05-19-2017, 08:50 PM
(05-19-2017, 10:30 AM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: A lot can change by 2020 but it is interesting to see the Upper Midwest becoming more and more hostile to Trump.
The telling one is Pennsylvania, which Trump barely won but looks as if it would go in a landslide to just about any Democratic nominee against him. Virginia was a modest Trump loss, but its polling results for the President are the political equivalent of a third-degree burn.
I'd like to see a poll of Ohio and more recent polls of Michigan and Iowa. I was polled in Michigan, and if this is for a statewide poll, I might have results to show.
One of the most telling is heavily-Mormon Utah, a state that Republican nominees for President have typically won by huge margins except in 1964 since Eisenhower pulled Mormons into the Republican camp. Donald Trump is about as far from practicing a Mormon way of life as is possible. His Party could pay a heavy price for that. Utah and Arizona have large Mormon populations. I can hardly imagine a more fitting exercise of democracy than Mormons choosing an Obama-like Democrat over Donald Trump to teach a lesson: offend Mormon values with behavior incompatible with Mormon values, and lose.
Recent national polls show President Trump with approval figures in the high thirties. I may lack the imagination to see how he could recover from that; after all I did not see the collapse of the Clinton campaign. He does have far more time in which to p[ull out of his current unpopularity than did Carter in the summer of 1980... but so far as I can tell, he doesn't understand what the Presidency is.
Imagine this situation: you are the manager of a fast-food restaurant, and someone immaculately dressed applies for a job. He* talks about art, history, classical music, philosophy, and literature. As you discuss the mundane reality of the job, he has something more to say that impresses you of his brilliance and erudition. Do you hire him? I say not. None of his brilliance has any relevance to the work that he will be doing. His co-workers are more likely to discuss pop music or professional wrestling, about which he will be clueless. His customers won't be interested.
If I were in that manager's position I would rather hire someone proud to push a broom, clean the grills, and take out the trash.
I see no evidence that President Trump is a learned or brilliant man irrespective of his bloated self-image. He does not understand what the Presidency is about. He acts like a dictator, contrary to the reality of most of the checks and balances having their focus on thwarting any executive despotism.
*Pronouns may be altered to fit the other possibility of gender.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.