Unlike most people in the media, Frank Luntz spends a lot of time talking to regular folks. He and
can see the objective reality of where we are now, yet they have difficulty explaining that to people on the Left.
To most of them, they’ve been fighting a war against Trump and MAGA since 2016. It’s unthinkable that anyone in America, let alone a majority, would not feel the same way.
Here is how the polls are lining up right now on Real Clear Politics:
Why is Trump polling ahead? Let’s get into it.
The people in power now can’t solve the problem; they ARE the problem. No one lays it out better than RFK, Jr., who has also been demonized and discredited by them for daring to run against Biden. He articulates what so many Americans have felt for a long time now. It’s 9 minutes but it’s worth a listen.
In 2016, half of America sent a clear message to the people at the top. They were unhappy enough to send an outsider, a Reality star and real estate mogul, to the White House. That should have been the moment the ruling class had enough self-awareness to address the problem.
Instead, they went to war on Trump and MAGA, demonizing them as racists and white supremacists, treating them like enemy combatants at best and human garbage at worst. That was the first clue that the Democrats and the Left had become completely disconnected from reality.
Do people in the bubble see it that way? No, they don’t. Trust me. I used to live in the bubble. Their only problem is that Trump and MAGA even exist. If they can get rid of them, One Last Cancel, they can have their Woketopia back.
That’s the fight. It has less to do with Trump and more to do with the change Americans want, to find our way back to sanity after the country has been overtaken by what appears to be a fundamentalist cult.
Like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, Joe Biden has existed in the upper class's rarified air for too long. If you can’t even see the problem, how can you fix it?
If you already understand all of that, you’re halfway there. Here are some other reasons why Trump is still polling ahead.
The Pendulum Swing
We like presidents to serve two terms. If the economy is bad, we vote them out after one term. They keep telling us Biden’s economy is going great, but that feels like gaslighting to most Americans. They remember Trump’s economy. If there is ever a reason for a pendulum swing, it’s that.
But there are other reasons. Everything feels like it’s collapsing. A media people can’t trust anymore, movies people can’t watch anymore, even science and basic biology have flown the coop. It’s all to serve some ideology that is starting to feel more like totalitarianism than democracy.
In 2016, the Democrats had held the presidency for two terms; holding onto a third would have been nearly impossible. The only president who has managed it since FDR was Ronald Reagan. Obama should have picked Joe. But he went with Hillary, which upended the pattern and reminded Americans it was time for real change.
To make matters worse, in 2020, Biden had nowhere to go except back to the past, to finish what Obama started, pulling America ever farther Left, exactly where we did not want to go.
Obama's emergence to campaign for Joe early shows how desperate they are. But that pendulum still wants to swing. All this will do is help kill Obama’s legacy. You can’t keep selling people something they don’t want and expect it to work out.
Trump sells optimism, Biden sells fear.
The version of Trump the media sells is as an angry, evil, frothing tyrant. That’s why so many of them call him “authoritarian” and “Hitler-esque.” But if you watch Trump’s rallies, as I’ve been doing since 2020, you notice his upbeat spirit.
He’s like a high school football coach who must inspire the players to go out there and win, even if the odds are against them. And really, that is the main job of the President of the United States. To be a great salesperson who can sell all of us on the can-do American spirit.
By contrast, Biden sells nothing but fear. Fear of Trump, fear of MAGA, fear of losing Democracy. Who wants a leader who keeps telling the American people one riot at the Capitol meant the end of America? Really? I thought we were the most powerful country in the world. No?
But that’s all Biden has. It’s a negative rather than a positive. After eight years, why would that be appealing to most Americans? They want to feel better, not worse.
Trump projects strength. Biden projects weakness.
Bringing Obama out might seem like a good strategy to remind Americans, "Don’t worry, Obama’s got this.” He isn’t going anywhere. But it also highlights Biden’s weaknesses.
Americans felt safer under Trump. Maybe not at the time, but in retrospect, they realize they didn’t know what they had. Trump was an unpredictable, intimidating force, which meant that world dictators did not want to mess with him, and maybe that’s why it seems like the entire world order has been upended and war is breaking out everywhere. Even Isis is back.
