Happy Wednesday all. Got a few things for you today (post was updated to include a sixth new poll showing Biden leading):
Trump Is Weak, Not Strong. An Unprecedented Dumpster Fire, Not A Juggernaut – With Trump’s struggles raising money and another election night where the opposition to Trump inside the Republican Party continues to be significant (even long after his opponents have dropped out), it is time for the “Trump is a strong candidate” bubble of the last few months to fully burst.
Let’s review:
Trump has underperformed public polling in most of the early battleground states, signaling reluctance of voters to vote for him when making that final decision
The struggle of his campaign and the RNC to raise money in an election year is shocking, a clear sign that MAGA is unattractive even for core Republicans – cannot stress enough what a big deal this is
The GOP itself is in turmoil, laying off dozens of staff, and going through a very rough leadership transition in an election year. Dozens of leading Republican officials including State Party chairs in key battleground states have been indicted
Republicans got blown out in NY-3, a big “bellwether,” seeing a seat they won just 16 months earlier by 7.5 pts going +8 for the Dems. The loss here was a continuation of the GOP’s ongoing struggle in elections of all kinds all across the country since Dobbs
There is an unprecedented revolt against Trump inside the GOP – Pence, Romney, the Cheneys, it just goes on and on. Two former GOP Vice Presidents, a former Party nominee, the former chair of the RNC, dozens of senior government officials who worked for Trump…..we’ve never seen anything like what is happening inside the GOP now. These leaders are creating a powerful permission structure for other Rs and R-leaning independents to walk away from Trump, as they did in the battleground states in 2022. Last night the Biden campaign announced that six major fundraisers for Nikki Haley’s campaign had started raising money for Biden-Harris. The party is splintering, bigly
Peter Navarro, a senior advisor to Trump, went to jail yesterday. His CFO went to jail last year, and is returning soon for committing more crimes. Most of his core 2020 campaign team were convicted or pled guilty of crimes. The man who was fueling the Impeachment inquiry was just arrested, and appears to have been working with both Russian intelligence and Trump. Everywhere you look there are crimes, crimes and more crimes…
House Republicans are retiring in droves, leaping from the burning MAGA ship. Large scale retirements are a vote of no-confidence in the party itself, and the ones who are leaving are considered “serious” Republicans
Trump keeps losing in court, badly, and he and Rudy now owe $700m, which is almost the size of all the hard money spent by the Trump campaign in 2020. It is serious money, and we all understand the President may go bankrupt or start losing properties and assets as early as Monday – it will be devastating for his image as a successful business if this begins happening. Dumpster fire
Trump’s performance on the stump has been scary, a daily “bloodbath,” providing Democrats with an unending amount of material to use in the election to push him further and further away from voters
Due to the success of the Biden Presidency, the major GOP attacks on Biden – economy, inflation, crime, border, war on energy, deficit, Biden crime family, age – are all evaporating, making this election increasingly a referendum on Trump, not Biden. That is really bad news for Republicans…
As I said in in my discussion with Lawrence O’Donnell last night, Trump 2024 is ugliest political thing any of us have ever seen: