Despite the “overwhelming victories” the media falsely ascribes to Trump in Iowa and New Hampshire, the real raw data tells an entirely different story. Trump, who should, according to Obama campaign manager David Plouffe, be in the position of “quasi-incumbent,” struggled to get even 50 percent of the vote from among the conservative voters who have come out in the caucus and primary election held so far. To win he needs all of them plus a significant share of the independents. He got neither.
The media, which itself has often been criminally negligent in the way it treats this election like any other “horserace,” pretends that former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley is leading some type of grassroots rebellion against the fascist Trump. That analysis too, is far off base.
Most of the voters who cast their ballots for her explained that they did so because anyone would be better than Trump. Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s insistence that Haley is “as bad as Trump” rings true since she is clearly the candidate of the corporate billionaire class.
Jamie Diamond of J.P.Morgan Chase has begged his billionaire pals to back her although now both Diamond and a growing number of his wealthy cohorts are talking about how Trump “might not be so bad” because the country survived his first presidency and he (Trump) can curb the allegedly left-wing Democrats.
This line of logic is precisely the one followed by German industrialists who eventually got on board with Hitler’s election, “Hitler will control the communists,” they said, “and later we’ll control him.” That is precisely the thing they could not do with the result being a World War that saw more than 80 million people killed.
Pundits wonder why the neo-cons and many billionaires have hoped for someone other than Trump to carry their banner. “Isn’t Trump conservative enough to make them happy,” they ask. An obvious answer is that they trust Haley will do a better job than Trump of curbing the re-awakened and energized labor movement in the U.S. That energized labor movement is seen by them as a real disaster for the billionaire class. Haley has a long and vicious anti-labor history. She tried to bust the union at Boeing for example, by offering the company bosses a red carpet entrance into South Carolina so they could leave Washington State which was, for their taste, too pro-labor.
Pollsters exposed as wrong
Once again in New Hampshire, the pollsters were exposed as wrong and very possibly part of a movement to make a Trump presidency look inevitable. Two weeks before the primary they reported that Trump was more than 40 points ahead. On Primary night he won New Hampshire by only slightly over 10 percent. Again, the voters he was unable to attract were precisely the ones he would need to win in November.
Also scaring the heck out of Trump were exit polls that said 43.4 percent of the voters declared they would not vote for him in November if he is convicted in any of the many criminal cases against him.
It was President Biden who actually had the good night. Only 10 percent of Democratic voters said they would not vote for him if he was the nominee, a far smaller amount than the 43.4 percent who said the same of Trump. And only a day after the primary Biden was endorsed by the United Auto Workers who have huge majorities of the U.S. population behind them in their quest for better wages, benefits, and respect on the job.
Still demanding a ceasefire in Gaza
The UAW endorsement did not mean that the union was letting up on its demand that Biden support a ceasefire in Gaza. In fact, leading union members say that a ceasefire would help the Biden re-election effort. Continuation of the war unabated, they say, will hurt that effort.
The poor performance by the media in polls and the underestimation of the anti-MAGA movement is actually not the worst part of their election coverage. Bordering on criminal neglect is their fostering of the idea that this is a “typical election.”
“This is not a normal election,” Democratic strategist James Carville declared last night. “The real conspiracy out there,” he said, “is a massive organized effort to normalize this election.”
What he was referring to is the effort to cover up the main story that the Republican Party is pushing to elect a criminal fascist.
“The insidious thing about this push to normalize this election is that it is the one thing that can actually enable Trump to win in November. We must make sure that voters see this election as anything but normal,” Carville said. “This is not normal. A rapist fascist is trying to get back into the White House. Stop talking about the election as normal.”
Only if you consider the most-right wing, pro-fascist 25 percent of the voters as being in the Trump base does the ex-president have strong base support. If, however, you count all the voters who consider themselves conservatives and would like to vote for a Republican as “the base,” Trump is in trouble.
Even Trump’s usual reliance on racism to boost his efforts did not go over as well as he would have liked in New Hampshire this week. He humiliated the two candidates of color who had opposed him in the primary, Vivek Ramaswamy and Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina. Scott ended up groveling before Trump saying, “I love you so much.” Much of the country was turned off by the crass racism displayed there. Trump triggered the remark from Scott by saying he (Scott) must really hate Haley since he endorsed Trump rather than her despite the fact that she had appointed him to the Senate. Scott was trying to say it was his love of Trump rather than hatred of Haley that motivated his endorsement of the ex-president.
Trump is demanding the fealty of everyone immediately, leaving nothing to the voters in the 48 states who have yet to participate in caucuses and primaries.
Fascist lawmakers like Marjorie Taylor Green are demanding immediate endorsement of Trump. Republicans are being told if they don’t endorse Trump now they might not be able to join his bandwagon later.
Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee joined this push for fealty yesterday saying it was time for everyone to get on board with Trump. The inappropriateness of a party chair demanding an end to campaigning before it even begins in 48 states displays the total lack of respect for any form of democracy in the GOP. Why did they even bother scheduling primaries? They could have just crowned Trump as king at their convention.
Democrats know Haley is really no alternative to Trump. They understand she is a corporate right-winger. They are happy, however, to see Haley attack Trump because those attacks seem to be helping Biden.
Haley, for her part, has no reason to rush a decision to drop out. Remaining in the race helps her with book deals and grabbing more seats on corporate boards. She is already a millionaire because of the deals made since she left the UN.
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