Can Donald Trump still win?
This analysis was excerpted from the June 9 edition of CNN's Meanwhile in America, the daily email about US politics for global readers. Click here to read past editions and subscribe.
(CNN)Can President Donald Trump win?
It's the question everyone outside the US wants to know, and let's face it, many foreigners are rooting against the President. Well, five months from the election, Trump is in the deepest trouble of his political career.
Polls are sometimes wrong and often change, so it's smart not to read too much into them. But when every survey shows a big lead for Democrat Joe Biden, the trajectory of the race is obvious. The President is wobbling. A pandemic that he ignored for months has killed 110,000 Americans and counting. The economy crashed and he misjudged a national outpouring of concern about police brutality. Generally, incumbent presidents with an approval rating in the high 40% range on Election Day have a good shot. But in a new CNN/SSRS poll, Trump is at 38%. He's got work to do and not much time to do it.
The best way to win a US election is to keep open multiple paths to 270 electoral votes. But Biden is ahead or competitive in almost all battleground states right now. The CNN poll also finds that 60% of Biden's voters are most motivated by voting against the President. That means even Trump's verbal assault on his foe may not turn things around.
But the election is far from over. For one thing, Trump, who ran four years ago on a hunch, has built a richly funded, tech-savvy campaign that knows exactly where to find its voters. Biden has nothing comparable. And Trump's incessant feeding of the GOP base has paid off. He is impregnable among Republican voters which, theoretically at least, gives him a foundation on which to build the remaining 5% to 8% that he needs to win.
The President has also shown he will do anything, including the use of government authority, to stay in power â after all, the man was impeached in the House for trying to get Ukraine to rough up Biden. And the former vice president running against him is -- to put it kindly -- an accident-prone politician whose chances might actually diminish once he gets out of his basement full time.
The test of every great politician is whether they can dig themselves out of a deep hole. Trump has 147 days to do it -- but have voters already seen enough?
FAKE NEWS CNN, Better watch Fox News.
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