Six major polling outlets, including Quinnipiac, Real Clear Politics, and Bloomberg, have given us one less reason to reach for the Xanax: no matter his opponent, Donald J. Trump is just about certain to be demolished in November’s general election. This comes as the media has turned its keen eye on the bigotry and violence encouraged by the candidate, as well as the glaring lunacy of his rabid supporters.
Quinnipiac’s numbers were the kindest to Trump; their report sees Hillary Clinton vanquishing the would-be American dictator by six percentage points. The others polls all put Clinton ahead by double digits, amounting to an Election Day landslide not seen in decades. How about a Trump-Sanders matchup? That same Quinnipiac survey has Bernie trouncing The Donald 52 to 38.
The pollsters weren’t exactly baffled by their results. While Trump’s ugly, soulless pandering to the worst of us has long been apparent to many, the real horror of it all became plain in recent weeks. The entirely unprovoked attack on protester Rakeem Jones by “Trumpeter” John McGraw was just one of the examples we’ve seen in recent weeks. Prior to his arrest, McGraw opined that Jones wasn’t “acting like an American… the next time we see him, we might have to kill him.” It’s hard not to connect that animalistic behavior with Trump’s own savage comments: “I’d like to punch him in the face, I tell ya,” he said of an activist at a rally in Las Vegas, and “Maybe he should have been roughed up“of another in Alabama. As Quinnipiac University’s Tom Malloy charitably phrased it, “There’s a possibility that the violence at the rallies has cut into his overall popularity.”
Furthermore, that line above regarding Xanax was no joke. When survey participants were asked, “What one word best describes how you feel about the possibility of Donald Trump as President,” an outstanding majority answered,” scared,” “disaster,” “horrified,” “disgusted,” or something very similar. And yes, this recent spate of polling is precisely the thing to calm our nerves. But let’s not lose sight of the fact that the election is still over six months away. Tyrannosaurus Rump might not have made it this far had his opponents not shrugged him off as some impossible sideshow. So while it’s heartening to realize how many of us have awoken to reason, we still don’t have the luxury of letting our guard down—a predator like him will pounce at any vulnerability. Remember that come November, we’ll all have our say in the one poll that matters. Only when Trump retreats to sob like an infant can we finally let ourselves shed tears of joy—as it becomes clear, in no uncertain terms, that Donald J. Trump is a loser for the history books.
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