Ignore the approval polls. They are mostly garbage and do not negate the fact that President Donald Trump is well on his way to reelection. For those who are not brainwashed liberals, this should not come as a shock. We have a Democratic Party that is making 2020 the year of destroying hundreds of millions in private health insurance plans, providing health care to illegal immigrants, decriminalizing border crossing, attacking the police, especially Immigration and Customs Enforcement, raising taxes and killing jobs. Oh, and beheading those evil billionaires because jealousy is such an attractive trait in a candidate. Also, pushing laws that would allow abortion up to the moment of birth and making taxpayers pick up the tab is also unpopular.
You’ll hear a lot of talk about the moderate Republicans defecting from the party and giving key territory to the Democrats. It happened in 2018 and 2019. That’s how the Democrats took back Congress… because the tender, moderate Republicans in the suburbs didn’t like his rhetoric or his Twitter usage. They’re traitors and they’re no better than the Democrats. And when they come back, bloody and beaten because the Democrats are not their friends, they should be left out in the chilly. As the saying goes in House of Cards, “We’ll separate you from the herd and watch you die in the middle of nowhere.”
But as Salena Zito, who has documented the rise of populism in American politics, has pointed out, not all suburbs are equal, and those around predominantly working-class cities will be key in determining whether Donald Trump gets another term. So far, Trump’s support has not waned, and many of these people are not lifelong Republicans. As reported in 2016, many of these people are Obama voters who went Trump, and they number in the millions. Zito has crisscrossed the country with fellow writer Brad Todd, interviewing these people and learning about their lives. The divide between the two Americas is very real. For those on the left coast or along the Acela Corridor who simply can’t understand how Trump won, it’s because you are not the majority country. And yes, you haven’t met anyone from these parts, which is why I’m pretty sure Trump will win with a good result in the final Electoral College tally (via NY Post Office):
You might think that 2018 was a “blue wave” that swept the world.
But here’s a fact that now seems pretty significant: Republicans *won* two Senate seats.
And Trump’s supporters have grown even more (no McCain, Flake, Corker, etc.)
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 22, 2019
I have long believed (even apart from this poll) that Wisconsin would be the hardest state for Democrats to win back out of the three states of Michigan/Pennsylvania/Wisconsin. https://t.co/vmkFOBMFe0
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 20, 2019
Conservative ideology alone did not unite this coalition. What did was conservatism combined with a populist distrust of vast institutions, including the media, D.C. politicians, Hollywood, and corporations, all headquartered in zip codes far from the people they supposedly serve.
Three years later, all 24 people we interviewed for The Great Revolt (apart from two we were unable to reach) told us that their political views had not changed.
Polls reflect that lively. Earlier this month, Cook Political Report polling analyst Amy Walter crunched numbers from a recent New York Times/Siena poll to show that Trump’s Electoral College lead has stayed the same or even grown since 2016 in places like Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and even Minnesota, which he narrowly lost.
“It’s 2016 all over again,” Walter wrote, and she’s right. In many ways, our political climate is like the movie “Groundhog Day”—every day. If you woke up after Trump’s election feeling positive about the future, you probably still are. And if you didn’t, your hair is probably still on fire, and nothing will put it out until the president is removed from the White House.
[…]
According to post-election polls, college graduates living in areas with more than a high school education turned out to be very much against Trump, while college graduates living in communities with less than a high school education turned out to be very slightly supportive. In brief, not all suburban voters are created equal.
The suburbs around Erie, home to the state’s poorest ZIP code, are less educated than most. Although the county hasn’t gone red for a presidential candidate since Reagan and even backed Obama by 58 percent in 2012, it gave Trump a surprising two-point victory over Clinton.
In 2020, Trump will likely suffer another defeat in the suburbs of Chicago and Los Angeles, but his fate will be decided in the suburbs surrounding working-class cities like Erie and Detroit.
[…]
Cindy Hutchins, a 58-year-old Democrat by birth who lives in Michigan, switched her party allegiance from Democrat to Republican in 2016. She fits our “Rough Rebounder” archetype—someone who has struggled personally and professionally but has found a way to persevere despite the circumstances.
[…]
“I would vote for him again in a heartbeat,” she says from her home in idyllic Lake County, Michigan, which until 2016 was one of the most reliably blue counties in northern Michigan. It’s one of the few places in America so Democratic that it backed a landslide loser, George McGovern, in 1972. Yet Trump won 59 percent of the vote there.
Yes, the Democrats think they have it in the bag. They don’t. The impeachment hearings won’t end Trump’s presidency. The Republican Senate won’t convict him, and it will waste valuable time for Bernie Sanders, Liz Warren, and maybe Kamala Harris (if her campaign isn’t over by then) to be forced off the campaign trail while the trial continues. I think some Democrats know the end. With a robust economy, Trump will win. This is their best chance to beat him—and all because some biased Democratic CIA agent heard some bad things about Trump’s July phone call with the Ukrainians. It’s pathetic. If you want to beat Trump, have a better trade program, a job creation program, and, oh, I don’t know—promise to enforce our immigration laws, and you’ll see the Trump coalition start to fall apart. These aren’t die-hard Republicans, people. But the Democrats are too liberal, too crazy, and too stupid to understand that.
