A great deal is being made of the ABC News/Washington Post poll which has defeated, former President Donald Trump leading President Biden by 10 points because the media likes to make a great deal of things.
Yet if we look at recent polls done over the same period, this ABC News/Washington Post poll is clearly an outlier as illustrated below via Real Clear Politics.
It is worth noting the sample size for the ABC News/Washington Post poll is much smaller than the other polls conducted over the past couple of weeks or so. If we exclude this poll, all the other polls are in a statistical tie or have either Biden or Trump in the lead within the margin of error of plus or minus 4%.
Let us also keep in mind that if a week in politics is a lifetime than a year plus is an eternity. President Biden could be re-elected and there would be not a goddamn thing Trump could do about it even if he continues to scream fraud and rigged in all caps.
We nevertheless must be mindful that notwithstanding the fact that Trump is facing 91 charges in four separate criminal cases and that we have a national unemployment rate of 3.8%, it is certainly more than possible American voters are prepared to give Trump another shot at the White House.
Should this come pass then it would say as much about the character of the American voter as it does about the character of Trump himself. If the American voter see fits to give Trump another chance, then that tells us the American voter doesn't really care if Trump falsified his business records, carelessly and unlawfully shared top secret war plans on tape, saw fit to prevent the peaceful transfer of power and tried to get state officials to find him votes he never earned.
It would also tell us the American voters does not care about the low unemployment rate because of inflation despite the fact it has been cut by more than half over the past year. Nevertheless, we have a generation of voters who remember two decades of zero inflation who cannot fathom inflation of 3% much less the double-digit inflation which prevailed in this country in the late 1970's and early 1980's. A vote for Trump would be a reminder that a great many Americans trust Trump more than they trust their own families despite his numerous and ongoing lies.
Should Donald J. Trump be sworn in as the 47th President of the United States on January 20, 2025, I am tempted to say that we deserve everything which is coming to us. However, this would be unfair to the generation of younger Americans who have no say in the matter and yet will face the consequences of his retribution every bit as much as the rest of us.
A second Trump presidency could be constrained by a Democratic controlled House and Senate, but I could easily see a scenario where Trump uses a State of the Union address to suspend the Constitution as a means to purge members of Congress from both parties, the cabinet and Supreme Court and have them tried and executed much as Saddam Hussein did with members of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party after ascending to power in 1979. If this comes to pass, then the American experiment in democracy will have come to a bloody end.
Although we must prepare for the worst, it is also all too easy to the American voter as it is to underestimate President Biden. While the American voter might have reservations about Biden's age and his performance, it is possible that the American voter could also see that returning Trump to the White House is not a viable option and view Biden as a safer option and give him a second term.
Of course, Trump would howl but that would be all he could do. It wouldn't mean American democracy was in the clear, but it would mean that the American voter still wants values democracy and wants to live by it.
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