Politics is exhausting in the US. Election cycles are non-stop and and then there is Trump… The media are obsessed with him and it is almost as if the more an outlet is hostile to him, the more obsessed it gets. There is wall to wall coverage of Trump on CNN for example, particularly as he is currently starring in a New York courtroom production, and politics here has become a permanent psychodrama. But one senses that voters are tired of it all. Except for hard-core MAGA supporters who have captured the Republican Party, there is a hidden consensus one suspects, that whatever the dissatisfaction with Biden, Trump is unfit to be President.
Earlier in the week a New York Times poll showed Trump ahead of Biden in 5 out of 6 swing states. It got much coverage. But what got less coverage was that if Trump gets convicted, those numbers look very different.
And then there were State election results this week which were a huge victory for the Democrats predominantly driven by a desire to protect abortion rights. The Democrat governor was re-elected in Kentucky, Democrats took control of the General Assembly in Virginia which will block any reform to State abortion laws and, in Ohio, voters passed a constitutional amendment guaranteeing abortion access. If the Republicans can’t win now, when can they?
Finally, to add insult to injury, ex-Trump, five largely irrelevant candidates, all in their own way, defined by Trump, debated why they should be the Republican presidential nominee. Oh dear. Except perhaps for Nikki Haley, the quality was dire. Trump has drained the Republicans of any talent.
The quality of Republican candidates plummeting under the malign influence of Trump…
Amidst all this noise, it is worth taking a reality check. Whatever voters’ views about Biden and his age, Trump is simply too toxic to be a winner. He is facing multiple legal cases and even if he became President, he can’t pardon himself from a State conviction. Incredibly a Presidency run from jail is a bizarre possibility.
It may be a rash prediction, but one feels Trump won’t even make it to being the Republican nominee (watch Nikki Haley), but if he does he will be defeated by Biden. Why America has to choose from two candidates with a combined age of 160 is a topic for another blog but sanity will prevail if that is the final choice.
After that, what the media fills their air time with in a post-Trump world is anyone’s guess.
Inside Right Politics 