You may have missed this yesterday, but according to a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, Donald Trump is the choice of just 1% of Republicans. An NBC poll analysis tells us this:
The Donald: Is just a bit outside the top 10 at 1% support, meaning he would be left off the debate stage in August. Worth noting that he announced the day after Bush and apparently did not get a bump from that interesting speech he delivered at Trump tower.It's unusual for a candidate to get no bump whatsoever from a candidacy announcement. By contrast, Jeb Bush, who finished first in the poll, seems to have been helped by his announcement:
Jeb Bush is the first choice of 22% of likely GOP voters....The widespread reaction to Trump's announcement was laughter. If it had been exasperation -- if he'd angered liberals and Democrats in particular, and if, after his announcement, we and the non-conservative media were talking about how dangerous his demagoguery was -- I think he'd have gotten a bump. He didn't have to be serious or credible -- he just had to be approximately as infuriating as he was, say, when he was first talking about the president's birth certificate, before the long-form certificate was released.
The caveat: The poll was conducted June 14-18 in the midst of the Bush announcement tour, which may have given him a bump.
Maybe he should have delivered the relatively tight, ten-minute prepared speech he released in document form before his announcement, rather than that incoherent hour-long rant. A tight speech that attacked the president as weak and included nativist denunciations of foreigners? That might have helped him.
GOP voters choose candidates primarily based on one criterion: Can you make our political enemies howl? Jeb is doing reasonably well because some Republican voters think he can win a general election against Hillary Clinton. Scott Walker has been doing quite well because he's beaten Democrats repeatedly.
We laugh at Trump. We laugh at Sarah Palin now as well, so she no longer does well in Republican polls -- but when she seemed to have the potential to hurt and enrage us, Republicans thought she could be a great president.
Nobody fears you, Donald. We know you're a clown, but after that announcement, nobody thinks you're a dangerous clown. You blew it.
That speech was a great example of belligerent and egotistical performance art.
ReplyDeleteAs political theatre, it would be shut down by the critics after the first night.
Having said that, let's hope this doesn't turn into "The Producers!"
Donald is only dangerous to the extent that his presence in politics further degrades the credibility of the U.S. in the eyes of other countries.
ReplyDeleteWhich seems like something we don't need much help with.
Trump is a symptom of the dumbing down of American politics but you have to give him points for entertainment.
ReplyDeleteI just heard a poll saying that 74 percent of REPUBLICANS say the could never support Trump for president. He's a joke to his own party .
ReplyDeleteIs possible the Trump campaign will end up reporting Comedy Central as its single biggest source of funding?
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