They’re rough people, in many cases from jails, prisons, from mental institutions, insane asylums. You know, insane asylums, that’s Silence of the Lambs stuff. Hannibal Lecter? Anybody know Hannibal Lecter? We don’t want ’em in this country.
Donald Trump, talking to Right Side Broadcasting Network at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Monday evening, gets a laugh from the audience with this line, like an ageing insult comic giving the crowd a little call back to his most famous material, the outrage that kicked it all off. The former president — and, by the time you’re reading this, all-but-confirmed Republican presidential nominee — was in fine form, fresh from the Supreme Court ruling that states could not kick him off the ballot.
Indeed, everything old is new again. Trump is going out of his way to be vile, with the media calling his comments a “new low” and wondering whether his performance will affect his chances… even as it runs background from his people that he’s toning things down and getting more presidential.
So, to Super Tuesday, where Republicans in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia and the US territory of American Samoa will vote for their candidate. Roughly a third of the delegates required to become the nominee are up for grabs here.
Trump won a crushing victory in North Dakota over the weekend, bringing his overall total to 273. Nikki Haley, the last, fading hope for the Never Trump movement, has just 43, 19 of which she picked up in Washington DC, her only primary win over Trump so far. She even lost in her home state of South Carolina.
Super Tuesday used to be an event, particularly for the party picking its challenger (Joe Biden, as with most incumbents, is sailing through the Democratic equivalent). But as the faintly deflated coverage makes clear, in 2024 it’s basically a procession.
Trump once famously remarked “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters”. Ever since then, it appears he’s been committed to all but testing that theory. The vile race-baiting, the chaos of his government (he managed to lose the 2020 election with a higher personal vote than 2016), and now, the many, many court cases and the alleged slide into what Gore Vidal called “the bright Autumn of senescence”.
This of course calls attention to the strange shift in the rules when it comes to coverage of Trump. President Joe Biden’s every hoary moment is accompanied by reams of humiliating coverage, while Trump mixing up Biden and Obama, Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi, the country Argentina with a person of the same name, doesn’t seem to give anyone pause, except a few publications hoarsely wondering how that could be. Here’s Trump’s plan for America’s missile defense system: “Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.… Boom. Okay. Missile launch. Woosh. Boom”
And on education: “We have children that are no longer going to school. They’re throwing them out of the park. There’s no more Little Leagues, there’s no more sports…”
There are two reasons for this disjuncture. One, though Democrats are unwilling to admit it, it that Trump’s grubby charisma projects a vigour that Biden hasn’t mustered for quite some time. Trump is now closer to the Diamond Joe character created by The Onion about Biden’s time as vice-president than Biden is.
The other is the big one: the chaos is all part of the appeal for Trump supporters — that he can ramble and rave and still be president is of a piece with the fact that he can savage high profile Republicans and still have the party almost completely behind him. For anyone voting Biden, the thought that he is not 100% present is a cause for genuine concern. For a rusted on Trump voter, it would be just another thing he’d been clever enough to get away with. For context, the media was making worried sounds about Trump slurring his words as far back 2017.
According to poll aggregator RacetotheWH, Trump has a clear lead over Biden, and has done since September last year.
Are we doomed to a repeat of Biden vs Trump? And is The Donald in with a real chance in November? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
I don’t get the Trump as sure thing. Electorally he’s been doing worse and worse.There is a large cohort of Republicans who won’t refuse to vote for him,amplified by those distressed by increasingly regressive state policies around birth control and IVF.
Plus the ongoing fact that younger age cohorts don’t pick up the phone to respond to randomised polls.
**refuse, not won’t refuse
i agree, the whole “when Trump gets in again” narrative has been pushed hard for quite a while now…the suspense, the impending doom, the fear and horror, “how can this even be happening?” – it all makes for a riveting thrill-ride, and i think the media absolutely knows this.
I’m not saying that he couldn’t win mind you, but if the news were more sober and measured in their reporting, i think it’d result in a more realistic reflection of what’s actually happening, and what’s likely to happen, based on the odds.
And of course, the more of the “Trump can’t be stopped” coverage there is, the more it snowballs, and is almost accepted as a done deal. Sometimes you’d think Trump was already in office, because of the coverage of his opinions on stuff that he isn’t a part of. Meanwhile Biden is working away furiously on a whole raft of things, but comes across as a minor character in the Trump show.
What i’d like to read more of, is analysis of what’s going down in the swing states which seem to be the key to american elections. If i were the Dems, i’d be pouring my energies into making sure their probs are being dealt with. That’d stop Trump from threading the eye of the needle of college votes, like he did in 2016. But maybe they are doing just that! But i don’t know, because all the news is just Trump Trump Trump.
Pre-exit polls from the Primaries are showing that about 30%-40% of Republican voters won’t vote for Trump if he is the nominee. His base is extremely vocal & visible, but relatively small compared to even the voting population of America. That base plus the rusted on GOP voters almost certainly won’t be sufficient to get him back into the White House.
