This morning Bloomberg is reporting a nightmare scenario for the GOP’s prospects in the midterm elections. According to the business news service:
“A private survey conducted for the Republican National Committee and obtained by Bloomberg Businessweek contains alarming news for Republicans hoping to hold on to control of Congress in November: Most Trump supporters don’t believe there’s a threat that Democrats will win back the House. President Trump’s boasts that a “red wave” could increase Republican majorities appear to have lulled GOP voters into complacency, raising the question of whether they’ll turn up at the polls.”
For the past several months, President Donald Trump has been hyping a supposed Red Wave that’s coming that will sweep all elected Democrats out of office — and it seems the president’s supporters are buying it.
In August the editors of The Wall Street Journal expressed a grave fear they had that Trump’s “red wave” talk was the last thing the Republican Party needed during a tough election year.
“Republicans on present trend are poised in November to lose their majority in the House of Representatives and a slew of governorships,” the editors wrote.
“That’s the clear message from special election results and from a growing body of evidence. The President’s persona is trumping positive policy results among voters, and without some intervening news or a change in strategy the result is likely to be a national left turn.”
The Bloomberg report goes on to discuss the danger facing the GOP:
“According to the RNC study, completed on Sept. 2 by the polling firm Public Opinion Strategies, most voters believe Democrats will win back the House — just not Republican voters. Fully half of self-identified Republicans don’t believe Democrats are likely to win back the House. And within that group, 57 percent of people who describe themselves as strong Trump supporters don’t believe Democrats have a chance.”
What has happened here is that Donald Trump has succeeded in convincing people who still support him that they should believe what HE says instead of real news sources. He has told his supporters that everything but his own public statements and Twitter feed is “fake news.”
This means these people — who now comprise a large percentage of the GOP electorate — are not worried about November because Trump has told them not to worry. Like Mitt Romney in 2012, they feel they are assured of victory. When people are so complacent, they feel that they don’t need to work for candidates, donate money — or even go to the polls.
Of course people at the Republican National Committee are smarter than that. They’ve read and analyzed the dozens of polls which show massive leads for Democrats in the congressional generic ballot. They know that Trump’s low approval ratings mean big losses for their party in November, even though Trump’s Twitter feed has reported that his approval ratings are among the highest in history.
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