After several bad weeks for the Republican front- runner, E.J. Dionne, Jr., thinks he's finally seeing a loser in neo- fascist birdbrain Donald "Rump" Trump:
It’s time to go back to where we began: not only that Donald Trump will lose the Republican presidential nomination, but also that he could be so weakened by the end of the primaries that his party will not even have to worry about choosing someone else.At the same time, fellow
... Earlier this year, University of California at Irvine political scientist Michael Tesler, citing data from Rand Corp.’s Presidential Election Panel Survey, found that “Trump performs best among Americans who express more resentment toward African Americans and immigrants and who tend to evaluate whites more favorably than minority groups.”
In short, no other candidate on the Republican/ New Confederate/ Stupid/ Shooter's Party side pushes the racial animus buttons of this demographic more than Rump. (He's the wind beneath their white robes stoking their burning crosses.) As much as we admire Dionne, we think this hardcore segment of racially aggrieved Stormtrumpers, far from slinking off into the shadows, is going to rally to him in the critical primaries later in the month.Trump’s supporters overall tend to be older, disproportionately male, less likely to have a college degree and more likely to be suffering economically. But race is an ever-present factor among Trump supporters. Trump support, it has been shown, is high in areas where the number of racist search queries on Google is also high. The Post’s Jeff Guo has documented that Trump, in GOP primaries, performs best in areas where the middle-aged white death rate is highest — that he effectively channels “white suffering into political support.”
For example, in one of the states Dionne cites, Rump is currently up by 16 -18 percent over "Tailgunner Ted" Cruz in Pennsylvania. Looking at the metrics Milbank cites above, a large swath of Pennsylvania from the Philadelphia suburbs to Pittsburgh is likely Rump Country (some refer to it as "Pennsyltucky"): suffering economically, rural, white. A stat noted in the Bezos Bugle's "The Monday Fix" (no link) today shows that 120,000 Pennsylvanians "mostly Democrats and independents... have switched their registration to Republican since January." Those are, we strongly believe, the elusive "Reagan Democrats" who rarely, if ever, support Democrats but have not changed their registration until now, because they have a chance to vote in the Republican primary for their racial paladin, Donald "Rump" Trump. Likewise, in another state Dionne mentions, Rump is polling over 30 points ahead of his nearest rival in New York, which also has a sizeable rural, white demographic, not to mention some fairly polarized racial communities downstate. Doesn't look like political demise to us.
The reality, we think, is that because Rump provides a unique opportunity for so many of these racially aggrieved voters to strike a blow against [fill in the minority], his core support is not going to be fazed by a week or two of stumbles, however damaging they are to the larger electorate.
