Poll Watcher
I used to be a “poll watcher”. I knew all of the ins and outs of finding the most recent polls for any specific race. And I was a poll “believer”. I thought I had a good understanding of how pollsters reached their conclusions. But the last few years, and particular the last few weeks, show how wrong I was.
Polls are based on “pre-conceptions” of what the voting public will do. If the pre-conceptions are wrong, then so are the polling results. It happened in 2020 (Biden was over-estimated, the rest of the Republican ticket under-estimated) and now again in 2022 (national “models” didn’t work). So I’m letting go. I’m not checking the polling “pulse” at Real Clear Politics and 538 anymore. I trust my own intuition more than a trust theirs.
Bad Leader
I spent the morning listening to “other Republicans” (not Trump) speaking to the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas from last weekend. It was an early look at the Republican 2024 Presidential slate: DeSantis, Christie, Pompeo, and Pence among then. And all of them pointed out that Donald Trump wasn’t good for the Republican Party. They highlighted the poor quality of candidates that Trump foisted on the Party in 2022; folks like Dr. Oz and Herschel Walker. They never – never said anything about Trump being a threat to the American democracy or the Constitution. He was just a “bad leader” who picked losers.
And that’s the rub. My intuition, backed by the polling I no longer trust, says that about 30% of Americans are committed to the personhood of Donald Trump. That same intuition tells me that about 35% of Americans would vote for the proverbial “Yellow Dog” rather than vote for Trump. And that leaves the remaining 35% of Americans that I just don’t understand.
The Threat
To me, Donald Trump is an existential threat to America. He is the man who led an insurrection, one that came perilously close to overthrowing our Constitutional system. He did that in full public view, exhorting his millions of social media followers to come to Washington, then openly sending them to the Capitol to force the Congress to throw out the confirmed Electoral votes. There’s a lengthy list of things that Trump did in his Presidency that I disagree with. Many of them are unforgiveable “mortal sins” in my mind. But to threaten the Constitution itself should be a “mortal sin” to everyone – and the fact that it’s not makes me crazy.
I hear all of those Republican leaders tell their Party that they should turn from this “bad leader” and electoral “loser”, and chose them (of course). But there is still the what-if question. What-if Trump still wins the Party’s nomination? They all say, from Mitch McConnell and Bill Barr on down, that faced with the choice of a Democrat who supports the Constitution, and a former President who demonstrably does not: they will vote for the former President.
That raises the question: what is the existential threat posed by the Democrats, so dangerous that it somehow over-shadows the danger posed by a second Trump Presidency? Joe Biden is a moderate Democratic President, and it’s likely that if he wasn’t the nominee (he will be), that the next generation of Democrats will moderate as well. But, to those other Republican leaders, that moderation must be worse than direct, fundamental threats to the Constitution.
Winning
Or is this something else? Perhaps “winning, power, money” is more important than our Constitution itself. Or, to be charitable, perhaps the Pompeo’s and McConnell’s believe that our Constitution is so strong, so based, that it can survive another Trump. And meanwhile, they can take their power and money literally, “to the bank”.
I don’t share their faith that our National structure can survive another run of Trumpism. We were on a knife edge on January 6th. Had the mob found Pence or Pelosi or Schumer or the others, the results would have been very different. Trump would have had the crisis he hoped for, and would have declared a national emergency. It’s hard to say what would have come from that.
But Republican leadership, and a significant percentage of the undecided 35%, are willing to risk that. I just don’t get it.
