between now and November: to do everything in its power to remove from the presidency a self-pitying man who is shattering the nation and doesn’t even care.
Hardball by Nancy OhanianAnother new poll just released, this one of likely Georgia voters, shows both Trump and enabler David Perdue both losing to utterly worthless Democratic candidates. Another one, by Quinnipiac of Texas voters, shows Trump losing there too! And, again, Trump's response: hideous and profoundly unpatriotic divisiveness. Ron Brownstein: "On one front, Trump is taking his confrontational approach toward big cities to an ominous new level by deploying federal law-enforcement officials to Portland and potentially other locales over the objection of local officials… On the other, Republican governors, especially but not exclusively across the Sun Belt, have repeatedly blocked mostly Democratic local leaders from locking down their communities, despite exploding caseloads in cities from Atlanta to Phoenix. The common thread in these twin confrontations is that they pit Republican officials who rely on support primarily from exurban, small-town, and rural voters against major metropolitan areas that favor Democrats. In the process, these Republicans-- Trump in particular-- may be hoping to rally their non-urban voter base by defining themselves explicitly in opposition to the cities." Trump is trying to split America while painting himself as a hero combating violent crime in fetid American cities filled with disloyal, threatening minorities.In his new book, Traitor: A History of American Betrayal from Benedict Arnold to Donald Trump, set for publication in late October, days before the election, historian David Rothkopf wrote how "Trump is unfit in almost every respect for the high office he holds. But what distinguishes him from every other bad leader the U.S. has had is that he has repeatedly, egregiously, betrayed his country. Regardless of how Senate Republicans have let him off the hook, the facts available to the public show that Trump has met every necessary standard to define his behavior as traitorous. He has clearly broken faith with the people of the country he was chosen to lead, starting long before he took office, then throughout his time in the White House. And we may not yet have seen the last of his crimes. But the story we know so far is so outrageous and disturbing that it raises a question that has never before been presented in American history: is the president of the United States the greatest threat this country faces in the world?"Rothkopf concludes that Trump and his many abettors have committed the highest-level, greatest, most damaging betrayal in the history of the country-- worse than Benedict Arnold, Aaron Burr and leaders of the Confederacy!
