Ruy Teixeira, he of The Emerging Democratic Majority published back in 2002, is running the polls for 2024. And what he shows is significant switch to the GOP across pretty well all voter categories. Even blacks, as in
Interestingly, while inflation and the cost of living is [black] voters’ top issue, as it is for most other groups, crime is actually very close behind, much closer than among other groups.
Who knew? Whatabout women?
[There are] particular problems among white unmarried women (25-point Trump lead) and white working-class (noncollege) women under 50 (47-point Trump lead).
But what puzzles Teixeira is that Democrats aren’t willing to compromise:
[S]houldn’t Democrats be casting the net as wide as possible, compromising on anything and everything to make their party maximally accessible to persuadable voters?
…
And the great irony here is that progressive Democrats, who are precisely the ones who are most hysterical about the threat posed by Trump and Trumpism, are also the ones most adamantly opposed to making any compromise on border security as part of this deal. Or really anything else for that matter.
Yeah, what is going on? I mean: I’m reading a bunch of Kissinger books right now, and the whole point of his life in diplomacy is to find areas between enemies where some sort of common ground can be found. And that common ground leads to a smidgeon of trust, and that leads, maybe, to further common ground.
Well, we know how the “no compromise” thing works in real war. Enemies refuse to compromise either when they are about to win bigly or when they are desperately afraid they are going to lose and know that, if they do, then it’s the end of the regime.
But really: do Dems have to hold out on policing and the border — not to mention the whole woke nonsense about diversity and “harm” and “safety?” The point is that ordinary voters really don’t care about that. They care about a decent economy and they care about getting their free stuff.
Or take the attempt to take down Trump. The guy is nearly 80; he is just not going to be around much longer. So why go to all the trouble to keep him off the ballot and lawfare him into insignificance? It’s not as if the whole administrative state is just going to fold and collapse on January 21, 2025. Mind you, the Democrats have been taking down annoying people since at least the days of FDR. Maybe it is just insulting to their honor to have opponents actually daring to strut their stuff in the public square.
Maybe the regime knows something that I don’t know. Maybe their “eyes only”secret polling is telling them that the end of the regime is near.
Maybe the Democrats’ problem is that their theory of reality just cannot compute Trump and the populist rebellion: it just does not compute.
Yes, I know: my comprehensive theory of life, the universe, everything, says that in politics you gotta have an enemy, and right now the enemy of the Dems is climate change and ultra-MAGA racist-sexist-homophobes.
But surely all that stuff is just a light show for the rubes. Right?