Thought For the Day
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
I think there are some weird things on that list, but not all of them. Including them hurts the overall list. For example, the things about the primaries. No one ran against Trump, so his primary stats are great. But there’s definitely been some Republican dissatisfaction with his presidency.
Biden lost Florida, yes. But aside from Obama barely winning it twice, Florida is basically a Republican presidential stronghold. We should probably stop calling it a swing state.
The number of counties won means nothing more than which candidate was Republican.
The mere fact that 17% of the counties in the country can control who is president should give people serious pause. It’s nearly as bad as allowing 5 or 6 cities to do the same.
I think the Electoral College is a reasonable balance between priorities. I don’t see how Throckmorton County TX and Dallas County TX should have the same impact, but then again, that’s mostly up to the states.
But there’s definitely been some Republican dissatisfaction with his presidency.
Nope. Trump’s observed approval rating among Republicans was the equal of Bush the Younger’s in 2004, Reagan’s in 1984, and Nixon’s in 1972. It was notably higher than Bush the Elder’s in 1992 and Ford’s in 1976.
The NeverTrump phenomenon was confined to people on the payroll: opinion journalists, politicians, consultant-grifters. It’s been manufactured for several years by liberal patronage, institutional (PBS, the Sulzbergers, Bezos) and personal (Pierre Omidyar). Take away the leftoid money spigot, what you have left are some people supported by donation and endowment income stewed through the offices of National Review, Commentary, AEI, and the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Salem Media also continues to employ a few of these characters. It’s been manifest for some time that the institutional purpose of Commentary is to provide employment for John Podhoretz (courtesy the Jewish septuagenarians who keep it afloat). National Review‘s stance has been omnidirectional as their editor tries to placate his employees and remaining readers in order to avoid running out of the latter a la The Weekly Standard. Mona Charen is the least consequential person EPPC employs as she has no policy chops; she’s there to produce PR, which she doesn’t do anymore. It is interesting that the Republican commentariat had so little rapport with or sympathy for Republican voters.
For example, the things about the primaries. No one ran against Trump, so his primary stats are great.
That’s actually what makes the primary stat so impressive.
Nobody ran against him, and he got record turn-out in the Primary anyways.
Pinky, that’s exactly why it’s extraordinary. If Trump is unopposed, then his vote total should be lower – because why bother to vote for him since he wins by default? Especially if he’s unpopular, then why would people bother with a meaningless formality? (Why not write in someone as a protest vote if you’re going through that much trouble?)
The fact that so many folks came out and put in the extra effort to vote for a guy that was going to win that contest anyway is a sign of his enthusiasm and popularity.
For comparison. Obama in 2008? 17,535,458
Obama in 2012? 7,376,659
(sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Democratic_Party_presidential_candidates)
By comparison?
Trump 2016 = 14,015,993
Trump 2020 = 18,159,752
Go on and look through wikipedia’s records. Bush? Primary vote went down in his reelection year. Clinton? Same. Even Reagan did, and did you see his reelection map in 84?
Pinky,
It’s not that Biden didn’t get the majority of the counties. It’s that he got an astonishingly small portion of them, even compared to other democrats like Obama and Hillary, while simultaneously getting a huge boost in the popular vote. That only makes sense organically if we had a far larger population shift into a few counties than we have actually seen.
But on top of that, Biden also largely underperformed Hillary in the urban areas we would expect to see him dominate in a scenario where he has highly concentrated geographic support. That is, largely except for the swing states he needed to win.
The “Trump’s primary votes were high merely because he was unopposed” doesn’t make sense for two reasons. Most obviously, if he was so unpopular, why wasn’t he opposed? But beyond that, if the voter base is unenthusiastic they will just stay home rather than vote in an unopposed primary. To believe that dissatisfaction among Republicans was wide spread we have to believe that those that disliked Trump somehow still felt obligated to go to the primaries and vote for him.
Most obviously, if he was so unpopular, why wasn’t he opposed?
I’ll second that observation. There have been five occasions over the last century when an incumbent president not retiring faced significant opposition to his re-nomination. Truman in 1952 and Johnson in 1968 could see it would be a slog they didn’t want at their advanced age and elected to change course and retire. Roosevelt in 1940 received a modest demurral to his plans for a 3d term – about 11% of the delegates at the Democratic convention voted for other candidates. Pat Buchanan won about 1/4 of the primary and caucus ballots cast in 1992. Ronald Reagan nearly took the nomination away from Gerald Ford in 1976 and took over 45% of the ballots cast. Note, contemporary survey research (more reliable than today’s survey research) indicated that about 1/4 of the Republican respondents at the time were unwilling to tell the surveyor they approved of the President’s performance. In re Trump, Bush II, Reagan, and Nixon, the analogous figure was < 10%.
96% of Republicans supported Trump. A whole lot and vast majority hated the Establishment. Whenever the Establishment stares into the citizens, the abyss stares back