Clear and Present Danger

Just last week, Trump had another weak showing — this time in the Indiana primary. Haley got 22% of the vote even though she dropped out of the race over two months ago. 128,000 voters in deep red Indiana voted for Haley. This is a warning sign for Trump that he will ignore.

Over 100,000 Haley people voting against Trump is a big deal — because they didn’t have to. They’re normal people and they are tired of Trump. She dropped out months ago, yet they got in their cars and waited in line just to vote against him. Amazing!

Haley is pulling in 30% to 34% of the vote in the Indianapolis suburbs. This is a real phenomenon we have seen in other primary states that seems to be growing.

The Republicans and the press can’t blame Trump’s weak finish in the Indiana primary on being held in a liberal state. Indiana is not Washington, D.C., where Haley won a big victory just two days before dropping out. Indiana is a deep red state in which Trump won by 16% in 2020.

Results in Indiana are similar to results in other recent primaries. About 20% of Republican voters in the swing states of Arizona, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania cast a ballot for someone other than Trump. Haley picked up about 17% of the vote in Pennsylvania on April 23. Haley won more than 157,000 votes, or about twice the 80,500-vote margin by which Democrat Biden beat Trump in Pennsylvania in 2020.

Trump has underperformed in every single primary contest since Super Tuesday, consistently dropping in vote percentage in the face of a ghost challenge from Haley. Ever since Haley withdrew from the race two a half months ago, she has garnered a healthy protest vote. Her voters don’t like Trump and don’t want to vote for him in November.

Trump also did very poorly in the early GOP primaries. When he had opponents, Trump tallied anywhere from 50% to 60% of the Republican vote. This is alarmingly low because Trump is the equivalent of an incumbent president running for re-nomination.

Anywhere from 50% to 60% of the Haley voters told exit pollsters they won’t vote for Trump in November. Another consistent data point in the GOP exit polls was that anywhere from 25% to 35% of Republicans won’t vote for Trump in November. Even Fox “News” said that Trump can’t win with those numbers. There is Trump fatigue in the GOP and a significant minority of Republicans won’t vote for Trump in November.

There is a massive protest vote within the GOP that we are seeing in state after state. Trump’s weakness with GOP voters has been largely ignored by the mainstream press. The elite media prefers to obsess on outlier polls in which Biden allegedly trails.

Trump also badly under performed the polls in the primaries. That under performance ranged anywhere from 8 percentage points to 26 percentage points. The polls tend to overrate Trump and the GOP and underrate the Democrats.

Haley, for her part, has shown no sign of endorsing Trump. While she was in the race, Trump went full scorched Earth and constantly belittled and insulted her. Unlike the other GOP candidates who ran against Trump, she stood up to him. When Haley campaigned against Trump, she blasted her former boss over his conduct in office and his mental state, justifiably calling him “diminished” and “completely unhinged.” There is no love lost between the two Republican rivals.

The divisions laid bare in the GOP primaries persist. Trump continues to insult Haley and her supporters. The disgraced former president has ostracized her donors and said he doesn’t need Haley’s votes. He has given Haley no incentive to endorse him.

The Trump campaign has made no effort to bring Haley voters back into the GOP fold. Over two months after she suspended her campaign, Trump has yet to contact Haley to ask for her support. Trump is unable to unite the GOP.

President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign is appealing directly to supporters of Haley. “Nikki Haley voters, Donald Trump doesn’t want your vote,” Biden said in a social media post that included a link to a new ad from his campaign. “I want to be clear: There is a place for you in my campaign.”

As a consequence of Trump’s insults, several big Haley donors are now raising money for Biden. This is a huge development because it takes those donors off the table and puts them in the Biden camp. The Biden campaign continues to reach out to Haley donors and supporters.

Trump can’t win the general election with 78% of the Republican vote. In 2020, Trump got 94% of the Republican vote and lost. The country would be well served if most of the Haley voters either voted for Biden, voted third party, stayed home or wrote somebody in for president. They don’t have to vote for Biden to thwart Trump. Even Fox “News” has admitted that Trump can’t win without Haley’s supporters.

Another symptom of Trump fatigue is that Mike Pence has declined to endorse his candidacy. This is huge news. What if Al Gore had refused to endorse Biden? In addition, 41 out of 44 Trump cabinet members have declined to endorse him. These are the people who know Trump best. This gives millions of Republicans a permission slip to not vote for Trump in November.

Other prominent Republicans aren’t supporting Trump, either. Former GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan said he won’t be voting for Trump. Ryan was the Speaker when the Republicans held the trifecta in 2017–18. He had to work with Trump on a daily basis during that period.

There are plenty of other prominent Republicans who’ve it made clear that they don’t want Trump back in power — Dick Cheney, Liz Cheney, Chris Christie, Mitt Romney, and John Bolton have all announced that they don’t support Trump. These are people who worked closely with Trump when he was in the Oval Office.

One of the few prominent Republicans who has endorsed Biden is former Georgia Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan. He was on the front lines of Trump’s unsuccessful and illegal attempt to steal the 2020 election. Duncan said: “Unlike Trump, I’ve belonged to the GOP my entire life. This November, I am voting for a decent person I disagree with on policy over a criminal defendant without a moral compass.”

