Is Trump beatable?
Trump’s superpower is that no matter how vulgar, scandalous or reprehensible he is, his core base of supporters continues to adore him while the rest of us writhe in agony. This makes a sham out of all previous conventional thinking about political communication. I now fondly remember how Mitt Romney was skewered in the press when he said that he had “binders full of women” to choose from for jobs in his future administration. Even at the time, I failed to see how that was sexist, yet it did damage in a way that Trump’s “grab them by the pussy” didn’t. The conventional rules just don’t apply to this man, but they might finally be catching up with him.
The reason Trump’s vulgarity hasn’t hurt him as it has hurt other politicians is that he doesn’t give a damn about any voters beyond his loyal base. Most candidates do what I’ve called a dance to the center after winning their party’s nomination in an effort to attract the independent voters that are necessary to win the White House. Not Trump. He doubled down on the rhetoric that won him the Republican primary and again in his inauguration speech and has since governed just for his special MAGA tribe. Sure, he won despite this strategy in 2016, but it was a very narrow and precarious electoral college win. I don’t tire of reminding the world that he lost the popular vote by 3 million.
So, with such a razor-sharp margin, any normal president would have at least given lip-service to unifying the country and governing-for-everyone. Of course, Trump is no normal president but until now, it hasn’t gone so terribly for him. He’s maintained a low but steady approval rating of between 40 and 45% with two spikes to 49% earlier this year.
Yet the pandemic and civil unrest appear to be his kryptonite. This is not some gut feeling of mine, nor some an observation based on my lefty-filled Facebook timeline, it’s backed by numbers. Especially interesting polling numbers from New York Times and Siena College because they focus on six swing states that Trump won in 2016: Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona and North Carolina. Presumptive Democratic candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden currently leads in all six and not just tiny little leads but robust ones of 6 to 11 points.
Because Trump’s strategy has been to please this narrow group, much to the…
