As someone who wants to see our nation get back on track after all the damage that has been done by Joe Biden, I'm feeling cautiously optimistic right about now. The polls show Trump is ahead where it matters, and, let's face it, Joe Biden isn't getting any younger.
While Trump has officially secured the Republican nomination, the media can't seem to get over the swath of Republican primary voters who haven't been voting for him. On Tuesday, Trump easily won the Republican primaries in Wisconsin, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New York. But you've probably heard the media suggest that Donald Trump is in trouble because 13% of Republican primary voters supported Nikki Haley. Considering that Wisconsin is a pivotal battleground state, this apparent anti-Trump vote is a problem for Trump.
At least, that's what we're being told.
I'm not sweating it. You won't be able to convince me that 12% of Republican voters are going to sit out the election in November because they don't like Trump. For one thing, I'm not convinced that all who voted for Haley were Republicans, as Wisconsin has an open primary, and we've seen in previous primaries that she gets a significant amount of support from Democrat voters.
Even if we were to assume that Haley's voters were mostly Republicans, so what? Even the most contentious of primaries have the same eventual outcome: primary voters will overwhelmingly vote for their party's nominee. We've seen this too many times before to fall for the narrative that Trump has a problem and needs to win over these voters. You probably couldn't come up with a more bitter and nasty primary than the 2008 Democratic primary, when Hillary Clinton tried desperately to top Barack Obama and failed. You may remember that after Obama beat Hillary, there was a significant contingent of Hillary supporters who claimed they wouldn’t support him — the Party Unity My Ass (PUMA) movement. What happened there?
Exactly.
So, no, I'm not worried, and I expect that Republicans will come home and pull the lever for Trump when all is said and done.
I'd be a little more concerned if I were on Team Biden, though.
While 13% of Republican primary voters supported Haley, significant portions of Democratic primary voters in Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Wisconsin voted 'uncommitted' in their primaries. As our sister site Townhall reported, "In Rhode Island, 14.9 percent of voters in the Democratic Party went for 'uncommitted,' while 11.6 percent did in Connecticut, and 8.3 percent selected 'uninstructed delegate' in Wisconsin."
This was due to the organization Abandon Biden, a group that encouraged people to vote against Biden for his public support of Israel after the October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas.
Related: Is a Key Biden Narrative About 2024 Going Down in Flames?
"Our uncommitted vote is a message to the Democratic leadership in our state that genocide is a red line. The Democrats need to understand that insisting on a candidate that does not commit to the sanctity of life deserves nothing but our uncommitted vote," said Abandon Biden Co-Chair Mongi Dhaouadi.
Primary voters eventually get over their loyalty to their chosen candidate and vote for the party nominee. As for the antisemitic Muslims still trying to send a message to Biden, despite the fact he has thrown Israel under the bus repeatedly in recent weeks … there is no pleasing these people.
If they're still trying to send Biden a message now, will they ever be convinced that he is not a friend to Israel? Probably not. And even so, I'm not convinced that some won't end up supporting him anyway. From their perspective, Biden is sure to be friendlier to their cause than Trump.
Primaries can divide parties as they select their nominee, but they get over their disappointment eventually. While there's ample precedent for this, the movement to protest-vote against Biden is a completely different animal and is therefore far less predictable.
