Dark Brandon Passes Trump In Critical Swing States
Trump had ONE thing going for him: The polls. Once he loses that, the press is going to panic (and so is Trump).
The Opinionated Ogre exists because of you. Please support the work you love with a paid subscription and I will continue to inform/amuse/outrage you for years to come.
It’s been a bit of a mixed week for ol’ Dumpsterfire Donnie. Sure, a judge reduced the bond Trump has to pay to pursue an appeal from $464 million to “only” $175 million. But will he be able to raise that kind of cash? We’ll find out in a week or so because that’s when it’s due. Just to be clear, the reduction is to the bond Trump needs to pay to pursue an appeal. The $464 million fine still stands. If (when) Trump loses again, he’ll have to pay the entire amount.
And now he’ll be able to! Trump will finally be a billionaire for real! Maybe! With Truth Social going public, Trump stands to make at least $3 billion in the most obvious pump-and-dump scheme imaginable. The site barely has any users, is losing tens of millions of dollars a year, is not growing in any appreciable way, and is somehow “worth” $9 billion. Nothing suspicious there. Looking forward to the massive SEC investigation in a year or two.
But while all this is good(ish) news for Trump, he still has to win the election if he wants to stay out of jail. And that? That’s not looking so good.
Joe Biden had some good news on Tuesday as polling showed him gaining on Donald Trump in six battleground states, seven months before the presidential election. In response, one leading Democratic strategist said the “Biden bump is real”.
According to Bloomberg News and Morning Consult, Biden now leads Trump by a point in Wisconsin, having trailed by four last month, and is tied in Pennsylvania, where Trump had a six-point lead last month. The two candidates were also tied in Michigan.
Just to be clear: If Biden wins Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, that’s the ballgame. If Biden wins two of these states, Trump still has to win most of the remaining swing states to stay out of jail. Biden has a lot of paths to 270. Trump only has a few. And they all lead through Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan.
Now would be a good time to note that none of these states are controlled by Republicans. There will be no mass closing of polling locations in Black communities. There will be no “accidental” shortages of ballots or machines in Democratic strongholds. Hundreds of thousands of voters will not be purged 3 weeks before the election. No election tampering to be had here, thank you very much.
So what is happening and why? Why is Biden surging (hey, 2-3 points in a few weeks is a surge these days) in the polls? Was it the State of the Union? Ehhhh…probably not in and of itself. It was a hell of a speech but SOTUs have not historically moved the needle.
What the SOTU address did do, though, was plunge a stake into the heart of the “Biden is soooo oooollllld!” narrative. This is the lazy narrative the press has been relying on almost exclusively to attack the president. I said this round would have a very short shelf life and, well, when was the last time you heard the press make it the centerpiece of their case against Biden?1
At the same time, both Biden and Trump secured the delegates needed to become the candidate. This is almost certainly causing what the Biden campaign has been calling a “Oh shit!” moment. No more “Oh, that can’t possibly happen! Trump can’t really be the candidate again!”
All those months the press lamented that Americans were turned off by the idea of a Biden-Trump rematch, they weren’t being honest. What people were really sick of was Trump and a third Trump campaign was too awful to contemplate.
Is Biden unpopular? Sure. Can anyone, even the most deranged Republican, really claim that Biden’s speeches are filled with divisive rage and ugliness? Well, OK, MAGAland can and will. But out here in the real world? Biden is a normal president running a normal campaign. It’s hard to say Americans are “sick” of Biden when he goes on the road and asks people to vote for him so he can rebuild roads and bridges.
Trump, on the other hand, spews hate and lies and violence with every breath. That is what people are tired of. And now that it’s an unavoidable reality he will be on the ballot? “Oh, shit.”
So, who ya gonna call to stop him? Joe Biden, of course. Thus, the Biden Bump in the polls.
Now, we are still seven months out from the election so the polls are still mostly trash. A lot can still change. Biden can fall and break his hip. Is he still sharp enough to do the job? Clearly. But he is 81 years old. Shit happens to 81-year-old people, president or not.
On the flip side, Trump is 77 and has spent decades gobbling fast food and snorting Adderall. With the amount of stress he’s under, he could stroke out at any second. Damn shame that would be. Then there are all of his financial and legal woes. And his rapidly declining mental state. And the escalating extremism. And and and.
There are a lot more things pushing people towards Joe Biden than away. Is this the beginning of that shift in the polling? Maybe. Maybe not. I will tell you this for certain, though: When the polling starts to consistently show Biden winning, the press will turn on a dime. After a year of nonstop headlines screaming about Trump leading in the polls, the press will suddenly discover that polls actually aren’t that important, after all. Why, are they even accurate?! And besides, Trump’s rallies are so much bigger than Biden’s! Is there a hidden critical mass of Trump voters we don’t know about?!
I promise you, this is coming. Trump losing is bad for business in both the short and long term. The press has been putting its thumb on the scale for him since it became clear Ron DeSantis didn’t have what it takes to replace Trump as King of the MAGAs.
I’m not going to say ignore the press. Rather, pay close attention to how they treat the polls going forward. If (when) the Biden Bump becomes the norm, watch how the narrative around polls changes. Pay attention to how the closer we get to the election, the less the press will focus on polls when Biden is in the lead. It’s important that we understand how the news is manipulated by bad actors to help Republicans. If you don’t know it’s happening, you are more likely to fall for it.
Trump has no money, no platform other than rage, and no way to grow his coalition. He only has this one thing going for him, the polls. Once those are gone, his entire house of cards is going to collapse no matter how hard the press tries to stop it. Our job is to make the loss as painful as possible and hold the press accountable when it’s all over.
There are 222 days until the 2024 election. Vote blue like your life depends on it.
I maintain that the press will come back to this attack sometime in the summer to undermine Biden at the Democratic convention and to give them time to put it to bed again so they can pull it out one last time in the middle of October.
every day, i wish that the mango mussolini chokes on a "hamberder".
Let's hope it stays that way.