Arizona Rally Tonight

Still the protesters were much less. They don't really represent real Americans, the represent George Soros paid thugs.

 

I will believe the approval polls until someone provides unbiased, factual proof that they are rigged.

To believe one might be rigged is understandable.

To assume ALL of them are rigged - without ANY factual evidence to back it up - is utterly ridiculous.

 

Rigged or wrong, who cares? Clearly they under report Trump's support.

Recall some of the dire polling he faced as a candidate. More than 60 percent of voters didn’t think he was qualified to be president; not even 20 percent thought he had the temperament and personality to serve; more than half of Republicans said they weren’t satisfied with him as their nominee. On Election Day, 60 percent of the electorate said it didn’t like him.

By any historical standard, these were also politically catastrophic numbers, and yet, well, Trump is in the White House. In 2016, the numbers didn’t mean what you thought they did.

Consider the newest round of NBC polling from the three states that put Trump over the top. In Michigan, his approval rating is 36 percent, and in both Pennsylvania and Wisconsin it’s 33 percent. This looks brutal and it feeds the perception that Trump’s base is abandoning him. But is it different from his standing in these states during the campaign?

As Ryan Struyk shows, it turns out it’s pretty much the same now as it was last fall.

In each state, his favorable rating is in the low to mid-30s, close to where it was during the campaign. Back then, this was taken as a sign Trump would fall short in the Rust Belt; instead, he became the first Republican since the 1980's to win these three states.

Similarly, there's polling now that shows Trump's approval rating slipping among his fellow Republicans. Are they abandoning him? Or is this just another version of what we saw last year when his negative rating among Republicans looked alarmingly high through Election Day — when they snapped back and voted for him at a nearly 90 percent clip.

Among these Republicans, and among a certain type of traditionally Democratic voter in the Rust Belt, there was something that pulled them into Trump’s camp when it mattered — despite their misgivings.

The question is whether there might be another explanation for the rallying effect that lifted Trump last November.

Hugh Hewitt, the venerable conservative radio host, MSNBC, got at this possibility in a recent tweetstorm. Essentially, he suggested that contempt for "elite media" is even wider and more intense than generally recognized — so much so that it binds Trump’s voters to him even as they grow frustrated with his presidential style.

It’s not just that Trump registered terrible poll numbers throughout the campaign and then won. It’s also what was going on as he registered those numbers. Simply put, he was at the center of one extinction-level campaign crisis after another: His war of words with the Khan family; remarks about Judge Gonzalo Curiel that were deemed "the textbook definition of a racist comment" by Paul Ryan; the "Access Hollywood" tape. To call his campaign an uninterrupted parade of 13-alarm political fires wouldn’t be off the mark.

We assume he won in spite of all of this, but what if he didn’t? The controversy, chaos and outrage that Trump stirred also produced a reaction from the media itself. News coverage was withering toward Trump as the election approached, but it went beyond that.

More than we’ve seen in the past, popular culture took sides during the campaign, vehemently pushing back against Trump. It’s hardly new for celebrities to weigh in on behalf of Democrats; but with Trump, the entertainment world was sounding an urgent, existential alarm.

Again, Trump critics will say this was well-deserved; my question here is analytical: Did this kind of reaction from the media and popular culture widen the political divide into a chasm that was not just about Trump and politics but also media and culture?

That would explain how a candidate like Trump could engender such negative feelings from so many voters and yet still rally enough of them behind him to win. It’s not that they like him or even think he’d be a good president. They’re voting against the other side of a vast cultural gap.

It would also cast Trump’s current poll numbers in a different light. After all, the election ended nine months ago, but the campaign atmosphere remains: The frantic news cycles; the mass public engagement; and the bleeding-over of politics into popular culture. Late-night television can feel like an extension of cable news these days.

If his poll numbers ended up being good enough back then, can we be sure they aren’t good enough now?

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/polls-show-trump-cratering-not-so-fast-n794711

Trump's a brilliant closer.

 

Is it possible that people might generally dislike Trump, but support his policies? Is there a poll on that?

 

Clearly in your mind and the minds of Trumpbots maybe...not in most Americans minds (which is what counts).

Unlike you, I require fact-based, evidence from unbiased sources to believe the rants of a clearly stupid and/or emotionally disturbed manchild like Trump.

If you have a link to that - I might read it.

If you don't, I will not.

 

Hillary by 10.

 

The need to be seen as morally righteous is paramount, especially for the least spiritually active of peeps, which is certainly a feature of the Trump Coagulation, that sticky, sickly mess which happens when his fans gather to admire his magnificent ego. It's the best ego, of course.

 

"Bikers" aren't exclusively relegated to 1960's counter culture anymore. Irrelevant, as that counter culture was predominently leftist draft dodgers, and anti-war protesters. "Bikers" these days, are just weekend warriors, and encompass a very diiverse spectrum of enthusiasts.

 

Exactly... time for that prejudice to die.

My niece, the engineer, and her hubby...

 

Yeah, most modern enthusiasts are considered "posers" by the biker gang aficionados ...

 

We don't know who paid who, or if anyone ever got paid to show up at any rally or event. There were ads posted on Craigslist before the rally. There's no evidence that they were real or if they were fake. Same as the claims that Clinton's people paid actors.

It's more than likely that anyone who showed up really is a Trumps supporter, just like any who showed up at a Clinton rally was a Clinton supporter.

 

Actually the Polls did not reflect the Electorate. The Electorate is always right when it comes to elections. You won't want to be forgetting that!

 

I'm sure they spend their weekends as warriors at Hooters. Bikers are some of the biggest assh*es on the road, and I'm sure a good chunk of organ donations come from biker accidents.

If these were a bunch of Mustang low-riders, that'd be one thing but these are white trash vehicles, which motorcycles always have been, especially Harley's. Oddly enough, skinheads come to mind when I think of Trump and bikers in the same sentence.

 

This is a post you should be very proud of ... Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Not often you'll run across a bigot that's as open about as you are.