Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. The core of the blue wall Democrats maintained since the 1980s. States that Republicans haven’t won in decades. Until 2016, the last time Wisconsin went Republican was 1984, with Pennsylvania and Michigan last going for the GOP in 1988. Trump tapped into the white working class, he had an agenda, and voters responded. The margin wasn’t massive, but it was big enough. Now, Democrats have to win these states back in order to beat Trump. And it’s no cakewalk. With Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, spearheading this shoddy and laughable impeachment push of Donald Trump, it’s making it that much harder for his party to retake these states. Impeachment theater got 24/7 coverage. We heard the walls were closing in, only to have several polls showing support has dipped. In Wisconsin, a must-win state for Democrats in 2020, it’s even dipped a bit among Democrats.
The Marquette University Law School poll is rather quite insightful. The Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman commented on this survey as well, noting that Wisconsin, in his mind, remains the state that is going to be the most difficult for Democrats to reclaim next year:
Even as hearings that could lead to President Donald Trump’s impeachment heat up, a new Marquette University Law School poll of Wisconsin registered voters finds consistent, if sometimes modest, shifts in public opinion away from support of impeachment and toward supporting Trump in next year’s presidential election
For example, Trump holds small leads over each of four top Democratic candidates for president in head-to-head matchups in the new survey, while three of the Democrats held small leads over Trump in the previous poll.
While the shifts in opinion on both impeachment and presidential preferences are not large, they are consistent across multiple questions in the poll. That includes increases in support for Trump’s work on foreign policy and the economy.
[…]
In the new poll, 40 percent of registered voters think that Trump should be impeached and removed from office, while 53 percent do not think so and 6 percent say that they do not know.
[…]
There are large partisan differences in views of impeachment, with Democrats much more supportive and Republicans much more opposed, and a plurality of independents opposed.
Lots of Dems pushing this to suggest Trump wrong about a drop in support for impeachment, but:
— Michael Ahrens (@michael_ahrens) November 26, 2019
1. Several other polls show support dropping.
2. After wall-to-wall coverage of Schiff's hearings, they needed support to increase. It didn't. https://t.co/hVNdukIwiJ
Have long believed (even aside from this poll) that Wisconsin will be the toughest state for Dems to get back of the MI/PA/WI trio. https://t.co/vmkFOBMFe0
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 20, 2019
The economy remains Trump’s biggest accomplishment and Democratic overreach on a slew of issues is only making him seem like the sane option. As for trade, Democrats have tried to highlight how his trade dispute with China is killing farmers in the Midwest. While the impacts of the dispute have impacted some farms, Charles Franklin, who runs the Marquette poll, was interviewed by Roll Call, where he noted that Republican farmers and Republican non-farmers are identical in their approval/disapproval of Trump. It suggests that the ongoing trade tussles with China aren’t impacting the president to the degree that Democrats think they could land a fatal blow.
In Pennsylvania, the Democrats' hatred of fracking could see another wave of Democrats in the western part of the state voting Republican in 2020. For all their war cries about being a party of the working people, Democrats have an agenda that does little to help them at all. It’s a byproduct of a regional party, where the professional elite—snobby, condescending, and overly-educated, reign. They’re mostly urban-based. Outside of the Acela Corridor and the West Coast, most of the Democrats on the Hill probably don’t even know a Trump supporter. They don’t know these communities. And thank God for that because these people aren’t die-hard Republicans. If the Democrats abandoned their left-wing fantasies and focused on job creation, you’ll see the Trump coalition peel away. But resist, be woke, and be crazy is the mantra of the cycle. Oh, and impeach, even if it makes retaking those states we need to win more difficult.
