Donald Trump is facing cancellation
“TRUMP IN TROUBLE” That’s the headline over a USA Today story reporting that in their latest poll, only 31% of Republicans want Donald Trump as their nominee in 2024, while 61% prefer someone else. By 58 to 33, GOP voters favor Florida Gov. Ron Desantis over the ex-president, and in a national rematch of the 2020 race, Trump loses to President Biden by
7.8 percentage points (the margin between them two years ago was 4.4% of the popular vote).
This poll squares with other surveys that come to the same conclusion: Barely a month after Trump announced his bid for a second White House term, his campaign is collapsing. This trend is fueled by former supporters who might still like his policies but can no longer stomach his increasingly bizarre and bombastic behavior.
These defectors have not become liberals or Democrats, but simply antiTrumpers. As David Paleologos of Suffolk University, which conducted the USA Today poll, puts it: “Republicans and conservative independents increasingly want Trumpism without Trump.”
As a result, in a national average compiled by the website Real Clear Politics, Trump’s favorable rating among all voters has plunged to 36.8%, 10 full points below his share of the vote in 2020 and more than 6 points below Biden’s anemic rating of 43.3%. Moreover, this decline came before the latest spasm of bad news for Trump: A Congressional committee recommended to the Justice Department that he be indicted on four criminal charges — from inciting insurrection to obstructing the electoral process — engendered by the riot he encouraged at the Capitol two years ago.
Maggie Haberman of The New York Times writes, “Mr. Trump is significantly diminished, a shrunken presence on the political landscape.” And she quotes former Representative Carlos Curbelo, a Republican from Florida: “I don’t think that anything can save Donald Trump. He’s decidedly on the path to irrelevance. He reduces himself by the day.”
Of course, Trump remains extremely popular with his hardcore base, MAGA Nation, but they comprise only about one-third of the country, not nearly enough to win national elections on their own. He needs to attract another 15% or so, which can be described in many ways — moderates, independents, quasi-republicans, pragmatists, realists — and those are exactly the voters who are jumping off, not joining up.
Trump is frantic — desperate, really — to stay in the spotlight. So he does increasingly outlandish things, from suggesting the Constitution should be “terminated” to hawking a set of digital trading cards for $99 that depict him as a superhero. That sort of unhinged behavior might excite the true believers, but it’s ultimately self-defeating because it drives away that second — and essential — layer of softer support.
Political analyst Ron Brownstein, writing for CNN, examined the midterm election results and concluded that Trump-style Republicans met a “wall of resistance” from independent swing voters. Brownstein quotes GOP strategist John Thomas: “There’s a huge lesson here, which is if you talk like Trump or remind voters of Trump, particularly at a personality level, it’s pure poison to independent voters. It might have been effective in 2016 because voters were looking for something new and a change, but it hasn’t been useful since then.”
Republican pros have always known that Trump was an erratic egomaniac who knew little about running the country and cared less. But he was their egomaniac, a winner, the team captain who could deliver the results they cared most about: power, access and influence, plus reduced taxes and reactionary judges. It was an offer they couldn’t refuse.
But the dynamic is changing, and fast. If Trump is a loser, not a winner, then why put up with all that chaos? As the swing voters who decide elections are abandoning Trump, so are the smart GOP strategists, the ones who focus on data, not delusions.
Asa Hutchinson, the outgoing governor of Arkansas, told the Associated Press that nominating Trump would be the “worst scenario” for the Republican Party. “That’s almost the scenario that Biden wishes for.” Stephen Schwarzman, a major Republican donor, spoke for many others: “It is time for the Republican Party to turn to a new generation of leaders, and I intend to support one of them in the presidential primaries.”
“The Apprentice,” Trump’s first reality show, ran in various forms for 15 seasons before being canceled. His latest TV series — call it “The President” — has run for about half that time since he announced his candidacy in June 2015. Now another cancellation is looming.