How Could Trump Possibly Get Re-Elected?

The new Quinnipiac poll looks fairly dire for Republicans preparing for the 2020 election cycle, especially the bozo at the top of the ticket. Most Americans now consider Trump a criminal and less than a third of voters think he's honest. Here are some highlights:

• 38% of voters (34% of independents) approval of the way Trump is handling his job while 55% disapproval (57% of independents)

• 27% of voters (24% of independents) approval of the way congressional Republicans are handling their jobs while 66% disapprove.

• 30% of voters think Trump is honest. 26% of independents do. 65% of voters think Trump is not honest (including 26% of Republicans and 69% of independents). His dishonest numbers are the worst since Quinnipiac started polling that question.

• Just 39% of voters think Trump has good leadership skills, while 58% think he doesn't.

• Asked if Trump is a good role model for children, 22% of voters-- may they rot in hell-- say Trump is, including 54% of Republicans, 3% of Democrats and 17% of independents. 71% of Americans say he is NOT a good role model, including 37% of Republicans, 97% of Democrats and 75% of independents.

• Asked who they believe more, Trump or Michael Cohen, 35% of Americans say Trump (79% of Republicans, 4% of Dems and 31% of independents) and 50% say Cohen (11% of Republicans, 86% of Dems and 51% of independents).

• 64% of Americans think Trump committed crimes before he was elected and just 24% don't.

• 45% of Americans think Trump has committed crimes as president and 43% don't. Significantly, just 38% of independent voters say Trump hasn't been committing crimes while in office.

Early this morning, a poll of Florida voters was released by Bendixen & Amandi International showing that just 40% of Sunshine State voters think Trump deserves to be reelected. 53% oppose a second term for him. This is no path to reelection for Trump that doesn't include Florida. And, by the way, Florida voters identified Climate Change as the number one issue facing the country, an issue Trump still calls a "Chinese hoax."

Tim Wu is a law professor at Columbia University who ran for Lieutenant Governor New York with Zephyr Teachout a few years ago. Yesterday he wrote an OpEd for the New York Times, The Oppression Of The Supermajority which makes the important point that, on many of the big issues of the day, Americans are not nearly as divided as a "divide and conquer" establishment would have us believe. In fact, he wrote "The defining political fact of our time is not polarization. It’s the inability of even large bipartisan majorities to get what they want on issues like these. Call it the oppression of the supermajority. Ignoring what most of the country wants-- as much as demagogy and political divisiveness-- is what is making the public so angry.

• higher taxes for the ultra-wealthy- 75%
• guaranteed paid maternity leave- 67%
• strong net neutrality laws- 83%
• stronger privacy laws- 60%
• Medicare should be able to negotiate lower drug prices- 92%
• consumers should be able to import cheaper drugs from Canada- 71%

Thwarting the will of the American public is a long anti-democratic tradition that the establishment has honed into a science. Wu wrote that "During the first decades of the 20th century, the American public voted for politicians who supported economic reforms like maximum-hour work laws and bans on child labor. But the Supreme Court struck down most of Congress’s economic legislation, deeming it unconstitutional. In our era, it is primarily Congress that prevents popular laws from being passed or getting serious consideration. (Holding an occasional hearing does not count as 'doing something.') Entire categories of public policy options are effectively off-limits because of the combined influence of industry groups and donor interests. There is no principled defense of this state of affairs-- and indeed, no one attempts to offer such a justification. Instead, legislative stagnation is cynically defended by those who benefit from it with an unconvincing invocation of the rigors of our system of checks and balances." And that brings us to why it is so crucial to elect Bernie president, not Status Quo Joe or Bloomberg or any of the other corporate candidates being dubbed "moderates" by the corporate media.

The president, because he is representative of more voters, might be thought an important remedy to this problem. And when running for office, Mr. Trump did gesture at his support for popular policies, promising to control drug prices, build public infrastructure and change trade policy to favor dispossessed workers. Yet since coming to power, Mr. Trump, with a few exceptions, like trade, has seemed to lose interest in what the broader public wants, focusing instead on polarizing issues like immigration that are not the public’s main concerns but the obsessions of a loud minority faction.

As the United States begins the process of choosing the next president and Congress, we need to talk more openly about which candidates are most likely to deliver the economic policies that the supermajority wants. Yes, the people can be wrong about things, but so too can experts, embedded industry groups and divisive political factions. It is not a concession to populism, but rather a respect for democracy, to suggest that two-thirds of the population should usually get what they ask for.

The Blue America 2020 congressional thermometer above will help guarantee that if a progressive president is elected-- whether Bernie or Elizabeth Warren or anyone else with a plan to enact real change-- there will be more members of Congress ready to back them up. That's crucial. Please consider contributing what you can to any or all of the candidates.