Okay, but why do we care about polls as much now? Haven’t they been spectacularly wrong for the past few election cycles? Not all, but I definitely feel like the overall accuracy and reliability of most national and state polling has been exceptionally poor.
In any case, I’m not at all surprised that his supporters aren’t bothered by the indictments. It’s a cult. Like, actually.
IMO the best possible case scenario here is DeSantis and Trump remain so close that they go into the convention without a clear winner. Then the GOP tips the scale in favor of DeSantis because he’s the more establishment-friendly candidate and Trump decides to run 3rd party out of spite. He gets on the ballot in just enough sympathetic red states and inspires just enough down-ballot 3rd party challengers to run as “Trump party” options that the GOP suffers a historically embarrassing loss up and down the ballot across the country. Then Democrats get actual concrete majorities both in several states and federally and the younger more progressive members drag some of the dinosaurs kicking and screaming into reestablishing a right to abortion access, reinforcing voting access rights, reforming campaign finance laws, reapportioning the House to be actually a representation of the population like the Constitution says it is, and expanding the SCOTUS to 13 seats so they can’t legislate away any of these reforms from the bench.
Of course the odds of that happening aren’t actually very good, it seems much more likely we’re just going to get a Trump primary victory followed by another contentious general election, a narrow Biden reelection amidst threats of violence (and possibly J6 repeats), and basically these last two years all over again with stubborn center-right Dems crippling the Senate agenda while Republicans cling to a very narrow majority in the House and basically shit up the Congressional session with pointless hearings for political theater, threats of crashing the entire economy out of spite, and otherwise throwing up non-stop hurdles in front of attempts to address even the most basic, non-controversial issues facing normal people in day to day life. Basically the only thing Republicans are good at, making government as dysfunctional as possible. Still preferable to a DeSantis presidency though. Complete dysfunction for two years beats christofascist authoritarianism.
Any publicity is good publicity for this dude
If they would just stop making EVERYTHING about him, that alone would hurt his campaign more than anything else.
Just report the facts and stop trying to clickbait news articles.
…but I guess there’s no money in that.
The enshittification of the media…?
It’s pop science in the marketing departments of many companies to capitalize on shock and drama as it grabs attention at a base level. That’s the way to make money.
As you are probably aware, reality has a well-known liberal bias. So, facts and non-clickbait are directly at odds with Trumpism.
Hitler’s popularity skyrocketed after being convicted and jailed for the Beer Hall Putsch.
This isn’t the first time that Trump’s supporters have acted like this. They cheer for their team.
I have no expectations that any of the current goings on this would sway Republican primary voters one way or another. They’re already quite set in their opinions and maximally engaged such that negative information only makes them gird their loins and further harden their opinions.
Some pundits insist that our Republican leaders will slowly back away until the trickle becomes a flood, but I don’t really see that happening with the base until Fox, OAN, and Newsmax back of. And honestly if one does then they’ll just lose ratings to whichever outlet doesn’t.
Let’s see, on one side they get to chose between trump and desantis. On the other we have a corporate geriatric Dem and…well that’s it. That side doesn’t even get a choice. Fucking hell we’ve had some awful choices for president for decades.
Bold of you to assume there was ever anything better before that. Two hundred years of nearly all affluent establishment geriatric white guys, who ran against affluent establishment geriatric white guys.
But this guy’s a Catholic. [Clutches pearls.]
There are a lot of historical things to bitch about as far as the ruling class, but out of 46 presidents, only Biden, trump, and reagan were above 70 while holding office. Well, I guess technically you could add Eisenhower, but he was 62 when elected. A good chunk of them where in their 40s or 50s when elected. We’ve never had this shit before. Shitty choices, sure. But not this shit.
The definition of ‘old’ has also shifted, though. Personally I don’t care much how old a person are. I only care how old their ideas are.
Doesn’t Biden have any contenders within the Dems?
Oh no, the DNC won’t allow that to happen.
I don’t think incumbent presidents ever have a real primary. Trump didn’t for his second run in 2020. He only does now because he lost (can’t think of another time the incumbent lost and ran again, so nothing to compare it to.)
Do they see him as an election winner? Or is he just dancing to their tune?
Polling has gotten really difficult because so it’s much harder to reach people by phone. Republican primary voters are more likely to be old people with landlines, so I would expect polls of them to be more accurate and any inaccuracies to favor Trump.
I thought so as well, but I literally just read this and my opinion of polls has changed:
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/2022-election-polling-accuracy
It’s a fascinating and educating read. Essentially, polls last year were historically accurate.
