Is it possible that President Donald Trump may drop out of the 2020 race?
We believe the mere suggestion to be incredible – literally impossible to believe. But, according to a Fox News report, some Republican operatives are starting to entertain the possibility of President Trump dropping out of the 2020 race if his poll numbers don’t get better.
Here we go, again
Time does indeed fly, but most of us can probably remember back to 2016 when Trump was facing off against Hillary Clinton in the general election. One of the things that really sticks out is how much of an underdog Trump was, and the polls seemed to support this notion with just about all of them easily handing Clinton the victory.
Trump, however, obviously won, and it seemed that we all learned a lesson about polls. But, clearly, we haven’t.
Here we are, not too far from the 2020 general election, and once again, Trump is trailing in just about all of the polls. And, once again, we have some – even some from within the Republican party – considering the possibility of Trump dropping out.
Why? Because the whole thing is futile, they say. Because the polls already show us how this general election is going to play out.
Nonsense
The 2020 campaign of President Trump dispelled this notion vehemently, first during a Fox News interview with campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh.
“This is the granddaddy of fake news,” Murtaugh said. “Everyone knows that media polling has always been wrong about President Trump – they undersample Republicans and don’t screen for likely voters – in order to set false narratives. It won’t work. There was similar fretting in 2016 and if it had been accurate, Hillary Clinton would be in the White House right now.”
The campaign made a similar statement in a memo released on Sunday, writing:
As was the case in 2016, the mainstream news media is relying on polling financed by their own operations and others, released publicly in order to set a narrative that conforms with their own worldviews. The president’s campaign has repeatedly called into question the validity of such polling, based on methodology, party representation in the sample, wording of questions, and other factors. These are legitimate criticisms, as there are real differences between public polling and proprietary internal polling such as the campaign conducts for itself.”
The bottom line is that the polls have been wrong before, and they could be wrong again. In other words, there is just no way that President Trump is considering dropping out of the 2020 – at least not because of these polls.
A legitimate concern
The polls may indeed be wrong. But, we also ought to consider whether they might be right and why they might be right.
In a recent edition of his Fox News program, Tucker Carlson did just this, suggesting that, if Trump is indeed behind Biden, it could be because of the president’s somewhat soft responses to the coronavirus epidemic and the George Floyd protests. The clip from Carlson is worth watching and considering, and it can be found here.
If there is truth to this – that the president has lost some of his voting base with his recent inaction – then there is a very real possibility that Trump could lose this November. This ought to be a legitimate concern because that would mean that Biden would be running the country – or whatever faction of the Democratic party that is running Biden these days. But, as for polls causing Trump to drop out – we can just forget about that happening.
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