Independents Flee GOP: And Democrats Sound the Alarm

Democrats surge in polls right now and warn of threats to elections themselves. Democrats just opened their biggest polling lead over Republicans in eight years now. This is according to a recent poll. It's from PBS NPR Marist, the University of the upstate New York Marist survey. 55% of voters say they would choose a Democrat for Congress to today and I have to emphasize today the election is a long way off. That's compared with 41% who would back a republic. That's a 14 point gap, the largest since 2017. Independents break down even harder, 61%, 28%. Giving Democrats a stunning plus 33% advantage among independents. Trump's approval rating has fallen to minus 17% and his party has lost a string of high profile races from New York to Virginia. But these numbers are landing at the same moment prominent Democrats are sounding alarms about Trump's federal deployment into blue cities. California Governor Gavin Newsom argues the administration is creating a Pretext undermine the 2026 vote, saying, quote, this is a pattern, this is a practice. Trump's efforts to rig the midterm election continue to this day. He's even warned, I fear that we may not have an election in 2028 unless we wake up to the code red. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker says Trump's use of federal agents look like, quote, testing the limits ahead of the midterms. While Senator Chris Murphy argues Trump is signaling that allies who manipulate elections or use violence will be protected. A massive Democratic polling surge, paired with unprecedented fear fundamental Democratic procedures could be warped, sets up 2026 as a political test like no other. Okay, what's the real message here? The Democratic brand is still seen as by most voters, but the Republican brand is seen as even worse. Right now we're seeing the polls show that voters, average voters in America favor voting for the Democrats in 2020 by a whopping 14%. Among independents, it's 33% more for the Democrats than the Republicans. But before the Democrats start celebrating and popping the champagne corks, they need to listen to certain leaders like Gavitt Newsom say there might not even be an election Trump is doing. Sending in troops to only Democratic led cities could be a sign of exactly what he's planning on doing the election. If you just send in troops in every Democratic precinct, maybe no Democrat has the urge to vote in 2026. Let's dig a little bit deeper here. I do think that if you're being honest and fair and objective, as I try to be, this is good news for the Democrats because for so long, the Polling data said that after stock market crashes, after all of the tariff tax, after all the unconstitutional activities, polls were showing as recently as a month or so ago that most voters said if they had to do the election over again from 2024, they would still vote for Trump. They were no longer thinking about, or they were not yet thinking about, that they'd made a bad choice. It would appear now that many Americans are really having second thoughts on what they're getting. And again, don't listen to liberals or Democrats. You know who they voted for. But increasingly you're seeing it from all of these conservative broadcasters who are constantly saying things like, I didn't vote for a big tariff tax. I voted for smaller government cutting out waste. I thought this was the guy against foreign entanglements and giving our money away. He was going to be the guy to keep money here. And he's giving it to places like Argentina and to anything Netanyahu wants. So there's real disenchantment among a lot of people who consider themselves MAGA supporters as well as people who consider themselves independents who for whatever reason didn't like the Democratic nominee last time. Right now, and I have to stress it's not particularly meaningful for two reasons. One, there's so much time between now and in election day in 2026 to everyone, I believe everyone, although perhaps not Gavin Newsom, is underestimating the things this administration will do to find votes. Remember, find me 11,000 votes, Mr. Secretary of State in Georgia. I think they're underestimating what this administration is willing to do to find votes or to eliminate votes, either by counting certain ways or, or having rioters mob the election facilities, as they did in Miami in the year 2000, to stop vote counts if it looks like a Democrat might come ahead. There's so many ways, if you're willing to use the power of the state to sort of cheat a little, change the lines a little, just nudge a little here and there. There's so many ways where it could affect the entire outcome because let's not forget there's only a handful of votes separating Democratic versus the Republican representation in the US Congress. Today, the Republicans only have a handful majority. It's snim slight. So just changing a couple of votes per precinct, adding a few here, taking a few away there could make the entire difference between another two years where Republican has a give a rubber stamp approval to anything Trump wants versus the US House having nonstop impeachment hearings. Now you may say, well, I don't want nonstop impeachment hearings, you're going to have to get poison. But do you want more of what we've had the last 11 months? For some of you, the answer is yes. For others, if you want any kind of return to normalcy, the answer is no. You may have to find an alternative. What do you think? I would love to hear from you. Here are some more facts. Trump's approval rating has dropped to 39% with 56% disapproval. I will say this about Trump. I'm here as an honest, fair broker of information and ideas. His polling, to me is more consistent than any politician I've followed in my lifetime. And I've been following politics pretty closely since the 1970s. You hear about his polling data soaring and going up, and it seems like it's at 43%. You hear about his polling tanking going down, down, down, down, and it's quite often 42, 41%, as it still is in some polls. The lowest I've seen in the last month is 37. So he basically has four out of 10Americans who loved him in 2016, who loved him in 2020, and who loved him in 2024. And now to me, bizarre and amazing. The resiliency is how little public opinion has changed over. Having said all that, we talked about it yesterday on the show. The ground does seem to be this Epstein thing. I'm not saying it's going to destroy him, but there are cracks in the foundation that we've never seen before. The fact that some of his staunchest cheerleaders, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, felt unencumbered at opposing him and felt they had to speak out. And how that spread, it went from really Congressman Massie, who has been a vocal critic, he's a conservative Republican, but he's been a vocal critic of Trump for a long time. That's not that significant. But when you see a Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert say we're parting with Trump on that, and then you see things cascading out of control for Trump where now we have this laughable situation where he's like trying to take, he's acting like it was his idea to release the Epstein files when he could have done it the first five minutes he was sworn into office, but he didn't. He does look scared for the first time. He does act guilty. Now, I will say this about Trump again. I'm fair. He is a gifted communicator. He is a world class television performer. I mean, that's his real strength. Those of you who've actually followed his business career, know that he's had bankruptcy after bankruptcy. The one area where he's been isolated and the only area where he's been wildly successful in life. It's not airlines, it's not USFL football games, teams. It's not Trump steaks, it's not Bibles, it's not Trump vodka. The one area where he's legitimately been very successful is playing a character on TV and communicating something that's interesting to people. He's been really good at that and being able to shape the message he wants. He's really good at. And all of his normal magic is not working on this Epstein thing. For the first time, really, in his life, he's acting guilty. And he's acting like, you know, he looks guilty. We've never seen that before. He's always acted like, I'm loving this, E. Jean Carroll, Bring it on. Grab them by, you know, whatever. Yeah, I'm proud of my locker talk. He's always acted proud of his transgression. You want to take me to court and charge me with felonies, great. People will be talking about me. He's always addressed all of these issues head on, put his own spin on things and attacked, and he's not doing it with this Epstein thing. Now, is his department of justice going to release documents that implicate him in crimes and sexual assaults, even if they existed? I don't think so. It's very hard to get these things in once stuff starts coming out. So we are in a new era where, again, I'm not predicting that this finally is the thing that destroys Donald Trump. I'm not predicting that. But of all the crises I've seen hit his career, including felony convictions, this one is the first one I've seen that seems to really be shaking the confidence of his core base. That's what's different, and that's why we got to take this serious.