The GOP’s phony Red Wave 2024
Donald Trump’s ever-tenuous grip on realty is spiraling downward like the price of shares in his media company. The Dow Jones briefly halted trading in Trump Media Tuesday when the bottom dropped out. The decline in Trump’s mental state has become too obvious for the press to ignore. At issue in these next few weeks is whether voters who’ve bought into Trumpism will dump it too. Or will they be duped again into buying the BS the Trump campaign is selling?
There are signs they may not. Anecdotal, perhaps, but signs.
But first, as predictable as the fall leaves, Democrats are engaging in their traditional pre-election panic attack. Polls are nail-bitingly close. What if Trump and his Nazi-adjacent supporters regain the White House? What country is safe to flee to? What do I do with all my my stuff?
“Republicans are going to extraordinary lengths right now – red wave polls, releasing ‘nternals,’ Polymarket voodoo – to try to make it look like Trump is winning the election when he isn’t,” Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg cautions. “Democrats should not be helping them.”
Those close polls are another red mirage. The horse-race press naturally laps them up like mother’s milk. Yet, Democratic strategist Rosenberg warned a month ago that Republicans would flood the zone with fake polls just ahead of voting to deceive the public into believing that Trump was doing better than he really is.
And it’s happened, Rosenberg explained in a Tweet thread:
“Of last 15 general election polls released in PA, 12 have right/GOP affiliations. Their campaign to game the polling averages and make it appear like Trump is winning — when he isn’t — escalated in last few days.
“I urge journalists and researchers to dive into FiveThirtyEight and see how the red wave pollsters have flooded the zone again. MT, PA, NC were initial targets but now it’s all 7 battleground states.
“This 2024 red wave op is much larger and involves many more actors and polls than the red wave campaign in 2022. It also involves new players — Polymarket, Elon — and feels far more desperate, frenetic, unhinged. Trumpian.”
Republicans did it in 2022. They’re doing it again, says Rosenberg, as part of “red wave 2024.”
In fact, Trump is losing bigly among white women. His margin with them is six points lower than in 2020, CNN’s Harry Enten explains. (Could it be … I don’t know. ABORTION?!)
“In fact, he is doing the worst if this holds for a GOP candidate, this century among White women.”
“So when we are talking about five, six-point shifts, seven-point shifts in Kamala Harris’ direction, we are talking about that among a major part of the electorate and that can actually move the overall electorate more than ginormous shifts among a considerably smaller part of the electorate,” Enten said, meaning supposed Trump gains among Black men.
So, let’s get to one of those anecdotes. CNN visited Brantley County, Georgia, where 90% of voters vote Republican. They found plenty of Trump supporters, strong ones. But also some dissenters. Old white ones at that.
“I ain’t gonna vote for no criminal,” said Corbet Wilson, a Republican-voting independent, citing the Jan. 6 insurrection.
“The last time you saw him talking did you watch his lips?” asks Donald Lewis. “Were they moving? He’s lying.” He won’t be voting for Trump this time. (He doesn’t say he did before.)
“I feel about it like he’s anti-American. He’s trying to overthrow our government.” His choices are to vote for Harris or not vote.
“She’s the only choice other than Trump,” Wilson chimes in.
It won’t take a lot of dissenters like them to sink Trump. Okay, maybe not in Georgia.