As the Guardian has noted this morning:
Last night, the race for the US presidency formally started – and Donald Trump has won the first round by a landslide. With 99% of votes counted, Trump has 51% of Republican support in the Iowa caucus – a victory of unprecedented dominance for any race not involving a sitting president.
Apparently, more than 50% of Republicans in Iowa think the 2020 election was illegally called for Biden. This is their moment of retribution.
The problem with that is, firstly, they are wrong. Trump undoubtedly lost in 2020. Second, this would spell the end for democracy in the USA. And third, it might also tip the world over a precipice from which there might be no return, not least with regard to climate change but also on foreign policy, civil rights and other issues. After all, if the US abandons democracy, how many others might do so?
If you are not worried by this, you are reading the wrong blog.
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Guardian 3 days ago https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/13/abortion-republican-voters-presidential-election.
I think it is a useful corrective to the coverage that we currently get of American politics in the UK that Trump only got 51% of registered Republican voters.
Anybody who regularly listens/watches the BBC’s reports and other UK media coverage from America would have expected at least a 90% plus vote for Trump amongst Republicans with Trump a certainty to win the Presidency in November 2024.
Yes – I agree. 95 per cent of coverage is/was centered on Trump. For me it is quite surprising that only half of registered Republican voters who voted in Iowa primaries voted for Trump. I also assumed it was going to be more. What is a percentage of Iowa voters who are registered Republican voters and how many of them actually voted?
Agreed, according to Brian Tylor Cohen on his YT channel it is no surprise the Magat Republicans will vote for him. But when all republicans are polled 11% may vote for Biden and 30% consider him inelegible if convicted. Given the tight margins in many swing states this is bad news indeed for Trump.
Family members who live in the US also think the wider public are fed up with his insanity and point to recent elections that have punished the GOP,
From Heather Cox Richardson today:
“Turnout was much lower than expected, with only about 110,000 people voting. That’s about 15% of Iowa’s three quarters of a million registered Republicans out of a population of just over 3 million people.”
I should have highlighted that as well
It is a very surprising statistic
Maybe they realluy do not like any of their own party’s candidates?
Trump madness is just as depressing as the brexit holdouts here in U.K. There is a glimmer of sanity in the US group of experienced senior lawyers and law academics who give daily commentary based on collective legal experience. Tis called mediastouch on you tube experienced, it’s seems sensible and worth listening to.
I really think this is the time for everyone in the USA to come together, whether it’s Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative — it would be so nice if they could come together and straighten out the world.
That’s a quote from Trump last night.I saw it on CNN
Sounds right. Like the Democrats, he thinks that the world is the business of America and we should do as they say.
These Northern agricultural states are not renowned for having savvy thinkers. It was Sturgis in South Dakota that insisted on holding its annual motorcycle rally at the height of the Covid epidemic!
Two words: Roger Stone.
This seems to have his dirty mitts all over it.
But look – nature abhors a vacuum and as long as you have lily-livered lefties and liberals not doing the right and wringing their hands over taxes and money – this is what happens – OK?
Robert Reich succinctly spells out the “why”. It’s scary stuff. The US is not the only place where this is happening.
https://open.substack.com/pub/robertreich/p/why-trump-ran-away-with-iowa?r=2pesao&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
That is very well worth reading
Thanks for posting it
Another view in the NYT – a similar view perhaps to Robert Reich’s, but at greater length – is Bret Stephens: The Case for Trump … by Someone Who Wants Him to Lose, at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/11/opinion/columnists/donald-trump-election.html or https://archive.is/lo2mw .
Getting 50% of the vote in a Republican stronghold is more disaster than ‘landslide’. But it’s nevertheless great news for Biden (or any other Democrat) as Trump’s their greatest asset (apart from them not being completely deranged). Of much more significance is the Democrats’ winning the special election in Florida yesterday, overturning a Republican seat. Elections are the only ‘polls’ worth considering, & Democrats have been outperforming in these since 2016. Nevertheless, all the ‘Trump will win’ (Newsflash: he won’t ) hysteria is serving its purpose of keeping his opponents, the vast majority of Americans, from the complacency that got him in in 2016. Even if he’s their ‘candidate’ in November, he’ll be roasted at the polls, assuming everyone who hates him votes against him. My biggest fear is that he drops dead before he gets what’s coming to him…
I tend to agree and have been arguing as such around our sometimes lively dinner table on this issue