Now that we are officially in a presidential election year with the calendar turning to 2024 just a couple of days ago, my political ears are perked to see which way the wind is blowing for what looks to be the inevitable rematch of Donald Trump versus Joe Biden in November 2024.
Though the majority of Americans would prefer one or both of these gentlemen not to run, if everything holds as it does today, Trump vs Biden is what will happen a little over 10 1/2 months from now.
So imagine my surprise when I happened to be scrolling through the vast entity known as the World Wide Web and came across an article that had a story that showed an uptick of Americans, almost one-third now, believe that Joe Biden did not win legitimately in 2020.
The story I found was right here:
About one-third of U.S. adults say they believe President Biden was not legitimately elected president of the United States in 2020, according a poll released this week.
The Washington Post/University of Maryland (Post-UMD) survey examines evolving views of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol — as the third anniversary of the insurrection is coming up Saturday. A similar poll was conducted in December 2021.
Evolving is an understatement -- it is earth-shattering, in my ever so humble opinion. The data shakes down like this.
As of last month, 62 percent of U.S. adults say they believe Biden was legitimately elected, down from 69 percent overall in the 2021 poll.
The biggest drop in those who said the 2020 election results were legitimate came from Republicans — 31 percent in 2023, down from 39 percent two years earlier.
Among Democrats, 91 percent say Biden was legitimately elected, a slight dip from 94 percent two years ago, and 66 percent of independents say the incumbent was legitimately elected, down from 72 percent in December 2021.
The Post noted that, among those who primarily get their information from Fox News, only about 3 in 10 people say the president’s election was legitimate.
Now no one is going to lump me into the Donald Trump at any cost camp because my brain literally will hurt when I try to wrap my mind around the concept that out of 330 million Americans, Donald Trump is the only person who could be nominated as a Republican to be able to do something effective. That type of talk makes me feel like driving an iron stake through my eye, and watching and listening to the ladies at The View spew their idiocy is enough to drive me insane.
Donald Trump, since he came down the escalator in 2015, has always had high unfavorability polling, but effectively has been able to counter that with his loyal group of followers, and he has maximized that.
So my thinking for a while has been that Trump is not the shoo-in for the general election like he is in the primaries. Yet now, with this new poll of people beginning to think that Joe Biden's election in 2020 wasn't on the up and up, that might be opening some doors for Trump in November of 2024.
As my colleague Nick Arama wrote in this article, that might be part of the change the poll shows Biden is being looked at suspiciously now.
CNN had Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) in on Sunday to talk about the efforts by Democrats to boot former President Donald Trump from the ballot using the 14th Amendment.
Raskin made some comments that a lot of people are talking about.
The first part was what he said about the disqualification process. He had the temerity to claim that what they were trying to do against Trump was the most "democratic" form of disqualification. This takes some kind of gall to attempt this level of spin;
Rep. Jamie Raskin: "Of all the forms of disqualification we have, the one that disqualifies people for engaging in insurrection is the most democratic because it's the one where people choose themselves to be disqualified." pic.twitter.com/5SxPp3UvL8
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) December 31, 2023Wow, what horse hockey.
"Is it undemocratic that Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jennifer Granholm can't run for president because they weren't born in the country?" he ridiculously said. "Of all the forms of disqualification we have, the one that disqualifies people for engaging in insurrection is the most democratic because it's the one where people choose themselves to be disqualified." He then claims that Trump disqualified himself.
Just possibly the theory that the Democrats are overplaying their hand because they hate Trump with the passion of a thousand burning suns might be turning some of the Independents and or Republicans who have been anti-Trump to view the former president in a different light.
Politicians tend to overplay their hands, particularly when they're told how smart and pretty they are all the time with nobody in their circle challenging that orthodoxy. This might be one of those times where the politicians thinking that everybody hates Trump as much as they do are turning off people who are not necessarily pro-Trump but are viewing their actions through a common sense lens.
Only time will tell, but Trump has grown stronger with the base as these meaningless lawsuits and attempts to keep him off the ballot have shown. Maybe this effect is crossing over and giving people a reason to think Trump's point about the 2020 election being fixed might have legs.
We shall soon see if this trend continues.
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