Fear Factor
The election is getting more interesting by the day, at least for Donald Trump. According to The Guardian, Trump has moved his campaign away from Minnesota, Virginia, and New Hampshire. He has accepted the polling trends, which show all three going to Kamala Harris. Just a short month or so ago, he was bragging about capturing all three states. He is saving his campaign funds for Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, which, if he puts so much stock in polling, he will drop out of Wisconsin as well. Of course, Trump has a lot of things on his plate these days. Given his limited intellectual abilities, he’s likely having a hard time dealing with everything.
Whether Trump knows it or not, he’s not doing very well with registered voters. Before President Biden dropped out of the race, Trump was feeling mighty cocky, including his thoughts that he could win the three states he has now abandoned. He is learning that for some people, he was the “lesser of two evils,” not that Biden has one evil bone in his body, but that people thought he was too old. Now, Trump is only three years younger than Biden, but he seemed to have more “pep in his step,” as it were. As soon as President Biden endorsed Kamala Harris and the rest of the party began embracing her, things changed. Suddenly, a vibrant, positive light began to shine on the negativity and darkness of Donald Trump, and that is now overshadowing his possibility of winning back the White House.
With President Biden out of the race, the fear regarding his age was one of the first fears to go. Even though President Biden has done a phenomenal job with what he was left, people wouldn’t even give him the nod on the issue of “which candidate was more trusted to protect democracy.” It was as if his age alone was wiping out every good thing he had done for the country, but once Kamala Harris entered the race, things changed. People began to remember their fears relating to the other candidate. The Washington Post calls this phenomenon the “fear factor.”
To test its theory, WaPo looked at new polling results from CNN. That poll included in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin with the questions of which candidate seems more “extreme” and which candidate is the greatest “threat to the country.” Across all six states, an average of 54% of those polled found Trump to be “too extreme” and 48% found him a threat to the country. With respect to Harris, those same voters gave her 44% on the extreme question and 39% as a danger to the country. In fact, the report showed that most voters find Harris to be “generally mainstream.” Turning to independent voters didn’t help Trump, as their numbers were almost identical.
Clearly, Kamala Harris is best for our country. Even Trump supporters who said they would vote for him anyway find him “too extreme.” Whatever logic exists for them to continue their support is on them. It is now up to us to vote for the person best suited to the job, Kamala Harris.
Shirley is a former entertainment writer and has worked in the legal field for over 25 years