TRUMP’S NASCAR PLOY AND THE ‘REAL-PEOPLE’ VOTE

While Donald Trump rode “the Beast” limousine around the Daytona 500 track on Sunday — ostensibly to connect with “real Americans at Daytona,” real Americans in Chattanooga had been turning out to vote during the Volunteer State’s first days of early voting for the 2020 Super Tuesday primary.

In Hamilton County, the news is looking good — both for America and for Democrats.

So far, voting is up about 10% over 2016. What’s more, that increase appears to be driven by voters asking for Democratic ballots.

This year in Hamilton County, nearly every other vote cast has thus far been placed on Democratic ballots.

In 2016 at this point in the presidential primary — even when there was no incumbent on either ballot — only one in three votes were cast on Democratic ballots.

It seems that “real people” in Hamilton County are pretty discerning.

To borrow from Washington Post columnist Max Boot: “You would think the symbolism of a tycoon being chauffeured in an armored limousine” around a NASCAR track “would hardly be the most effective way to signal ‘I’m one of you.’ But that’s precisely what President Trump did at the Daytona 500 on Sunday — and he was met with a rapturous reception from Republican-leaning NASCAR fans.”

Boot continued: “Reality check: A president with [an average] 43.5% approval rating doesn’t speak for most Americans. In today’s America, Republicans represent more land area, but Democrats represent more people — having exceeded the Republican tally by 2.8 million votes in the 2016 presidential election and by more than 8.6 million votes in the 2018 House races.”

Of course, there’s this other reality check: While reality TV chump Donald Trump soaks up national TV coverage for a publicity stunt, Democrats are embroiled in a demolition derby. We have so many candidates still in the running that our primary votes may well throttle our November punch. That’s especially true with the johnny-come-lately appearance of Michael Bloomberg to split the moderate vote and give the advantage to Bernie Sanders.

Just look at a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll. It found Sanders to have 31% support nationally, with Bloomberg registering 19%, Biden 15%, Warren 12%, Sen. Amy Klobuchar 9%, and former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg 8%.

Here in the “real” peopleville that we call Hamilton County, 2,368 people voted on Democratic ballots by the end of the first five days of early voting, compared to 1,471 who voted Democratic in the same time period of the 2016 presidential primary. Likewise, the number of Republicans voting in Hamilton County dropped from 2,766 in 2016 to 2,615 thus far in this year’s early voting, according to state and county election figures.

It’s true that in Tennessee, voters can cross over to try to influence the primary votes of the opposite party.

But we think Hamilton County votes will be far less affected by that this year. President Donald Trump faces minimal GOP primary opposition from former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld. Former U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh dropped out of the GOP primary on Feb. 7, though his name remains on the Tennessee ballot.

What’s more, to cross over, this year, Republicans have to forgo a very important and heated local contest that will be decided only in the primary: the county’s assessor of property race between incumbent Marty Haynes and Hamilton County Commission Chairman Randy Fairbanks. Likewise, cross-over Democrats would have to forgo the all-important Democratic presidential primary race. Not even the tax assessor, who affects the value of our property, is that important. So, no, we don’t think we’re looking at cross-over votes.

We think we’re looking at anger. Long. Simmering. Anger. We see it both in the surging votes on the Democratic ballot and in the surge of both Sanders and party-crasher Bloomberg in polling.

Real people — here and elsewhere in the state and the country — are tired of tycoons (one in particular) pretending to understand how middle-class and poor Americans live.

We’re tired of a president who attacks everyone but dictators — especially Russian ones. Instead he attacks the prosecutors and the judge in the case of admitted dirty-trickster Roger Stone.

And we’re tired of a president who vilifies war heroes and the underpinnings of our State and Justice departments while he commutes on Tuesday the 14-year prison sentence of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was convicted of trying to essentially sell a vacated Senate seat. This same president, also on Tuesday, pardoned former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik, who was convicted of tax fraud and lying to the government. And Trump pardoned financier Michael Milken, the “junk bond king” convicted for securities fraud, as well as former San Francisco 49ers owner Edward J. DeBartolo Jr., who pleaded guilty in 1998 to concealing an extortion attempt after he agreed to pay $400,000 in brand-new $100 bills to then-Louisiana Gov. Edwin W. Edwards for a riverboat gambling license.

Now why would a president — a real president — do stuff like that?

Answer: He’s not a real president. He’s a fake president but a real fraud in our real Oval Office, and he’s giving the finger not just to the Justice Department but also the country — voters — because the Justice Department and American voters have finally zeroed in on his number.

Go vote — and pull that Democratic ballot.