On the Democratic side, President Biden has consistently received between 86% — 95% of the vote in virtually every Democratic primary despite having several challengers. Last week, Biden got 100% of the Indiana vote. Biden continues to out perform Trump in the primaries. In addition, Biden consistently out performed the polls in the primaries.

If Joe Biden had lost 22 percent to a candidate no longer in the race in a deep blue state, it would be front page news in the New York Times and Washington Post. There would calls from the elite pundits for Biden to drop out of the race, renewed speculation about a brokered convention and commentary about Democrats in disarray.

“We have a lot of evidence, including last night’s strong Nikki Haley vote in Indiana, that as Americans get closer to voting — moving from registered voter to likely voter to voters — Trump and Republicans lose ground, and we gain. And the problem for Trump and the Republicans is the whole country has begun going through that process now and will continue to do so as we go deeper into 2024.” Simon Rosenberg.

Trump has never once gotten more votes than his political opponent. Ever. And under his stewardship, the Republican Party has had historic electoral defeats in 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2023. The Democratic winning streak has continued into 2024.

“If Trump was strong he would not have to paint his face, die his hair, wear girdles and diapers, get help from Putin, pay porn starts to keep quiet or get a clearly crazy dude with brain worms to run for President. Trump’s delusions, his bluster, all this is illiberalism are signs of a desperation, of weakness, of folks who are losing — it is all the very opposite of strength. Trump is a weak, pathetic and awful man not a strong man.” Simon Rosenberg.

I’m convinced that the bottom will fall out for the GOP in October and we will win big. Trump and the MAGA Republicans are just too extreme. In addition, Trump has so much personal baggage. Swing voters will break heavily for the Democrats.

Mr. Trump sought to cast the poor turnout as more evidence of a plot against him. In a post at 8:50 a.m., he implied that would-be MAGA protesters were being discriminated against for political reasons.

The police aren’t scaring his “supporters” away. Trump supporters simply are not there.  They don’t have the energy. Or the time. Or whatever. But MAGAts are not heeding the call. Now, when the case goes to the jury, there’s no way to know in advance when the verdict will come in, so it’s not likely the faithful will gather and stay in front of the courthouse (which isn’t a big space anyway) waiting to see if the jury and the judge crucify their savior. It is possible the Trump machine may organize groups around the country to demonstrate over the verdict either way, but the record of Trump rallies hasn’t been encouraging (eg, Donald Trump’s Crowd Size Raises Questions — about the Saturday rally in NJ). So, we may see some scattered noise-makers, but I predict nothing substantial or seriously disruptive.

An additional reason I say this is that the January 6th rioters are now paying the price for that disruption, and seeing other people get arrested, tried, convicted, and sent to prison for doing what they did tends to cause others who want to do the same thing to hesitate before doing so.

This is why I also think that when (I say, when) the would-be Mussolini loses in November, there will be at most scattered demonstrations and disruptions, but no army of the disaffected marching on Washington in The Name of the Lord Trump. A rational president is in charge and he is not about to play the same games with the police and DOD and the National Guard that the previous tenant of the White House indulged in. Any attempt to disrupt the workings of government this time will be dealt with as it deserves. This administration is not only aware of the possibility, it is making plans to protect the seat of democracy from violence.

This will not necessarily dissuade the truly crazy, so we are likely to see small protests, some destruction, and some people will be hurt and some may be killed. Let us hope not. But I predict that there will not be an insurrection similar to the last one.

Lake’s likely Democratic challenger, Rep. Ruben Gallego, is currently lapping her in fundraising while Senate Democrats are also roundly outgunning their GOP counterparts.

The Democrats’ Senate Majority PAC has reserved $23 million in ad buys for the fall, according to Politico, while Senate Republicans are still holding their fire.

And Gallego, who has already spent $7.9 million in advertising, ended March with $9.6 million in cash on hand. Lake has spent just $170,000 in advertising to date, with $2.5 million on hand.

But amid all the GOP doomsayers, one Senate Republican voiced a refreshingly contrarian view of Lake’s apparent collapse.

Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, the Senate GOP’s third in command, argued that Lake’s dire cash flow problem was just par for the course among Republicans. Barrasso said he is “expecting that just about every Republican candidate is going to be outspent.”

Barrasso, who reportedly speaks with Lake often, argued that Republicans couldn’t afford to turn their backs on Arizona.

“To me, Arizona is a top-tier state. Because it’s an open Senate seat,” he told Politico.

Barrasso’s first assertion is correct: Democratic candidates and incumbents are already crushing Republicans in fundraising.

But precisely because that’s true, Senate Republicans may have no choice but to abandon a potential nominee who is already flailing. The competition to suck up Senate GOP resources is already on and the budget will likely only get tighter. That’s at least partially why McConnell is presently training his sights on flipping fewer than a handful of seats: Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. That could change but, for now, Senate Republicans don’t have much room to maneuver.

And Lake certainly can’t count on help from Donald Trump, who is beginning to see her as more of roadblock to his election than a help. Trump’s Arizona operation is damn near nonexistent, according to fresh reporting from The Washington Post.

“There is no sign of life,” Kim Owens, an Arizona Republican operative, told the Post. “Especially in a state that Trump lost so closely last time, you’d expect to have more of a presence. I would think, ‘Let’s step it up.’ I think it’s a terrible mistake.”