The first New York Times A+ poll of the campaign is out and it’s bad news for Trumpie:
Joseph R. Biden Jr. has taken a commanding lead over President Trump in the 2020 race, building a wide advantage among women and nonwhite voters and making deep inroads with some traditionally Republican-leaning groups that have shifted away from Mr. Trump following his ineffective response to the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new national poll of registered voters by The New York Times and Siena College.
Mr. Biden is currently ahead of Mr. Trump by 14 percentage points, garnering 50 percent of the vote compared with 36 percent for Mr. Trump. That is among the most dismal showings of Mr. Trump’s presidency, and a sign that he is the clear underdog right now in his fight for a second term.
Mr. Trump has been an unpopular president for virtually his entire time in office. He has made few efforts since his election in 2016 to broaden his support beyond the right-wing base that vaulted him into office with only 46 percent of the popular vote and a modest victory in the Electoral College.
But among a striking cross-section of voters, the distaste for Mr. Trump has deepened as his administration failed to stop a deadly disease that crippled the economy and then as he responded to a wave of racial-justice protests with angry bluster and militaristic threats. The dominant picture that emerges from the poll is of a country ready to reject a president whom a strong majority of voters regard as failing the greatest tests confronting his administration.
It’s not just the New York Times.
American approval of President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic has dropped to the lowest level on record, the latest Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll shows, as new COVID-19 cases surged and Trump was widely criticized for suggesting he wanted to slow down testing.
The poll shows that 37% of Americans approved of the way Trump has responded to the pandemic, the lowest on record since Reuters/Ipsos started asking the question at the beginning of March. Fifty-eight percent said they disapproved.
He does have his fans, though. Unfortunately for Trump, it doesn’t appear that there are quite enough of theme to win re-election. (And frankly, the way he’s encouraging them to kill themselves, there are likely to be even fewer by election day.)
Vaughn Hillyard was in Phoenix on Tuesday to cover the crowds that lined up for Trump’s event later in the day. Arizona has seen a particularly acute spike in Covid-19 cases this week, and Trump’s event there comes days after his under-attended rally in Tulsa that reportedly enraged him.
As Hillyard reported on the health hazards at the Arizona event, he was heckled by a number of Trump supporters, and he eventually moved to ask them questions about why they aren’t wearing masks.
“It’s not about the mask,” one supporter told him. “It’s about the hypocrisy that it’s okay for tens of thousands of people to go and riot, to go and protest, but you cannot have a group of a group of a thousand people… I don’t know how many people are here, this is not okay?”
…
After some more dialogue, a heckler was heard saying, “You talkin’ about that Covid-1984 bullsh*t?” That prompted Hillyard to throw the broadcast back to Craig Melvin.
Dying and killing others to make the point that your political enemies are hypocritical may be just a teensy bit self-defeating. But this is a Death Cult and these people are willing to die to support Donald Trump. It makes you wonder what else they’re willing to do for him.