The new ABC News/Washington Post poll was pretty awful for the Democrats. Republican congressional candidates are ahead and head pollster Gary Langer wrote that "the Democratic Party’s difficulties are deep; they include soaring economic discontent, a president who’s fallen 12 percentage points underwater in job approval and a broad sense that the party is out of touch with the concerns of most Americans-- 62% say so... As things stand, if the midterm elections were today, 51% of registered voters say they’d support the Republican candidate in their congressional district, 41% say the Democrat. That’s the biggest lead for Republicans in the 110 ABC/Post polls that have asked this question since November 1981. Indeed, it’s only the second time the GOP has held a statistically significant advantage (the other was +7 points in January 2002) and the ninth time it’s held any numerical edge at all."
Worse yet, according to the poll, "Independents, who are often swing voters in national elections, favor GOP candidates by 50-32%; they voted +12 points Democratic in 2018. Moderates divide closely, +6 points for Democratic candidates, 48-42%, as opposed to +26 points in 2018. Suburban voters favor Republicans by 54-39%, rural voters by a broad 66-26%. The Democratic advantage among urban residents, 52-38%, again is well off their 2018 result."
Next year Iowa has a Senate race and 3 of it's 4 congressional seats should be competitive. But another new poll is just as bad for the Dems there as Langer's is nationally. Trump, who beat Biden there 53-45% last year, would trounce him in a rematch 51-40%. Independents favor Trump by 8 percentage points, 45% to 37%.
Early in the 2016 primary Trump remarked that Iowa Republicans are among the stupidest people on earth. He was right but his opinion has no doubt changed: "In the hypothetical matchup, Trump leads with huge margins among evangelical and rural Iowans. He carries evangelical likely voters 76% to 15%, and he carries rural likely voters 64% to 26%. Justin Lindsey, a 36-year-old poll respondent from Sioux City, said he’d vote for Trump in a hypothetical rematch with Biden. He said Trump put in place policies that worked. 'The reason is: He is more of a businessman than a politician,' said Lindsey, a registered Republican who works as a skilled carpenter. 'When he got into office, he actually ran the country like a business, and he’s had great success with businesses.' Trump also does well among likely voters without a college degree, earning support among 59% compared to Biden’s 31%. Biden does better with those who have earned a college degree, 53% to Trump’s 38%."
Justin Lindsey sounds like a typical Trump voter, ignorant, pitifully low IQ with an inability to think about much beyond pleasuring himself. He's absolutely not capable of processing anything as complex as Trump's actual record in office, like, randomly, this report last week from Politico showing how Trump made the pandemic much worse with overtly political interference with the CDC. "Trump appointees tried to undermine the work of scientists and career staff at the CDC to control the administration’s messaging on the spread of the virus and the dangers of transmission and infection... [S]cientists at the CDC, well aware that the virus was transmitting at a high rate and could infect easily, stepped in early to speak to the American people directly in an attempt to warn the public about what was coming." That didn't jive with Trump's political message and he quickly moved to undermine and shut up the scientists, the importance of which a moron like Justin Lindsey would never comprehend and something that is still to this day prolonging the pandemic.
Iowa voted 53.1% for Trump and the state is 56% fully vaccinated. Sioux City, where Lindsey lives, spans two counties, Woodbury and Plymouth. Woodbury went for Trump with 57.6% and is 51% fully vaccinated. The more politically and socially primitive Plymouth County went for Trump with 73.9% and just 48% are fully vaccinated.
One of the Iowa respondents cited by USA Today, 22 year old Elizabeth McRae from Cedar Falls, said she believes "four more years of Trump would destroy the country." But it's what she said about Biden and the Democrats that holds the key to a possible-- if unlikely-- turn-around in their political fortunes, nationally as well as in Iowa. McRae approves of the job Biden is doing but... "she wishes Biden and the Democratic majorities in Congress would go beyond the status quo. 'I think it’s a little bit of a shame that we’re not pushing a little bit more of progressive policies while we have the power,' she said."
Lower the cost of prescription drugs and the age for Medicare eligibility, raise the minimum wage, add dental coverage to Medicare, extend paid family leave, make public college tuition free, act aggressively to combat Climate Change, and the Democrats would have a fighting chance to turn out their base and win over independent voters. The alternative-- which is exactly where we're headed-- is a massive red wave.
Not even this kind of deplorable behavior from Trump is going to stop a GOP sweep if the Democrats don't offer a tangible-- not theoretical-- reason for voters to give a damn about them in the decreasing number of competitive districts. Can you imagine Biden or Obama ever saying anything like this about Manchin, Sinema, Gottheimer, Schrader, Case, Correa, Cuellar, Peters or any of the assholes from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party?
