A candidate with as many legal problems as Donald Trump would have been sunk under ordinary circumstances. Donald Trump is not an ordinary candidate.
He has convinced millions that only he can defend America from a corrupt federal bureaucracy and a corrupt political establishment.
They see the indictments and lawsuits against Trump as evidence of a corrupt political establishment taking out its vengeance on its favorite whipping boy.
Donald Trump In Focus
“The best news for Trump in the Bright Line Watch survey was that on each specific issue around which he’s facing a criminal investigation, fewer than half of independents believed he has committed a crime. In a less specific question, an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll released Sunday found that only about half of independents agreed that he had ‘done something illegal’ in any of the conduct that prosecutors are investigating,” CNN analyst Ronald Brownstein writes.
Trump also is up against President Joe Biden, a candidate who is viewed as being corrupt and out of touch. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll found that 45 percent of Democratic primary voters want Biden and 50 percent of Democrats want someone other than Biden. Thirty-nine percent said they are averse to Biden’s advanced age.
The Real Clear Politics Average shows Robert F. Kennedy Jr. with 13 percent and Marianne Williamson with 6 percent. This means 19 percent of the Democratic Party electorate is openly supporting someone other than the incumbent.
History shows that no incumbent president who faced a strong primary challenge has won re-election since Harry Truman bowed out in 1952.
Could Democrats Face ‘Tailwind’ in 2024 Election?
“Trump is facing a swarm of criminal accusations unprecedented for an active presidential candidate, much less a former president. But during this ordeal, his lead in the 2024 GOP presidential primary has solidified. And while polls have highlighted some clear warning signs for him as a general election nominee, mostly they point to another closely fought contest, with President Joe Biden usually holding a small overall lead and a tiny handful of precariously balanced swing states likely to decide the outcome,” Brownstein writes. “Several big dynamics are converging, including a slowdown in inflation and acceleration of Trump’s legal troubles, that could provide Democrats a tailwind next year, particularly in the presidential race.”
Brownstein continues: “But all of these forces face the immovable object of the entrenched demographic and geographic divisions that have produced one of the longest periods in American history in which neither party has been able to establish a durable or decisive advantage over the other.”
Should Hunter Biden face criminal charges during an election-year trial and Joe Biden find himself facing impeachment it could depress his voter turnout and temper voter enthusiasm. At the same time, partisanship has reached a fever peak to the point that fewer voters are willing to cross over to vote for the other party’s candidate.
“The two political parties are farther apart on average than they have been in our lifetime,” Lynn Vavreck, a UCLA political scientist and co-author of books on the 2016 and 2020 elections, told CNN. “That makes it harder for people to think about crossing over to the other side.”
Democrat Advantage Due to Larger Coalition
Democrats have won the popular vote in seven of the last eight elections. Brownstein attributes this to the Democrats having a larger electoral coalition concentrated in urban and suburban areas where the bulk of America’s population lives.
Democrats are confident they can beat the 81 million vote tally that Biden won in 2024 by widening their coalition.
“Many Republican strategists privately agree that the combined effect of the January 6 insurrection and the court’s abortion decision will make it difficult for Trump to expand his support from 2020 if the GOP nominates him again. But they note that the fact that Trump has stayed so close to Biden in the polls, despite all his difficulties, shows how reluctant voters are to reelect the sitting president to a second term,” Brownstein writes.
John Rossomando is a defense and counterterrorism analyst and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting.
