The issues and the conditions favor Donald Trump.
I’m sorry, what issues are those? Abortion? Livable wages? Climate change? Corporate greed? Social safety nets? Or is the assumption still “R= good economy”
I came here to post exactly this. This line caused me to stop taking the entire article seriously.
The only thing working in Donald Trump’s favor was that he was able to convince independent voters that Biden is too old to run again, and even that was only having limited success until that disastrous debate performance where Biden seemingly confirmed everything Trump was saying about his mental capacity. That’s it. That’s the only thing that had been going in his favor, and even then it was only significantly in his favor for a couple of weeks until Biden finally dropped out.
Once Biden dropped out, taking the issues about his age with him, Trump was exposed. Voters who were now able to see beyond Biden’s age saw that Trump has nothing to offer them. Virtually everybody predicted what we’re seeing, even if they didn’t think it would happen this quickly.
The pollster is kind of right - on paper the economy should be an issue in Trumps favour. We’ve just come out of a period of high inflation and people are feeling the cost of living. Immigration is also supposedly an issue that should be favouring Trump.
That’s not to say that Trump has the answers - he does not - but in a conventional election cycle he would be in the stronger position as the “outsider” attacking the incumbents.
Yet instead the entire news cycle is dominated by Harris and Walz at the moment. Republicans are desperate for Trump to get back “on message” but instead he’s flailing around as his ego can’t take the Dems attack lines, biden dropping out and Harris apparent popularity.
So although the pollster is obviously biased as a Republican, I think he’s right in the sense this not playing out like a conventional election.
Also, I have to say as an outside observer from the UK, the excitement around Harris reminds me of Obama’s first election. Obama came from no where in the primaries and huge momentum built behind him as the hope candidate. Harris has emerged much later in the election cycle, and oddly she feels like the exciting unknown candidate even though she is Vice President. Yet it does feel like the momentum is with her and she drawing in people who have been otherwise alienated by the republican / democrat arguments over the last 4 years.
I have no idea if it’ll carry on to election day. But I must say on a personal note, the more I see of Harris, the more I warm to her. I suspect a lot of voters will feel the same. Her humour, and warmth are in stark contrast to Trumps meanness and petty nastiness. I’m beginning to think Trump is not capable of beating Harris.
Harris has emerged much later in the election cycle, and oddly she feels like the exciting unknown candidate even though she is Vice President.
Every day I’m waiting to wake up and read about the fever finally breaking and the collective illusion shattering about this. But she also genuinely acts differently (better!) now than compared to only a few years ago, almost like she’s been spending the time as VP away from the spotlight secretly taking public speaking classes or something.
I really hope this momentum carries.
I think it’s her now being in this role, it has changed her, and she has risen to the occasion. I don’t think we could have seen this from her ever before because she wasn’t in this situation. But now she’s here and she’s ready
Actually… being a little charitable and assuming Luntz’s head isn’t just filled with wet newspapers here (which is maybe a little bit too charitable), we could say that maybe the issues he’s concerned with are, who’s going to give tax breaks to the rich people, who’s going to gut the federal agencies, who’s going to kneecap the IRS so it can’t go after rich tax cheats. Things like that that are highly of interest to this lumpy bad haircut criminal, his criminal friends, the criminals that run the media, and so on.
I think Trump is so bad that he will cause problems for even the people whose main political alignment is “who will stop making problems for me while I rape the working class and have peasant-hunting parties with all my criminal friends”. But I think a really surprising amount of the rich criminals somehow haven’t figured that out and are supporting Trump because they’re still all bent out of shape that Biden was raising their taxes and letting the FDA continue to exist and etc.
Well said.
Luntz isn’t an idiot. He’s a republican, but he’s a keen political analyst and very savvy about political messaging. He’s the person that advocated “climate change” over “global warming,” for instance.
And, not for nothing, he literally partially blames his two strokes on not speaking out forcefully enough against Trump.
