It seems like the Republicans were indeed blowing smoke when they claimed they had internal polls showing that impeachment was increasing Donald Trump’s popularity. Because the only polls that actually matter are the ones that happen on an election day, like the one yesterday.
On Monday, the day before the election, Trump held a rally in Kentucky in support of the current Republican governor, Matt Bevin. Trump even begged the attendees to vote for Bevin, saying “You can’t let that happen to me!” because it would mean “Trump suffered the greatest defeat in the history of the world.” After all, in 2016 Trump won Kentucky by a huge 30 points.
It didn’t work. And of course, after Tuesday’s loss of Bevin to Democrat Andy Beshear, the GOP tried to blame it on problems with Bevin’s campaign.
But the reality is that impeachment did not fire up Trump’s base. In fact, it did the opposite, it fired up suburban voters to vote Democratic. This is like 2018, when suburban voters turned on the GOP and handed the House of Representatives to the Democrats.
Has Trump even tried to solve this problem? No, he keeps doing things to fire up is base, but his base isn’t growing, it appears to be fixed. In order to win next year, Trump will need to expand to suburban voters, like he did in 2016. But it seems that Trump is too dumb to realize that. Does Trump need attention so bad that he is incapable of stopping pulling the stunts that are now starting to piss off the voters he truly needs?
We’ll see.
4 Comments
Hope you do a follow-up on the Republican refusing to concede. What do you make of that?
The margin of lead in KY has grown to over 5000 votes, if KY’s voting system is anything like TN then a recount is a useless endeavor. Especially with that much difference in the Talley. I only wonder if the GOP will behave as they did in the 2000 presidential election when Gore paused before conceding, if money were riding on this I would place a bet on tantrum time.
Other statewide races were won by the GOP, 60-40. This was just about how unpopular Bevin was. There were some defections, and some refused to vote for him. Anybody else runs for Gov on the GOP side and they win. Don’t read too much into it.
The only thing I am “reading” into this is that Trump has no coattails. He could not save Roy Moore either. That means he can manipulate Republican politicians only by threatening to primary them. As he doesn’t care about anyone else, then it is likely that in order to remain in power (or avoid going to jail) he will destroy the Republican party.