According to recent polling by the Democracy Institute, if a presidential election were held today, 54 percent of the vote would go to Donald Trump but only 43 percent to Joe Biden. That outcome would put The Donald back into the Oval Office, by a landslide that would exceed any number that Joe might have received in 2020. (No, I don’t accept the official figures given, even if I’m not sure that Trump actually won.)
From these poll numbers, I might also conclude that Trump’s party would pulverize Joe’s in the fall elections, outside of certain areas that vote Democratic no matter what. It is also the case that Republicans are leading Democrats in generic polls. That may be further proof that Republicans are headed for an electoral blowout.
Not so fast! If one looks at individual state races, the Republicans are not exactly soaring above the clouds. In my own state of Pennsylvania, the decidedly left-leaning Democratic gubernatorial candidate Josh Shapiro has a documented lead over his Republican rival, Doug Mastriano.
Although the mass media and their local affiliates depict Mastriano as an extremist for questioning the official results of the 2020 presidential election, he is running mostly on economic issues, e.g., championing natural gas production. Mastriano is further hurt by a checkered past marked by questionable tax reports and his onetime support for the Democratic plan for drop-box voting. By contrast, Shapiro is benefiting from the effusive praise of major state newspapers and the cloying adulation of the national press. From the media hype, one would never know that as state attorney general, Shapiro busily covered up the electoral irregularities in Philadelphia so graphically shown in “2000 Mules.”
For better or worse, lots of Pennsylvanians consult conventional news sources, including our network affiliates, which rarely provide balanced reporting about political contests. This media bias may affect the electoral prospects of Republican senatorial candidate Mehmet Oz, who just won the nomination after a recount. Neither Republican would breeze through his senatorial race with Democratic candidate John Fetterman. That’s not because Fetterman, who sounds just like Bernie Sanders but has the appearance of an unkempt vagrant, is an appealing candidate. It’s because Democrats in Pennsylvania quite predictably vote for their own party. Although Republicans are now pulling almost even in registrations, Democrats vote more as a bloc.
The same trend can be seen in the Georgia races, where Herschel Walker and Brian Kemp should be doing better than their opponents, the undistinguished Raphael Warnock and the perpetual race-hustler Stacey Abrams. Both races, however, are well within the margin of error, although, as Patrick Basham of the Democracy Institute told me, Walker, who is a well-known black athlete from Georgia and an engaging candidate, would have been far ahead even a decade ago. (According to RealClearPolitics, Walker’s lead is currently at about one-half of 1 percent.) This changed situation is due to a combination of factors: a large black vote that will go against Walker (because he’s not a Democrat), college-educated white women in Georgia suburbs, and tech sector employees, many of whom are from the Third World but are now settled around Atlanta. Warnock and Abrams own these voting blocs in any matchups against Republicans.
In Nevada, Republican senatorial candidate Adam Laxalt should be trouncing the lackluster Democratic incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto, who only sporadically attends Senate sessions. Although the articulate Laxalt, who is the son of a famous Nevada senator, should be already tasting victory in a supposedly Republican-friendly year, particularly in a state that seems concerned about inflation, he is still behind in the polls. Although he may still win the race, if he does, he’ll be doing lots of heavy lifting between now and November.
The reason for the disparity between Biden’s dismal poll numbers and the Democrats’ steady support in their own state races is the presence of an ideologically driven, very anti-Republican electorate on the Left. Many of those who support the Democratic Party are indifferent to what’s rattling the other side. Or if they do notice that things are going south, they blame Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, or the now broken and bankrupt NRA.
I am expressing these thoughts without pleasure and would be delighted if I am proven wrong. Yet the Democrats don’t have to worry about internal critics who are the equivalent of the Bulwark, the Dispatch, the Lincoln Project, or Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.). Their partisans move in lockstep and always find reasons to support their candidates, no matter how crazy these politicians sound, e.g., when they tell us men get pregnant, gender-specific pronouns are Nazi, or white people (except for members of their party) are racists and terrorists. Democrats also enjoy media support, the protection of the deep state, and even the tender care of secret surveillance agencies. Why should something as trivial as Biden’s tanking popularity doom the Democrats in the fall elections?
And media-protected election fraud is always there as a last resort.