At nearing 300 pounds in this corner, resembling an Oompa Loompa in lifts, with a cotton candy-esque coiffure, and leaning slightly forward, surrounded by lawyers instead of trainers... The Teflon Don...and in this corner, mumbling almost to himself, troubled to state complete sentences, appearing clearly incapable of sensing the difference between stage direction and script on his teleprompter...Aging Joe...
This ain't the Thrilla from Manila or the Rumble in the Jungle. This by poll after poll is the rematch race that almost NO ONE wants to see, yet nearly every media outlet and major pollster continues to forecast. There are strong and ardent supporters for both former President Donald J. Trump, as well as current President Joe Biden, though only enjoy slight majorities in most national polls within their own parties. Presidential contests are consistently decided by Independent, non-aligned swing voters, and the fastest growing self-identification of voters is neither major political party, but instead, Independent.
Presidents Biden and Trump had each had their successes and I won't go into a listing of their failures or shortcomings, as that might consume more than the 750 words this space allows every week, other than to say Trump's plethora of felony indictments, civil litigation and other challenges are equally as repelling as many voters as Biden's apparent cognition challenges and the bumpy economy and rampant inflation. In a nation of nearly 350-million people, we honestly deserve better choices.
At this stage during the 2012 GOP Presidential contest, Dr. Ben Carson led the field in polling, and before the contests in Iowa and New Hampshire were completed, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich briefly moved to the front, yet ultimately, former Governor and more recent U.S. Senator Mitt Romney would become the GOP nominee. Polls are a snapshot of a race at any given moment, but they also shift with some regularity as election day nears.
2024 Iowa Republican Presidential Caucus
NBC News/Des Moines Register
Trump 51, DeSantis 19, Haley 16, Ramaswamy 5, Christie 4, Burgum, Hutchinson 1, Scott
Trump +32
2024 New Hampshire Republican Presidential Primary
Trafalgar Group (R)
Trump 45, Haley 18, Christie 14, DeSantis 11, Ramaswamy 10, Hutchinson 0
Trump +27
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/latest_polls/
Trump leads the GOP field in Iowa by 32 points, with his closest competition coming from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former U.N. Ambassador and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, but Trump also has no staff or campaign machinery on the ground in Iowa. Veterans of Iowa caucuses in both parties will tell you that surprise winners happen more often than not and that Iowa and Des Moines voters in particular have become accustomed to MEETING and speaking with their Presidential candidates.
The Iowa Caucuses statewide will tally the results among 100-200,000 voters, roughly the voting population of one second-tier MSA here in Georgia. They often break and decide late, and on caucus night, can move across the room to caucus with another candidate, as the caucus is underway.
In the first Primary state, New Hampshire, Trump has a slightly tighter contest, with Haley running a distant second. Trump will likely take these early contests by plurality, but Presidential campaigns are littered with the corpses of failed campaigns that won in either Iowa or New Hampshire but later showed little staying power. The third contest will be in the South, and Haley's home state of South Carolina, which resurrected the campaign of a wounded Joe Biden in 2020.
I recall, without much effort, how much disdain there was for this pair of nominees in 2020. A pandemic, two global conflicts, and runaway inflation later...I have heard virtually no one warm to a repeat. Third-party candidates have some good messaging and show some promise, but still do not have the financial or voter data infrastructure to carry the day. IF this is going to be a different contest than what conventional wisdom suggests today, voters will need to engage in Presidential primaries or speak out within the party with no primaries, which all but ran out candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who was consistently polling at 20-25 percent of Democratic voters, before he announced his candidacy as an Independent. As someone who has voted Libertarian more than once, in national, state, and local contests, they admittedly tend to field weak candidates.
If you want better choices or different nominee outcomes, speak now, or forever hold your vote.
