Blogger Candidate Forum: A Very Tall Order

Trump rally
Amway Center Orlando, Florida
cnn,com

Hello Everyone:

It is a sunny Wednesday and time for Blogger Candidate Forum.  The field is set and the candidates are off to a rousing start.  The president officially kicked off his campaign yesterday, at a rousing rally at the Amway Center in Orlando, Florida.  It was a much different campaign kick off than the previous kick off.  The big difference is Mr. Donald Trump is no longer the underdog candidate, he is the incumbent with a record.  The biggest thing he has going for himself right now is the economy.  Overall the economy is good, for now, and usually that mean a slam dunk re-election but is it?  Let us have a look at the road ahead for the president.

Rally crowd June 18, 2019
Orlando, Florida
orlandoweekly.com

The president is the Las Vegas oddsmakers' favorite to win the 2020 election, despite his low-40s approval ratings (cnbc.com; June 16, 2019; date accessed June 19, 2019).  Wall Street also expects him to be re-elected (Ibid; June, 11, 2019) but the oddsmakers and Wall Street are not the only voters.  Mr. Trump has to again convince enough voters in all 50 states that he deserves a second term.  Convincing the average voter that he has earned a second term looks to be more daunting task.  How daunting is this task?

A new Florida, a state won by the president in 2016, poll released by Quinnipiac University shows the president trailing former Vice President Joe Biden by nine point, 50-41 percent (Ibid; June 18, 2019).  The president also trailed other presumed Democratic nominees Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.  The news from Michigan, also won by the president, is also woeful; it shows him trailing VPOTUS by 11 points.  The news is also bad in statewide polls in North Carolina and Texas which show VPOTUS ahead by 12 and four points, respectively (Ibid).

The president carried those states in 2016 with the message of the underdog candidate fighting for Americans cast aside by the politically correct "elite."  The good news for the Trump campaign is that he could carry those states again because there is still time to fine tune the message and four years ago, he was even more behind Hillary Clinton sixteen months ahead of the election.  The bad news is the data shows that Mr. Trump will have to dig himself out of the deep hole he dug after almost two-and-half years in office.  Americans have a better sense of who he is and what he is about--not in a good way.

The president's job approval rating
poll.qn.edu

  The biggest obstacle to the president's re-re-election is his personality.  If the president plans to make him the central issue of this election cycle, he will lose because he is not the most popular person in the race.  Check out the Quinnipiac University poll at the left.  ABC news' George Stephanopoulous asked the president in an interview that aired Sunday  (https://youtu.be/G9vx7IRmNLQ; June 16, 2019; date accessed June 19, 2019) what would he tell the undecided swing voter.  Typically, this is the kind of question that allows a candidate to get the talking points out of the way.  The president followed the script: Safety, security, great economy (nationalreview.com; June 19, 2019).  Great start and he should have stopped right there.

Instead, he continued talking, bragging that he won 52 percent of the women' vote (not true)--it was the white women' vote--he actually won 41 percent of the female vote overall, according to the exit polls (Ibid).  Then went on about how the economy would help win the minority vote.  That was his pitch to the undecided voters.  He briefly returned to his talking points: a good economy, strong military, taking care of veterans.  Also a good moment to stop but no, the rest of the interview became an airing of grievances and splitting hairs with Mr. Stephanopoulous over what the Special Counsel's report did and not say: No collusion, no exoneration, total exoneration...

The president with George Stephanopolous
abcnews.go.com

 Jonah Goldberg writes, "...politically that's not the important part.  Impeachment is catnip to the mainstream media and Democrats.  Whether Trump was 'set up' by the deep state and their 'dirty' dossier is catnip to Republicans and right-wing media.  But it seems a fair bet that the swing voters Stephanopolous asked about aren't intoxicated by either topic" (Ibid).  This is the problem for the president.  If you talk to people who are confident that the president will win a second term, they say a good economy will keep them in the Trump fold.  Plausible but it ignores the 800-pound gorilla in the voting booth, the president's personality.

Elections are as much about personalities as they are about issues and a good economy does not always speak for itself.  Mr. Goldberg writes, "Normal presidents stay on message to deny the press the ability to talk about more interesting stuff" (Ibid).  The only issue the president reliably talks about is himself, barreling through the economy or conservative judges to get to the most important subject: Himself.  Thus, his lament that no president has been treated worse than him.  This is the problem if the overarching question in this election is him because he becomes the central question, the president will lose.

Expected match ups
electiongraphics.com

Leaked Trump campaign internal polling shows the president behind VPOTUS Joe Biden in several key states by wide margins.  Campaign manager Brad Parscale dismissed the polls as "irrelevant because it was 'ancient' data from last March, before he was 'exonerated' by the Mueller report" (Ibid).  Maybe, but the president's post-Mueller-report approval ratings still remain below 50 percent, the least variation of any president since World War II.  A lot of people have made up their minds about and most do not like this president.

The Trump campaign responded, saying "it had fresh data show solid support from 'informed voters'" (Ibid).  Mr. Parscale told ABC News that since March,

We have seen huge swings in the president's favor across the 17 states we have polled based on the policies now espoused by the Democrats (Ibid).

The operative words being "informed voters."  Jonah Goldberg reports, "According to The New York Times, the polls Parscale described were 'informed ballot' polls that describe Democrats in negative ways before asking about support for Trump" (Ibid).

Conventional wisdom among poll takers is "...if you're citing informed-ballots, you're losing" (Ibid).  Even at face value, the implication is that some voters could be swayed to vote for the president if they were convinced that they were voting on the issues, not on the president.  In order for that to happen, Mr. Trump would have to, essentially, stop acting like Mr. Trump and make the message about issues that voters genuinely care about other than him.  A very tall order but the good news for the Trump campaign is there is still enough time to correct the problem.  The question is will Trump be Trump or be the president?