The tale of three stories

Three stories crossed the LL news desk yesterday.

First, this one from the Orlando Sentinel. Which had this wonderful headline:

No, don't go, stay.

Here is the full portrait of the person who made that statement:

Michelle Lilly, of Port St. Lucie, said the first time she voted in her life was in 2016, at age 49, when she voted for Trump. “If he doesn’t win in 2024, I’ll never vote again.”

“Our country needs him. Trump’s the only one who can get us back to where we need to be,” Lilly said. Of his political opponents, she said, “They’re scared of him.” Of the criminal prosecution, she said, “This is ridiculous.”

Remember when Bernistas derided Black voters for being "low information voters"? Well, I think this is more apt.

Now, this was another Cletus safari (apologies to our own Cletus). And, as expected, it reiterated that Trump supporters remain Trump supporters. Dog bites man, news at 11.

However, this does embody the particular pickle in which the Republican Party finds itself in. As my dear friend Rational Left told me on Counter Social:

Or, as Trevor's title for yesterday's piece: I never thought the leopard would eat my face. The GOP thought it could harness the fascist element embodied by Trump without being subsumed by it. Like the German conservatives did with Hitler, they grossly miscalculated. Fortunately, for all the braying I see online, we are not Weimar Germany. We will weather this and come out the stronger.

But forget about 2024 and Trump being the Republican nominee. This story paints a much darker picture for Tiny:

"A majority of Americans (53 percent) believe he intentionally did something illegal, according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll. An additional 11 percent say he acted wrongly but not intentionally. Only 20 percent believe Trump did not do anything wrong, and 16 percent say they don't know, per the ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted using Ipsos' KnowledgePanel," ABC News reported on Sunday.

"The announcement of formal charges has nudged public opinion slightly against Trump, particularly among independent voters. As of April 1, exactly half of the public said the charges against Trump were either very or somewhat serious, and 36% said they were not," the outlet explained. "Now, after the indictment has been unsealed and the public has heard Trump's condemnation of the investigation, 52 percent find the charges very or somewhat serious, and 39 percent deem the charges not too serious or not serious at all."

Yet ABC's findings may not be an outlier. During a discussion on Saturday's edition of CNN Newsroom With Jim Acosta, the namesake host noted to married colleagues John Avlon and Margaret Hoover that a survey conducted by their network indicated that Trump's reelection chances are collapsing.

(Emphasis mine.)

Oh dear. This jibes with a Raw Story summation of a Wall Street Journal story: 'Normal people are repulsed by Trump': The Manhattan indictment is chasing away independent voters:

Independent Josh Olson, of Huntersville, N.C., predicted Republicans would have trouble appealing to voters like himself.

“A lot of us normal people are repulsed by Trump already, whether he was indicted or not,” he explained

Donald Trump went on ad nauseam about how we couldn't elect Hillary Clinton because she'd be under criminal investigation. As always, every accusation is a confession. The greatest mistake he has made in a life of mistakes is to descend that escalator. Even someone who thinks his farts smell like roses had to be aware that there were so many skeletons in his closet that he could open a Halloween store. But his infernal hubris overrode whatever good sense he had. He just had to get back at that Black man who was the most powerful man in the world for eight years and had dared to mock him before the public. Now his house of cards, and his misbegotten family, are about to be brought down low. Yes, the true believers will stick with him to the end. But once he's done, so are they. All that "new blood" the GOP brought in due to Trump will evaporate. Meanwhile, Democrats have locked in a new generation of voters. Things don't look too good for the GOP. Even places like Ohio and Wisconsin, shorn of Trump voters, might swing firmly to the Democratic side.

Those whom the gods wish the destroy they make mad first. The GOP had a chance to nip the Trump  movement in the bud. Instead it went all in. And now it has no way out.