If anything has become certain this election, it must be that, unless both presidential primaries end up being decided at the conventions and more likable and less divisive candidates are foisted to the surface, Americans are going to wind up electing an unpopular candidate, which seems counterintuitive to how democracy is supposed to work, but chalk that up to another of the head-scratching anomalies of 2016.
Clearly, Donald Trump is at the top of the unpopular list. In states where he has won, Trump has commanded up to 40 percent of the vote, and in at least one recent poll, 49 percent of the GOP electorate said they supported him, compared with 15 percent for Sen. Ted Cruz and 6 percent for Gov. John Kasich. But outside of Trump’s core audience, which includes mostly uneducated, angry or frustrated white people in rural America, Trump has long ago lost the plot with conservative-minded women, Hispanics and educated Republicans, which is why he not only could turn out to be a disastrous GOP nominee, but he may be virtually unelectable in a general contest.
The GOP inteligencia, we can only assume, includes all of the “establishment” Republicans in Washington and their supporters in districts across the nation who are beseeching the party to #StopTrump at all costs, which has become a viral hashtag on Twitter the last several weeks, along with #DumpTrump, #CrushTrump and of course, #AnyoneButTrump. Rather than let the democratic process work like it was intended, which occasionally means electing candidates who are neither qualified or worthy of the office — Trump happens to fit both bills — some leaders inside the GOP have been plotting and scheming in an attempt to “derail” the real estate mogul’s path to victory and offer up an independent candidate to face former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or Sen. Bernie Sanders in the general election.
So, it’s no wonder, then, that 37 percent of Republicans surveyed said they would cast their ballots for a third party candidate rather than giving their votes to Trump. Meanwhile on a national scale, more than 60 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump, and 53 percent have a negative view of Clinton.
In short, although Trump and Clinton are the frontrunners in the next presidential election, a majority of Americans, amazingly, don’t like them. Trump’s problems are glaring enough — hostility to immigrants, xenophobia, bigotry and woeful foreign policy — but Clinton, at one time the darling of the left, has lost much of her luster amid a general mistrust and a perception that she lacks sincerity at all, much less sincerity on the level of Sanders.
Here is what Michael Barbaro had to say about this year’s unlikely primary election in a recent New York Times article:
Should they clinch the nomination, it would represent the first time in at least a quarter-century that majorities of Americans held negative views of both the Democratic and Republican candidates at the same time.
Cruz, who currently holds second place in the GOP primary with 424 delegates, is no better, and he may even be more disliked than Trump and Clinton. Numerous polls show Cruz hovering around 50 percent approval, and inside Washington, the perception seems to be that the only thing of substance he has done on The Hill thus far is to oversee — some might say “force” — the GOP-led government shutdown of 2013.
That leaves Sanders and Kasich, two candidates who happen to be the most liked, but consequently, the least likely to actually win the nomination in their respective parties. As unusual as the 2016 election cycle has been thus far, it’s almost a given that we are bound, in spite of ourselves, to elect a deeply unpopular candidate this year, and will then, as democracy goes, be forced to live with the consequences.
Below are favorability charts for the remaining candidates in the GOP and Democrat primaries (courtesy Huffington Post) with my brief notes:
Trump: Has the most momentum so far in the election and is the most disliked.
Cruz: Has few friends in Washington and widespread disapproval in the body politic:
Kasich: Objectively the most qualified candidate in the GOP field, with favorables outweighing negatives. Yet, still in a distant third.
Clinton: Has a strong base of supporters who would walk with her through fire and back, but everyone else is decidedly mistrustful and sees through the hollow politicking veneer. Will mostly likely win the nomination because — well — she’s Hillary Clinton, and apparently for the Democratic National Convention and her loyal supporters, that’s all that matters.
Sanders: Has almost as high a favorability rating as Clinton has unfavorable, but is and will likely continue to be in a distant second because — well — Hillary.