Here is today’s conventional headline, courtesy of the Associated Press: Trump wins South Carolina, easily beating Haley in her home state and closing in on GOP nomination.
But here’s my headline, which best tells the real story: Trump is rejected by 40 percent of the Republican electorate in a deep red state, exposing his serious weakness as a November candidate.
Granted, the rapist/criminal defendant/sneaker salesman – who, at an event this weekend, couldn’t even remember his wife’s name (he called her “Mercedes”) – got 59.8 percent of the votes in the South Carolina primary. On paper that looks like a landslide, until you dig into the salient details. He was propelled to victory by his MAGA cocoon, by older ill-educated evangelicals who still stupidly “think” the ’20 election was stolen. But nationwide, in a November contest, there aren’t nearly enough of those sheep to return Trump to power.
Just do the math. In yesterday’s balloting 40 percent of Republicans didn’t want him. He can’t even unite his own party. He’s strong with voters who never went to college or couldn’t finish college – in South Carolina, he won 75 percent of those folks – but he lost heavily with people who have college diplomas (and who can thus think for themselves). The key suburbs in swing states are heavily populated by women and men with college diplomas.
Also, in South Carolina, 60 percent of the primary voters were evangelicals or born-again Christians. They surged to Trump, as expected, because nothing is more Christian than a serial philanderer/sexual assaulter who never goes to church and lies as he breathes. But, rest assured, the November electorate will not be 60 percent evangelical.
(Nor will most November voters be as insipid as the South Carolinian MAGAts who were pranked last week by late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. He sent an interviewer to chat on the street with some Trump voters. For instance, when one woman was told that Joe Biden had suggested drinking bleach to cure Covid, she said that proves he’s “clearly a dementia patient.” But when the woman was then informed that it was Trump who’d suggested drinking bleach, she replied, without missing a beat, “It depends on what the technology is, there’s a broad spectrum…it just depends the context.” Check out the video.)
Another key South Carolina metric: According to all the data, Trump lost moderate and liberal voters to Nikki Haley by a wide margin, and roughly 20 percent of all primary voters said they would not vote for Trump in November. One reason, perhaps, is that their moron-meter goes off when they hear him talk (this is verbatim, the other day):
“…It’s true in Beverly Hills they say you can only brush your teeth once a day, who the hell wants to – you can’t use too much water on your hair, I would not want to be – they put restricters on showers, they put restricters on faucets, you buy new faucets, aren’t they beautiful though, darling? oh yes they’re beautiful brass faucets let’s try them, oh! shit, there’s no water coming out, it drops out, you turn on the shower ‘I’m gonna take a shower,’ I get the whole deal ready set to go, turn on shower – DING DING nope…”
All told, there’s zero evidence this primary season that Trump resonates favorably beyond his bubble; indeed, according to polls, his multitude of legal woes – and the very real prospect of being convicted of a felony – continue to repel independents, the college-educated, and pretty much everyone who acknowledges (confirmed by 60 court rulings) that Biden’s presidency is legit.
Trump’s soft underbelly is softer than his belly.