Trump is now clearly an underdog heading into the November election. Multiple national polls, including the most recent ones from CNN, CNBC, Fox News, and the New York Times, give Biden a double digit lead over the president. For those who would say that what really matters is state results, the NYT poll found that Biden has built a nine point advantage across six battleground states. There is also this to consider.
The state polling is entirely consistent with a 10 pt lead for Biden nationally… I think for many folks… Their guts don’t comprehend what a 10 pt lead really means til they see it in the state polling.
— (((Harry Enten))) (@ForecasterEnten) June 24, 2020
As Trump goes, so goes Republican hopes for maintaining a majority in the Senate.
President Trump’s erratic performance in office and his deteriorating standing in the polls is posing a grave threat to his party’s Senate majority, imperiling incumbents in crucial swing states and undermining Republican prospects in one of the few states they had hoped to gain a seat, according to a new poll of registered voters by The New York Times and Siena College.
Senate Majority Whip John Thune is perhaps the first Republican to admit what’s happening.
“Right now, obviously, Trump has a problem with the middle of the electorate, with independents, and they’re the people who are undecided in national elections,” Thune, R-S.D., told reporters in the Capitol. “I think he can win those back, but it’ll probably require not only a message that deals with substance and policy but, I think, a message that conveys, perhaps, a different tone.”..
Asked whether the latest numbers were a wake-up call for the Trump campaign, Thune said, “It’s a message that there needs to be a — certainly a change in probably strategy as far as the White House’s messaging is concerned.”
Thune said Trump could boost Republican Senate candidates if he could “perform better in terms of his own standing with the voters.” He said the president is “in a bit of a low point right now, but as we all know in politics, in a short amount of time things can change.”
I have always maintained that polls tell us what would happen if the election were to be held today, which is why I agree with Thune—a lot can change over the next four months. But the senator suggested that Trump needs to change, which frankly, sounds a bit delusional.
Anyone who has been paying attention for the last four years knows that while Trump is occasionally able to give a scripted speech, the reason he craves his campaign rallies is because the adoring fans feed his narcissistic ego when he provides them with huge helpings of red meat. The president has already demonstrated that he is unwilling to give that up—even when lives are on the line during a pandemic.
Senator Thune is one of the Republicans who enabled Trump by voting against his removal from office after this prescient warning from Representative Adam Schiff.
Let’s be very clear: Donald Trump is incapable of changing. If anything is going to alter what the polls are telling us about the outcome of the November election, it will have to come from somewhere else.
