Thankfully, general-election voters are made of saner stuff — so Diabolical Donnie will be done before long.
By Raju Chebium
American Bazaar Columnist
WASHINGTON—Relax, people. Donald Trump won’t become the next president of the United States. It may not seem like it now, but Diabolical Donnie will be done before long.
True, the blow-dried blowhard is surging in the polls for now. Some surveys have him catching up to Hillary Clinton or even beating the likely Democratic nominee (though they also show him losing handily to the other Democratic candidate, Bernie Sanders). Many establishment Republicans who swore to never endorse Trump are now genuflecting before the clown.
Trump better enjoy this high now because his numbers will soon tumble.
I know, I know. That’s what the pundits kept saying for much of the Republican primaries and ended up being horribly, embarrassingly wrong. But those were the primaries. Many of the voters polled were white, Republican men on the extreme ideological right whom Trump had whipped into a frenzy over immigrants, gays, Muslims, terrorists, women and guns.
Thankfully, general-election voters are made of saner stuff. If Clinton becomes the Democratic nominee, her numbers will climb once Sanders is out of the picture. That’s what the pollsters themselves say. If Sanders ends up getting the nod by some chance, he would crush Trump if the election were held today.
So why is Trump destined to fail? The No. 1 reason is the economy.
General-election voters care more about non-ideological things like the economy than ideological, red meat issues. These kinder, gentler voters are unlikely to punish the incumbent president’s party if they feel economically more secure now than under the previous administration.
When President Obama began his first term in January 2009, the country was in the throes of the worst recession since the Great Depression. Unemployment hovered around 10 percent, companies were hoarding their cash rather than expanding their operations, jobs were harder to find than water in the Sahara and millions of people were so discouraged that they gave up searching for work.
Today, unemployment stands at 5 percent and the economy has created private-sector jobs for six years in a row, according to the White House. Though incomes haven’t risen quite as quickly as predicted, the revitalized housing market and low gas prices “portend a win for Democrats,” according to Moody’s Analytics, whose election model has accurately predicted the outcome of every presidential contest since 1980.
Reason No. 2 for Trump’s eventual downfall: General-election voters won’t tolerate the gibberish that Trump spews. Hurling nonsense at voters to see what sticks is not how one wins the presidency. Hello? Remember Priestess Palin of the Temple of Pablum?
Trump has had it so easy so far. He stoked the flames of racial animus and fear, insulted minorities and women and somehow endeared himself to millions of voters. Most of his supporters are angry, fearful people who yearn for a white, shiny America that never was; who refuse to accept the fact that a black man occupies the White House; who resent immigrants for “stealing” jobs they didn’t want or weren’t skilled enough to perform; who see terrorists in the shadows, ready to rape their wives, kidnap their daughters and blow them all to hell.
Mercifully, general-election voters tend to be more grounded in reality. Unmoved by Trump’s vague promise to “make America great again,” they’ll want to know how. Many will dismiss Trump’s outlandish promises to get Mexico to pay for a wall along the southern border, to ban all Muslims from entering the United States and to force China to submit to his will on trade.
Clinton and Sanders are imperfect candidates, but either one of them would be light years better than Trump. Clinton’s email problems appear to be errors of judgment, not legal infractions, and the Republican-led Benghazi investigation is a sham. She does need to inspire people to vote for her, something Sanders has done much better. But Sanders, who won’t be able to deliver on his laudable goals of providing free college for all and dismantling the corrupt campaign-finance system, must exit gracefully. The game is over, sir, thank you for playing.
Reason No. 3 why Trump won’t get anywhere near the White House is that his opponents vastly outnumber his supporters. Tens of millions of women and minorities loathe him. Legions of white voters would vote for a tree stump over Donald Trump any day. They may not like the alternative (Hillary) but they will choose her over Trump. Bigly. The Trumpeters will no doubt show up in force on Election Day, but mercifully there aren’t of them to put Trump over the top.
The rest of this campaign season will be nasty, brutish and long. It has already exposed an ugly vein in the American body politic. Voters with common sense and decency must show up en masse to cancel out the Trumpeter vote. Only then will America be able to look Trump in the eye and say, “You’re fired.”
(Raju Chebium was a reporter for 23 years for the Associated Press, CNN, Gannett News Service and USA Today. For 14 years, he was based in Washington, D.C., and covered the Supreme Court, Congress and national politics.)
3 Comments
So the general election voters have clear heads yet the primary voters are crazy? When I get my registration card do they assign me to one group or do I pick myself? And am I told which time to vote or do I decide that to?
You’re an actual moron, you know that? You must have voted in the primaries. Guess I will not be seeing you in the booths in general Election Day.
For someone with your credentials and work experience, you sure posited some biased garbage here.
This is a historic election, with nontraditional candidates in a nontraditional mud-flinging contest. You can’t possibly predict how the general public will vote, especially since people thought that Ted Cruz had more traction than Trump. Don’t underestimate the deciding power of the states not located on the coasts.
He also wasn’t going to win the nomination. Funny.