Super Tuesday is over
“Presidential primary season is effectively over,” writes Jim Newell at Slate, rather anticlimactically. California’s Rep. Adam Schiff is on his way to being Senator Schiff. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema announced she would not seek reelection in Arizona, clearing the way for Rep. Ruben Gallego to become Senator Gallego. And Joe Biden and Donald “91 Counts” Trump will battle again for the presidency. Didn’t see that coming, didja?
Here in North Carolina, Attorney General Josh Stein will battle Lt. Gov. Mark “Choking on my own blood” Robinson for governor. Guess which is the Republican?
The problem going forward to November, as Digby observed of Josh Marshall’s take on the polling, is that “half the country doesn’t have a clue what actually going on, in some cases because they’ve been brainwashed and in others they’ve stopped paying attention order to preserve their mental health.” Ours here remains tenuous.
Greg Sargent on Tuesday:
Large swaths of voters appear to have little awareness of some of Trump’s clearest statements of hostility to democracy and intent to impose authoritarian rule in a second term, from his vow to be “dictator for one day” to his vague threat to enact “termination” of provisions in the Constitution.
That’s maddening for obvious reasons. But it also presents the Biden campaign with an opportunity. If voters are unaware of all these statements, there’s plenty of time to make voters aware of them—and the polling also finds that these statements, when aired to respondents, shift them against Trump.
Carpet-bomb the MFer.
It’s the same with Robinson in North Carolina, I suspect. Just as you, Dear Reader, know how crazy Trump is and that his mind is going because you come here each day and consume mass quantities of cable news, Joe and Jane Average do not. They are not as much siloed as busy with jobs and kids and their soccer practices, etc. They are likely unaware of just how crazy men like Trump and Robinson are. Or they’ve stuffed their ears and la-la-la to block it out. It’s the campaigns’ job to make sure voters know.
Carpet-bomb the lunatic GOPers until people get it.
Sargent comments on a poll that sheds light on the problem and the solution:
The survey—which was conducted by veteran Democratic pollster Geoff Garin for the group Save My Country and shared with The New Republic—did something novel. It polled 400 voters in each of three swing states—Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania—and weighted them in proportion with each state’s Electoral College votes. It omitted respondents who voted for Trump in 2020 and also said Biden didn’t legitimately win.
In short, the poll was designed to survey voters who are genuinely gettable for Biden. The poll asked them about 10 of Trump’s most authoritarian statements, including: the two mentioned above, Trump’s claim that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” his vow to pardon rioters who attacked the Capitol, his promise to prosecute the Biden family without cause, his threat to inflict mass persecution on the “vermin” opposition, and a few more.
Result? “Only 31 percent of respondents said they previously had heard a lot about these statements by Trump,” the memo accompanying the poll concluded.
The good news for Biden is that when respondents were presented with these quotes, it prompted a rise in Trump’s negatives. For instance, after hearing them, the percentage who see him as “out for revenge” jumped by five points, the percentage who see him as “dangerous” rose by nine points, and the percentage who see him as a “dictator” climbed by seven points.
Joe Biden owns the bully pulpit. His job now and (hopefully) during his State of the Union Address on Thursday is to unleash Dark Brandon, to give Trump a taste of being bullied until he’s so apoplectic he won’t be able to pronounce it. (That shouldn’t be hard.) Then run the clip endlessly. There are already a wealth of Trump gag reels of him slurring his speech, spouting gibberish and clumsily trying to cover it up.
I’m hoping that Josh Stein will unleash similar hell on Robinson here in North Carolina. Like Gov. Roy Cooper (D) before him, the mild-mannered Stein does not exactly light up a room. But that worked for Cooper when pitted against Gov. Pat “Bathroom Bil” McCrory in 2016 and Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Forest in 2020. Low-key did not work for Cheri Beasley either in 2020 or in 2022. Few have heard Robinson’s pledge to “own this nation and rule this nation” for “Christian patriots” to the exclusion of anyone and everyone else. Stein needs to make sure voters hear it.
Americans want to pull for a fighter, for someone they feel will have their backs. That requires actually throwing punches.
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