L-O-S-E-R
Donald Trump has hawked “digital trading cards” of himself, Trump gold shoes, and Trump Bibles, a pundit pointed out on Friday. And Trump this and Trump that and Trump vodka he doesn’t drink. Trump is even peddling the hem of his garments like some oleaginous televangelist selling prayer cloths with magical healing powers and weekly “prosperity plans.” The man who once boasted he was so rich he couldn’t be bought advertises every single day that he’s for sale.
Perhaps Trump fatigue finally is setting in. He can still sucker the press into covering his daily outrages. He can still draw eyeballs and clicks. MAGA politicians who rode in on his coattails still genuflect before his image. But can he win a presidential election?
Politico considers that Trump is losing more than the suburbs:
The analysis of GOP presidential primary results from more than 1,000 counties shows warning signs for Trump, especially as Republican voters continued to vote against him in closed primaries after he clinched the nomination. And it makes clear that, while independents and crossover voters may have boosted former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley in some primaries, a chunk of true Republican voters still wished for someone else to be the party’s nominee.
“You hear a lot of moderate Republicans now who say that they’ll never vote for Trump again,” said Parker Fairbairn, county GOP chair in Emmet County, Michigan, on the northern end of the state’s Lower Peninsula, where Trump won 55 percent of the vote in the 2020 general election. In last month’s primary, he got two-thirds of the vote there.
What distinguishes Emmet County and similar geographies from the other suburban ones is their broader politics. These aren’t the kinds of suburbs on the outskirts of major cities, where wealthy, educated professionals have already fled the Republican Party.
They’re farther away from urban areas. They’re less densely populated, and they have fewer voters with college degrees. These places — which include North Carolina’s Republican-leaning exurbs, and conservative but less Trump-inclined counties several hours north of Michigan’s major cities — still vote predominantly for Republicans, both at the presidential and local levels. In 2016, when both parties held contested primaries, the Republican voters in these counties backed candidates like Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) over Trump, and in the general election they voted for Trump at lower rates than the deep-red rural areas.
I’ll take that, especially here in North Carolina. Even small shifts matter, Politico observes. A reporter at Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vice-president announcement this week found more Republicans than disgruntled Democrats supporting the anti-vaxxer candidate. For anybody-but-Trump Republicans, RFK Jr. looks like anybody, and not a Democrat. Others may stay home or simply leave the race at the top of their ballots blank.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden is pitching for Nikki Haley’s voters:
If Democrats can buck historical trends, such voters could play a particularly outsize role in deciding swing states: Candidates other than Trump got at least one quarter of the Republican primary vote across more than 60 counties across North Carolina, Michigan and New Hampshire.
And in Georgia, Arizona and Florida Trump lost primary voters.
Shout out to my friend Sam Edney, Democratic chair in Transylvania County southwest of here.
He tells Politico, “We will pick up a few of these Republicans, I believe that,” adding, “I also hope a substantial number simply don’t vote in the Trump and Mark Robinson races, that will help Democrats as well.”
Especially if we remind voters over and over what freedoms Trump means to take from them next if elected. Project 2025 won’t stop with abortion.
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