Tea-leaf readers seeking news of Trump’s impending implosion see it everywhere. He ventures beyond MAGA rallies and is booed at a World Series game and a UFC event, but one was in Washington and the other in New York, places where his unpopularity is decades long.
But there’s more. For once a fraudulent claim — this one regarding his quid pro quo threat to Ukraine — is disputed by men and women who witnessed it. Edicts not to appear before the House impeachment inquiry are ignored. Articles of impeachment are inevitable. And Trump’s undermining of government and social norms, and his reliance on disinformation only become more brazen and reckless each day.
Economic analysts chronicle failures of the Trump administration that contradict its crowing. Trump ran on a ten percent middle class tax cut that never happened. The corporate tax cut was not reinvested in plant and equipment. Instead of reviving manufacturing we are now experiencing a manufacturing recession.
A huge promised infrastructure program has not been enacted ot even proposed. An “easy-to-win” trade war drags on and has damaged American consumers, farmers, and businesses. Big banks have not been broken up, as promised, but have been dangerously deregulated and are even bigger.
The trade deficit is not lower but has grown by $633 billion. The budget deficit is now costing $1 trillion a year. And promised growth of 5% or more a year actually grew at just 1.9% in the latest quarter, down from 2% in Q2.
All these policy failures and the constant scandals and evidence of corruption are beginning to take a toll. More people said Trump should be impeached and removed from office than said he should stay in late October/early November polls from the Economist (+7), Politico (+5), NBC/WSJ (+3), ABC/WP (+5), Fox News (+4). His important approve/disapprove rating is underwater in numerous recent polls. Between 55 and 52 percent disapprove of the job he is doing while between 40 and 45 percent approve.
For all these reasons Trump ought to be toast, but he still may win re-election. His loyalists are likely to turn out. Having failed to enact election protection measures, Trump and Mitch McConnell have collaborated to make sure a second attempt by foreign enemies to interfere with a presidential election will not be thwarted.
Democrats must also rely on huge turnout and need a candidate that cannot only get the left-leaning base to the polls but enough of the swing vote in the middle to win. Especially in the crucial battleground states that control the outcome in the electoral college, as Democrats learned to their sorrow in 2000 and 2016 when the popular vote winner lost.
Do they have a candidate capable of attracting both the fiery base and the more moderate middle? You can’t beat somebody with nobody, as the old campaign adage insists. Biden was supposed to be the man, yet he’s looking old and less than unbeatable on the hustings. Sanders and Warren are too far left to nail down the essential middle, especially the vital demographic slice of white suburban women.
In recent polling, Biden beats Trump in the general by +10, but he barely ekes out wins in the swing states. He beats Trump in Florida +2, PA +1, Wisconsin +2, Michigan +1, Arizona +3. Warren loses all of the above to Trump — Florida-4, Wisc.-2, PA.-2, Mich.-5, Ariz.-1. Nationwide Biden wins white suburban men 51% to Trump’s 43%, carries white suburban women 63% to Trump’s 35%. By contrast, Warren performs about the same with the men 54% to 43%, but she loses white suburban women by a horrific 34% to Trump’s 60%.
It is results like these and Biden’s perceived lack of energy and fire that may have made Michael Bloomberg consider getting into the race in time for Super Tuesday. But he is a Republican turned Democrat, is another New York billionaire, is even older than Biden and not notably peppy or spellbinding on the stump.
His baggage also includes the ulterior motive of stopping Warren and Sanders before they can tax him into penury. He, thus, seems unlikely to appeal to the party’s left or to be able to unify the party. His chief selling point is the ability to buy the election.
Perhaps Bloomberg would do the party and the country a bigger favor by funding the campaign of a younger candidate, one who is a Democrat, one untainted by the coastal elite pedigree that can be poison in the purplish electoral college states unless you are a populist conman like the incumbent.
Voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, Minnesota, et al. don’t want to hear how people from big cities with their fancy degrees plan to prevent climate change at their expense, or take away their health insurance plan, open borders to all comers, or in Bloomberg’s case keep the taxman away from he billionaire’s foor or restrict their access to sugary drinks. They want to hear how their kid is going to get a good job, pay for college, avoid being shot in school or, if black, by a cop.
So if you really want to give Trump the boot, Mr. Bloomberg, how about giving a billion or two to a candidate who might have a chance to win with the middle if they can stay in the race long enough to be heard — Buttigieg, Bennet, Booker, Bullock, Klobuchar, Harris and even Biden, all of whom are lagging behind Trump and the unelectable lefties in fundraising.