Thursday, 19 September 2024

ROD THOMSON: Trump defied all post-conviction expectations, and it's glorious


Defying every conceivable political norm and conventional wisdom, “convicted felon” Donald Trump appears to have stayed steady and even picked up support from the American people following the New York City witch hunt. This was most definitely not the planned outcome for the lawfare-driven Democratic Party and their giddy media cheerleaders.

Besides just the delicious meltdowns on all the lefty cable “news” outlets, what these results show is that Americans still have eyes to see what is going on. There has been some doubt on that point since the mass obedience during Covid shutdowns, masking, distancing and vax mandates.

But let optimism prevail for a moment. What the growing mass of polls after the show-trial in New York reveal, is that Americans are becoming aware that there is a two-tiered justice system, and it is so powerfully corrupt that it can and will go after a former President of the United States, who is also the leading candidate to be elected again.

It may not be a wave. But it could yet become one. Let’s look at the numbers.

In the weeks following the conviction, the RealClear Polling average in a general election matchup between Trump and President Joe Biden, Trump is ahead by 0.8 percentage points. Six out of nine polls in the average have Trump ahead. Two have Biden ahead. One has them tied. So, very tight. But no significant changes based on the “convicted felon” label at this point.

It’s important to note that it is difficult to find even one poll where Biden is leading with likely voters. His only leads are in registered voters, which is a less accurate reflection of election day. Trump leads in all of the likely voter polls. This suggests his true lead is probably a little bigger than what the average shows with all broadly registered voters.

So other than making Alvin Bragg and Judge Juan Merchan beloved among the terrible left, it seems to have accomplished nothing. And also foreshadows what may happen if they actually imprison Trump just days ahead of the Republican nominating convention in Milwaukee — which is when the compromised judge has set sentencing.

What is more surprising is what is happening in the battleground states. Let’s start with the shocker.

Virginia — not a battleground state, or so we all thought — may be in play. The two most recent polls, from Fox News and Roanoke College, have Trump and Biden tied. Biden won Virginia by nearly 10 points in 2020. It was largely uncontested. That may have just changed. This is terrible news for Democrats. While they have seemingly endless gobs of billionaire’s money to spend from Tides Foundation, Arabella Advisors and the rest of the foreign dark money entrenched in their apparatus, this means it must be spread to yet another state. And this is problematic because at this moment, Trump is ahead in every single battleground state. And several, including North Carolina, Nevada, Arizona and Georgia are looking like they may be drifting out of reach of Democrats to buy back into competition.

If that holds, that leaves the Democrats with must-wins in their blue wall of northern states: Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin and split the weird Maine and Nebraska districts. Michigan and Wisconsin are basically tied, with Trump up 0.3 and 01 percent respectively. In Pennsylvania Trump is up 2.3 percentage points. If Biden can win all three of those, plus of course Virginia, he wins re-election by 1 delegate. That is really threading the needle for a guy that can’t walk the right direction off stage.

Of course Trump benefits greatly from the general awfulness that is Joe Biden, always a corrupt, vicious dim bulb that the media ran propaganda for, but who is now a senile, corrupt, vicious, possibly incontinent dim bulb puppeteered by shadowy radicals in the White House and whatever Jill Biden is doing. America and every corner of the world is worse with Biden as president, which explains how the RealClear Polling average shows a whopping 40 percent of Americans believe the nation is on the wrong track and a whopping 56 percent of Americans disapprove of the job Biden is doing.

And a gander at some final numbers, which are both more real and less real, but another data point to see this shift: The betting markets. Let’s look at Polymarket, a prediction market where users bet on the outcomes of current events using cryptocurrency. These markets have been very accurate in elections, and have missed wildly. So a bit like polls.

Right now, Polymarket betters give Trump a 54-36 chance of winning. That is putting money where their opinion is. Of course this changes in real time. But it is another point.

Taken all together, the reality is the race remains close, but that the Democratic strategy to lock him up has failed miserably. Perhaps even backfired in some swing states. That has rolling implications. The Democrat strategy remains completely harnessed to making Trump unelectable because the deeply unpopular Joe Biden simply cannot win on any merits or personality. But if this is a failure to make Trump unelectable, the question now becomes: Can the Democrats possibly stick with Biden? The top-down party can swap out candidates easily enough — their voters don’t really matter to them — but it comes with high risks.

It is a pleasant moment to think that Americans can still see when something is terribly wrong, and when Democrats are actually playing defense.

Rod Thomson is a former daily newspaper reporter and columnist, Salem radio host and ABC TV commentator, and current Founder of The Thomson Group, a Florida-based political consulting firm. He has eight children and seven grandchildren and a rapacious hunger to fight for America for them. Follow him on Twitter at @Rod_Thomson. Email him at [email protected].
 

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