Heading Into Convention Season, President Trump Looks Formidable

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore | Flickr

One is hard-pressed to imagine a better case scenario for President Trump a week out from the Republican National Convention, which is set to formally begin on July 15.  Over the last two weeks, the 45^th President has enjoyed maybe the best stretch of his entire political career.  Between Biden’s meltdown to the Supreme Court recognizing presidential immunity, the Trump Train has been propelled by a mountain of good news. Every reputable poll has President Trump leading in each of the six most important battleground states.  The New York Times, which has never been friendly or fair to President Trump, has him up between 1 and 5 points in each of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina.  Winning all those states, in addition to the states he carried in 2020, would guarantee him his greatest electoral college victory ever.

But the momentum does not stop there.  A recent Fox News poll has President Trump tied with Biden in Virginia.  Polls by both Emerson College and McLaughlin & Associates have President Trump outright leading in the state of Minnesota, which no Republican has carried since Richard Nixon in 1972.  Perhaps most remarkably of all, a poll by co/efficient has President Trump up by 1 point in the state of New Jersey! 

As the weeks progress, polling will better capture the fallout from Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance, which should be even more to President Trump’s advantage.  Expect the numbers above to get only better for President Trump, who is well on his way to a landslide victory, if the election were today, based on these projections.  Even if current polling has somehow overcorrected or biased in favor of President Trump (it would be a first!), he would only need to pick off one of the midwestern battleground states to defeat Biden in November.  Or he can hold onto his leads in North Carolina, Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada – and secure either a New Hampshire or Maine, which would be enough for victory.  

Although Trump supporters know more than anyone — given how scandalously off they were in 2016 — not to obsess over the polls, President Trump’s fortunes go beyond the positive news from pollsters.  First, he is enjoying great enthusiasm on the ground.  In May, he hosted over 100,000 people in Wildwood, New Jersey, smashing every record for the largest political rally of any kind in state history.  He has enjoyed similarly huge turnouts north, south, east, and west, from Las Vegas to Miami to Virginia and Milwaukee, which is playing host to this year’s RNC.  

It is no secret that President Trump’s base is enthusiastic like never before.  In sharp contrast with Biden, whose “supporters” are defecting to the Trump Train or other candidates in droves, the 45^th President’s base has been galvanized by the lawfare that has made a martyr of President Trump, the ultimate victim of our weaponized justice system.  What is more, they are tired of being ransacked by inflation of a scale that surpasses anything most Americans have experienced in their lifetimes.  The message of closed borders and mass deportations resonates with all Americans, who so desperately want a return to the rule of law and a focus on American interests, rather than prioritizing those of another foreign nation or people. 

Hundreds of millions are fed up with radical woke insanity.  They do not want to see men competing in women’s sports or changing in their daughters’ locker rooms.  They find equally appalling the idea of having abortions at eight or nine months, or even post-birth, as many mainstream Democrats have advocated for.  They are fed up with DEI policies which prioritize skin color, gender, and sexual orientation over merit and ability.  They do not want to be saddled by crippling regulations, made in the name of “climate change,” which prevents us from tapping into our vast natural resources, thereby creating a greater dependency on competitors like Russia and Iran for their oil.  

All these policies have the effect of making us poorer and more vulnerable to foreign adversaries.  At the same time, our economy has basically entered a recession, defined by little to no growth, lingering inflation, fake jobs, and a hollowing out of industry.  On top of it all, migrants from across the world have invaded our borders by the tens of millions.  Almost all of them are low-skilled, adding zero cultural or economic enrichment.  Many belong to gangs, deal in drugs, traffic children, and have committed some of the most barbaric crimes conceivable. 

These policies, taken collectively, spell doom for America – and will bring about our demise as a nation if allowed to go on with this suicidal trajectory another four years.  It is thus the survival impulse among the populace that is ultimately responsible for the seismic shift in the polls, support, and yearning to see President Trump back in the Oval Office – and Biden’s crime family kicked to the curb.

Biden’s implosion on the debate stage, before a national television audience, was legendary.  He was so bad that he got networks like CNN and MSNBC to immediately turn on him and demand that he be replaced.  The New York Times, which similarly called for Biden’s replacement, for the first time in living memory might now be more antagonistic to Biden over Trump.  The effect of this has been to further mobilize President Trump’s base, and demoralize many would-be Democratic voters, who will instead opt for a third-party candidate like Robert Kenney or check out of the election altogether. 

Also, the timing of Biden’s meltdown could not have been any better for President Trump; we now have less than four months to go until November.  If the Democrats want to replace Biden this late in the game, even with an ostensibly easy switch like Kamala Harris, they are going to encounter a litany of logistical and constitutional obstacles that will further complicate matters given the short timeline they are forced to work with.  

Biden is also a stubborn old dog. Further, he is being aided by a power-hungry Lady MacBeth of a wife in “Dr.” Jill. He is highly recalcitrant to the prospect of stepping down and surrendering power.  In that regard, he is following the tradition of many other geriatric Democrats who have gone before him in recent years – from Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who held onto that court seat until the bitter end, to Diane Feinstein, who famously voted in the Senate during the day, only to kerplop later that evening.  

As people age, they tend to get more stubborn.  Combine stubbornness with arrogance as well as a pathology for power, and, well, you get a deadly combination – the paradigmatic example of which is this Biden melodrama playing out in real-time. 

All of that, of course, is not to say that President Trump – or the American people, should rest on our laurels.  We cannot claim victory prematurely.  We should continue our relentless push forward, operating as if we are ten points behind in the polls.  We need to double and triple down with our ground game in battlegrounds like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, especially; registering voters, deploying lawyers and poll watchers, educating vote counters, and harvesting ballots, all to ensure an orderly electoral process and secure President Trump’s victory – which, based on the current rules, goes on for weeks, if not months, prior to Election Day itself. 

Nevertheless, Team Trump is in a formidable position: the best for President Trump, yet, at this stage in each of his three races.  That is reason to be cautiously optimistic. That is also reason to be hopeful that God has not abandoned the American people, or the great cause of freedom this nation epitomizes.  

Paul Ingrassia is a Constitutional Scholar; Communications Director of the NCLU; a two-time Claremont Fellow, and is on the Board of Advisors of the New York Young Republican Club and the Italian American Civil Rights League. He writes a widely read Substack that is regularly posted on Truth Social by President Trump. Follow him on X @PaulIngrassia, Substack, Truth Social, Instagram, and Rumble.