Donald Trump for President again?

Donald Trump held a rally in Manchester that attracted a huge crowd of supporters for the Republican. Pic/Getty Images

"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters," Donald Trump boasted during his successful 2016
campaign president.

That claim may not hold for all who voted for him that year because many defected in 2020 - and in the 2022 midterms from his protégés - but it is true of his core base of supporters.

Unshaken by the two impeachments, the criminal and civil cases against him and his mercurial temperament the 51 per cent of the Republican Party who make his base hold the party hostage.

For them, Trump is their champion hounded by the elite.

With Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the only one in the Republican roster of his challengers or likely challengers to break into double digits in the RealClear Politics (RCP) aggregation of polls, with 23 per cent. Trump appears to have the first step of the presidential race - getting the party nomination - race locked up.
And if a challenger is able to win the party nomination against all odds, Trump is not above running as a third party candidate or an independent and dooming the Republican Party.

In 1992, a conservative businessman, Ross Perot, ran as an independent drawing 18.9 per cent of the politically conservative votes that could have gone to sitting president George Bush, the senior, leading to his defeat to Bill Clinton.

In the RCP polls aggregation, Trump and President Joe are running neck and neck in the 43 per cent range.

And this is where the challenge of increasing their lead lies for both, septuagenarian Trump with an unfavourability rating of 55 per cent and octogenarian Biden with 52.6 per cent.

Contrary to common perceptions that voters abandoned Trump wholesale, he actually increased his votes by over 11 million, from 62.98 million in 2016 to 74.22 million in 2020, but with bigger mobilisation, Biden outdid him by getting 81.28 million votes.

The big divide in US politics is between the college-educated elite and the rest, with some racial variations, even which is shrinking among some.

Both groups spew contempt at each other from their positions of being high up in an intellectual nirvana or a down-to-earth daily grind.

Even if it is ultimately manifested in economic status.

55
Percentage of Americans who find Trump unfavourable

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