It’s funny watching the media try to pretend Trump is “nice” to dictators because he is one. Trump is an alpha male. Biden is a beta. Sorry, but it’s true.
One of the things that has impressed me most about Trump is how tough he is. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone who can take as much as he has and remain chipper and optimistic.
Yes, Trump says offensive things can be a bully and often hits below the belt. But that’s what you want if you’re worried about foreign adversaries. You want a bulldog. You want someone that tough. By contrast, Biden is easily triggered into anger; when he isn’t triggered, he laughs off any questions by reporters. The last thing he projects is strength.
Trump is a leader. Biden is not.
Trump has been the boss his entire life. Biden has been in Congress his entire life and only knows how to be a party-line participant. Trump is used to delegating, hiring, giving directions to people, and leading projects. Biden is used to being a senator and a team player who follows the leader.
Trump would not be a good Senator because he is not a team player. He only knows how to lead. And he’s good at it. Yes, he was hit with an extraordinary wall of resistance, but that doesn’t take away the fact that his gift has always been leadership.
Trump sells American Exceptionalism. Biden sells American shame.
After Biden took power, he set about lecturing all of us about how rotten America is, a “white supremacist” nation. All of his equity fixes were meant to correct the wrongs of the past. He spends much of his time shaming half the country, calling them “extremists” and “racists.”
He only hired Black women and women of color and people of color and members of the LGBTQIA cult and then bragged about it, further alienating the silent majority. Everyone can sense a crisis among the nation’s men yet Biden is perfectly happy with that, it seems. Shame them, marginalize them, and then expect them to vote for you?
By contrast, Trump makes it abundantly clear with four words on a red hat: Make America Great Again. Democrats took that as an insult to our God Obama, but really, it means bringing back manufacturing, bringing back patriotism, make America first. Trump has never wavered from his desire to see America come out on top.
And yes, American exceptionalism means telling Americans how great they are, and how great this country is. Or used to be and can be again. That’s the whole point of it, and selling it is key to any presidency. It’s also what brings all Americans together, or used to. It’s the fragile thread that ties each of us to each other.
Trump likes to win, and he wants America to win. That’s something his voters notice. For many of them, all they have is a love of country. They’re patriots, and they feel lucky to be born in the greatest country in the world. They want a leader who feels the same way.
Trump Knows this Country. Biden Does Not.
Even before I left the Democratic Party in 2020, I drove across the country and saw real America for the first time.
I had no idea I was in such an isolated bubble. That bubble is where Biden gets his information. When he attacks Trump, he uses the talking points of the mainstream media, almost all of which are false. Here he is again, bringing back Obama — this is just sad by now.
You can’t run this country if you don’t know this country. Trump might come from the elite ruling class, but he spends enough time with people, traveling from town to town and talking directly to them to speak their language. Biden, a creature of the swamp for his entire life, can’t.
Americans can now compare Trump's and Biden’s four years in office.
The Democrats got what they wanted in 2020. They had four years to prove to Americans that they could do the job better. Trump was finally gone. So great, right? Everything should have gone perfectly after that. Calm to chaos, the adults are back in the room, and happy days are here again.
One year later, Biden’s exit from Afghanistan showed America and the world just how incompetent the man in the White House was. And his approval ratings have never recovered. That “X” is Afghanistan.
That’s why Biden pivoted to Trump and made his entire presidency about stopping him. What a waste.
For the regime that has now gone to extraordinary, unprecedented, unAmerican lengths to stop Trump, it must really suck that Biden is still trailing him in the polls. But they have no one to blame but themselves. They’ve squandered their power, wasted our time, and made this country far worse than it was under Trump.
America still wants to turn the page away from the America under Obama. Holding all of us back was a mistake in 2016; in 2020, it will be in 2024.
Their mistake was not learning the lesson the first time.
That Trump is polling ahead doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll win. We all remember the Red Wave that wasn’t in 2022. With Lara Trump and Scott Presler working to boost the GOP’s ground game, maybe this time, the ending will be different. Like Tom Petty says, even the losers get lucky sometimes.
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