Two things: First, the US doesn’t have compulsory voting. The Republican voters who are actually telling the truth (i.e. not the ones who will end up voting for Trump but “unwillingly” come the day) are just going to stay home. It isn’t like the Australian experience of voting where refusing to vote for one party results in a vote for a different party.
Second, Biden isn’t exactly inspiring a large number of Democratic voters to get themselves to a polling booth either. Again, it’s not like Australia. Here our parties have to encourage voters to vote in their favour. In other countries the challenge is to get the voters out their front door.
Summary: It isn’t the number of voters who won’t vote for Trump that matters. What matters is how many will be enthusiastic enough to show up and vote for him on polling day.
Trump is great at turning out voters. Election results in Generals show he has a history of turning out more Democrats than Republicans except in 2016.
Thats the fear of those of us against Trump will we get Democrats repeating the 2016 turnout.
Or, a la Brexit, Steve Bannon and Koch’s ALEC strategy for voter suppression for non RWNJ nativist voters to stay home, due to all the supposed issues around first EU, then Biden and the Dems…..
He’s already promised to a be a vengeful dictator on his first day. How many people does that appeal to? Giving not just justification to their own revenge fantasies but a real time show for their vicarious pleasure.
First of all he/it has to be elected. It’s even money on that. Then second cab on the rank is the military question. That’s the first constitutional crisis uncle Sam is going to face should the dunce of spades win the bid.
This is the Peak GOP moment and the media pundits are yet again getting carried away.
It’s a repeat of the Red Wave media narrative. Then the GOP lost the Mid Term against an incumbent President.
The concern over Michigan and Israel/Gaza and low turnout is the real story as that could derail Biden’s chances that we have seen in every election since the GOP caught the car on abortion.
There should be enough drama there to keep the media happy.
To remind myself I just think about Lula winning in Brazil in circumstances where Lula was in jail before he ran the second time against Bolsonairo
Agree, he has won nothing nor increased his voter base since 2016…. and this article is guilty of a phenomenon that is used by RW MSM to nudge and promote themes to deflect e.g. ‘fatigue’ or ‘I’m tired of hearing about X’.
There is a mass of research and journalism in the US exploring how RW MSM promotes and/or avoid themes via people’s sentiments and psyche for voters to become tired, bored or angry about climate science, renewables, EVs etc.; elites, centrists, LGBT etc.; Biden’s age, polls, gossip etc.; nudging that leads to passive acceptance of suboptimal policies and players, or worse simply ‘following orders’ (see GOP)?
Trump the 5 time bankrupt has been groomed and taught how to behave in front of a camera, nothing else really matters does it.
Prezitainment.
If our media owners and their vested interest group believe they can improve their profit by
creating a nonsensical monster would they do it?
The main vehicle used to familiarise the western world with his personality was called “the apprentice ” is another chilling reminder of the power of the media narrative.
A century of not fixing the lead piping in their water systems, unlike most of the rest of the world. The results are becoming all too evident.
The US ‘system’ deserves Trump – the rest of the world doesn’t.
“Trump has the answers” so one of those ‘Joes’ interviewed said on TV?
FFS Blind Freddy can see problems – but Trump comes with his own, and US, problems. What you don’t need is someone making them worse.
The sell-out of government to vested interests, over the greater good, begs root and branch surgery before the tree dies : Trump is all self-centred rotten tap root.
Trump is now a sure thing! He’s a dirty rotten scoundrel who has evaded to this day of ever being convicted of a crime, those civil matters wins against him just don’t have the same pulling power as a felony conviction, the world is done! On a more positive note, Trump will more than likely sink the whole AUKUS fiasco, as he loves circling the USA wagons, fjki the rest of the world! Both current and former Labor and Liberal National Parties parliamentarian neo-cons will be gasping that an American peer of such admirable disrepute has been able to rise from the ashes to truely stuff their once in a life time mega pay off – perverse poetic justice or just indifferent collateral damage to arse yickers ally goons by a sociopath US president. Another more than plausible outcome of Trump mk2, will be the abrupt end of the Ukraine war. Zelenskyy and his American funded regime will be left high and dry, Putin will promptly remove all traces of this puppet government, just as efficiently as the many past USA operations, ‘clean for a new regime’. Israel will also feel an uncomfortable pressures from an apathetic Trump, this will enable other Israel enemies to manoeuvre and close on Israel with renewed violent vigour. As for the rest of the world, Chaos by fear and loathing in Trump’s White House/Mar-A-Largo: God Blessed America, the rest of you are forevermore accursed.
Apart from Trump and Putin prevailing over Ukraine, EU etc. like Abbott’s friends in Hungary, what are you for?
String hint of, just get this stupid civilisation over with, there