Posted on 04/12/2016 5:30:16 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
If Republicans nominate Donald Trump, they nearly cede the White House to Hillary Clinton. Trump wouldn't merely be an underdog in the general election. He would be the worst Republican nominee since Alf Landon 80 years ago.
The polls show Trump would be a disaster. To date, Trump's message control has been a disaster, and it would be a disaster in the general election. His political inexperience, which has hamstrung him in the primary cycle, would be a disaster in the fall.
All indications suggest a Trump versus Hillary battle would be a one-sided affair.
Poll problems
Donald Trump would be the most disliked major-party nominee in the history of favorability polling.
The only presidential candidate to beat him in unfavorability never got close to the nomination: Former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke, who had 69 percent unfavorable ratings in 1992 — and Duke was within the margin of error of Trump, who is currently at 67 percent unfavorable in a late-March ABC/Washington Post poll.
That means that for every American who has a favorable view of Donald Trump, more than two others have an unfavorable view. A majority of the country, 56 percent, have a "strongly unfavorable" view in that survey. Trump's 37 percentage-point net unfavorable rating makes Democratic front-runner Clinton, who is 6 percent underwater in favorability ratings, look more than likable enough.
A clear majority, 59 percent, do not find Clinton honest and trustworthy. That's much better than Trump, who is found dishonest or untrustworthy by 69 percent. Trump polls worse than Clinton on basically every question.
When asked if the candidate:
• "Understands the problems of people like you?" Clinton is in the negative, but still has a 13-point edge on Trump.
• "Has the right kind of experience to be president?" Clinton has a 40-point lead, 66-26, over Trump.
• "Has the personality and temperament it takes?" Clinton is 33 points stronger.
Trump would be the least-respected, least-liked major party nominee since polling began.
That's why Clinton leads Trump by double digits in most recent polls, with an average of 10.6 percent according to RealClearPolitics. She has led Trump in the RCP average for the entire campaign. That lead grew steadily throughout March, ever since Clinton and Trump became the clear front-runners for their party nominations.
Compare that to past elections. In the first half of April 2012, President Obama's lead over Mitt Romney hovered between 2.3-5.3 percent. Obama's largest lead in the RealClearPolitics average at any point in 2012 was 5.9 percent. Obama held a double-digit lead over Romney in only one poll after March 1, 2012.
Obama's largest lead over John McCain was eight points.
The problem isn't just Clinton's lead. It's Trump's apparent ceiling: His average in head-to-head national polls against Clinton has never climbed above 44 percent, and he's been hovering around 40 percent since Super Tuesday.
Electoral college
No Republican has ever won the White House without carrying Ohio, and Trump is looking bad in Ohio. Clinton beat Trump in all three Ohio polls conducted in March, by an average of six points.
Any review of the Electoral College looks ugly for Trump.
The website "270 to Win" looked at polling averages and found Clinton carrying 260 electoral votes to Trump's 115 votes, with 165 up for grabs. Clinton's vote total on the site doesn't include Minnesota, Iowa, Ohio or Florida, all states where Clinton has to be considered the favorite. If Clinton carried Minnesota, Ohio or Florida — any one of those — she would win.
Look at every other swing state. In New Hampshire, Trump trails in every poll this year, most recently by eight points. In Florida, Clinton leads by eight in the latest poll and 2.2 percent in the RealClearPolitics average. Clinton beat Trump in the only Iowa poll. Clinton beat Trump by 17 points in the only Virginia poll this year.
Trump says he can expand the electoral map and win in places Republicans haven't won in decades, such as Michigan and Pennsylvania. The polls don't concur.
Trump trails Clinton in Michigan by double digits in two polls conducted in late March. Every Michigan poll this year has shown Trump losing to Clinton significantly, and the margin grew after the Michigan GOP Primary, which Trump won.
Clinton led Trump in every Pennsylvania poll in March, most recently by 13 points. Trump hasn't cracked 40 percent in a single Pennsylvania survey this year.
Trump lacks the political skills
In some ways, Trump is a phenomenally effective politician. He couldn't have gotten to 45 percent nationally in a crowded field otherwise. He couldn't have won 20 states including New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida otherwise.
But he appears to lack the political skills to win in a general election.
First, we should expect Trump to flop in the debates. Trump had success in GOP primaries, but there was a reason he called them off — refusing to participate in a post-Florida Fox News debate and ignoring Ted Cruz's calls for one-on-one debates. Trump thrived in crowded debates where all he had to do was rudely put down Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio and where he could get away with always changing the topic.
In the less-crowded debates after South Carolina, Trump looked worse. Rubio exposed Trump's utter shallowness on healthcare policy, and Trump found himself flailing in policy areas where he was way out of his depth. Recent interviews, in which television journalists Anderson Cooper, John Dickerson and Chris Matthews pressed Trump on abortion or nuclear proliferation, exposed his incompetence.
In a one-on-one debate against Clinton, Trump's lack of policy knowledge and critical thinking skills would be glaring.
There's also the boorishness problem.
Despite all the talk about equality and equity, and treating women the same as men, we don't really live that way. Men are still expected to treat women with more courtesy than men treat other men. Put another way: You can be a boorish bully toward men in ways you can't toward women.
Trump probably helped himself by interrupting, insulting and sneering at Bush and Rubio. It may have been deliberate on his part, but it's also his personality. When he behaves that way toward Clinton, he will accomplish the incredible: making Americans feel sympathetic toward her.
Rick Lazio and Obama both learned that the hard way. In 2000, as Clinton was campaigning against soft money, Lazio walked across the stage, handed her a pledge to forego soft money and prodded her to sign it. Clinton was as evasive and equivocating as always, but with him leaning over her, pointing his finger at a small mother in a pastel pants suit, Lazio looked like a bully.
