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April 19th, 2024

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Trump can still be trumped

Paul Greenberg

By Paul Greenberg

Published March 30, 2016

Trump can still be trumped

It's called the Bandwagon Effect: Hop on now or forever be left behind. The train's pulling out of the station and this may be your last chance to hop aboard! Hear that whistle blow and that calliope play, shaking the fairgrounds with its rumble and growl all around.


Only this bandwagon's wheels may be coming off as it goes bumping along. For The Donald is more of a Howard Dean or Pat Buchanan, hopeless losers both, than even a Bob Dole, the weakest of Republican presidential candidates in recent years.


Sen. Dole had a net favorability rating of 54 at one point in his presidential campaign. The Donald began his presidential campaign intensely disliked and has become less likable since. Over the summer, according to Gallup, he raised his net favorability rating to minus 21. Indeed, his unpopularity may be the only stable thing about this whole unstable presidential campaign of 2016. Gallup has just reported that The Donald now has a higher unfavorability rating than any nominated candidate it has tracked since 1992. Despite his boasts, he is losing, not gaining, momentum as his presidential campaign proceeds. Downhill.


And fast.

To quote Jonathan Last in the Weekly Standard: "(T)he forces opposing Trump now understand that he is not an unstoppable juggernaut. The question is no longer can he be stopped, but rather can he be stopped in time. "

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Paul Greenberg is the Pulitzer-winning editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

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