In New Hampshire in 2008, as Clinton gave a cheesy answer on her likability, Obama interjected with an offhand joke. "You're likable enough, Hillary," he said, a bit tersely. He lost New Hampshire.
Americans expect men to treat women with courtesy. Clinton would find it the easiest thing in the world to tease out Trump's rudeness — if she even had to try.
The money problem
The three factors for judging a candidate's strength are: the polls, the candidate's political skills and campaign cash. If Trump is flailing in national polls, state polls and favorability polls, and if he's an unprepared boor, at least he can spend his billions, right?
Wrong. Trump would be steamrolled by Clinton's cash juggernaut, even worse than other Republican candidates would be.
Trump hasn't sworn off fundraising. His website and his ads all solicit donations. But he has barely raised any money — $10 million in contributions and $24 million in loans to himself as of the end of March.
Trump also has no experience raising campaign cash. He has alienated the two parts of the Republican Party that do have experience raising money: the establishment-K Street axis and the Tea Party groups. Many businesses already have expressed unwillingness to attach themselves to a Trump nomination.
And Trump probably can't close the gap with his own wealth. Clinton will spend more than a billion dollars in the general election. We don't know Trump's net worth exactly, but we do know the higher estimates all include the value of his name brand, which is not a liquid asset. His buildings, his golf courses and his casinos are not liquid assets, either. Trump probably doesn't have a spare billion in cash to spend.
He lacks the political skills, the likability, the public support and the fundraising ability to beat Hillary Clinton. That's why he won't even come close.
“Why would the Democrats fail to secure their November victory like this? If Cruz loses Wisconsin, he’s done - and Trump is on the Democrat menu for the fall... “
Now that you mention it, there was an interview of an older lady, a democrat, who said she registered republican and voted Cruz. It was replayed over and over again on Fox on election day.
Excellent analysis and deduction.
If not Trump, then who? There are no winners in the GOPe, the gravitas just isn’t there. There is a struggle and and a lot of FEAR going on with the GOPe, they don’t want their apple cart toppled. I don’t call it a cart, I refer to it as the Golden Goose that sustains the 537. LOL, another post I read today, Trump/Bernie ticket. Yeah, its funny, but its also crazy enough to win it. Why not, seems like we’re headed in the direction to get a President Comacho anyway?
Wisconsin is a particular interest of mine, since there's ALWAYS shenanigans going on, influenced in part by its southern neighbor. :)
>>> whereas a used car salesman like Cruz will hide it as best he can.
You are right that hiding their true positions is a revered trait in a politician called “message discipline.” All it does is promote corruption, since any evidence that a pol’s private views/life does not match his public persona is embarrassing at least, and blackmailable at worst. Trump without teleprompter is indeed refreshing.
Yep, when you see papers like the NY Times and the Washington Post running hysterical headlines saying:
“TRUMP MUST BE STOPPED!”
it sort of tells you something about who they actually fear as a candidate. No headlines like that about Cruz. They will, of course, appear if he is nominated.
Thank you. Yes. Many Freepers do, and that’s one of the many reasons why many of them are still STUCK on ‘Cruz Control’.... Hate to be so blunt, but really.....if they would only get a mind of their own and shake of the ‘knee jerk’ mindset that Cruz is some sort of conservative god.
Reagan switched to the GOP, helped conservative candidates all over the country, built a twenty year history of conservative principles before he presumed to ask us to vote for him for the presidency.
Trump's been a self-styled conservative for about ten months now, and still slips back into his liberal big government, big Washington ideology at least a couple of times in every speech.
Reagan wanted government out of the people's lives so that they could do great things. Trump never stops talking about the great things Trump is going to do.
I don't have much of a problem telling them apart.
To continue to support Cruz after he is numerically eliminated from a clean nomination next week is either to be unaware of the implications of a brokered convention (almost guaranteed loss of general election) or else to believe that Hillary is preferable to Trump.
Either one might be the case, but one should not fool one’s self into thinking that Cruz has a prayer in the general.
Let’s focus seriously on the states he can win, once he gets the nod. NY is not in play. He is down anywhere from 20 to 30
I’m embarrassed as a NYer, but the hard left is HUGE here.
Upstate will break for him. Upstate is not FIVE to ONE republican. NYC, with 9 million people IS five to one dem. and Not your mother’s dem. HARD LEFT dems.
PA is SO in play. PA is HUGE. It brings a nice number of votes with it and it’s a tie right now!!
OH and FL we can take.
If we take those and the reds, we win, no?
I didn’t believe that until recently.
He is doing worse than Trump against Hillary for the first time since maybe February.
He is done.
To be as horrible as y’all say he is, he sure is doing well in the polls and in the primaries.
Thanks for the much-needed clarity.
So very true.
It's as if these people have never seen the democratic process in action before.
It's as if they're doing everything they possibly can to subvert that process.
Indeed, it's as if they're willfully parroting slanted GOPe propaganda, all in order to save us from ourselves.
The non-stop character assassination of Donald Trump by the Left/Media/GOPe/"me too" Cruz campaign is wearing thin with GOP voters and with the public in general.
Ultimately, it will backfire. The signs are already appearing...
Around 148 posts and no one has answered the most important part of your post. Where is Mr. Trump going to get the money to run against her? Free publicity will be gone the MSM will shut him out, unless it reflects poorly on him, Trump supporters where is the money coming from?
But the Republican establishment wasn't going to let that happen.
This makes me wonder how they're different from the Democratic establishment.
LOL! Fag.
If that's not the dumbest question ever posed in the entire history of mankind, it has to be close...
Mrs. Bill has the “cares about me” vote nailed down forever more.
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