Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 07:04 pm
Donald Trump’s response to President Obama’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton as president is in. He took time – in between gloating tweets about his 13 million primary votes – to take a shot at both the president and the presumptive nominee.
So having referred to Clinton as “Obama plus!” on Thursday, and taking to Twitter as usual, Trump sent this message to America:
Obama just endorsed Crooked Hillary. He wants four more years of Obama—but nobody else does!
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— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 9, 2016
It’s funny Trump should mention nobody wants another four years of Obama. Because he says his 13 million votes show that he is the one Americans want. He even claimed he’d have more than he did if he hadn’t had so many opponents, tweeting the other day, “I would have had many millions of votes more than Crooked Hillary Clinton except for the fact that I had 16 opponents, she had one!” and Sean Hannity crowed, “@RealDonaldTrump’s Historic 13 Million Primary Votes Compared To Every GOP Nominee Since 1908.”
Somebody else had more votes than Donald Trump too, back in 2008. Somebody named Barack Obama, with 17,584,692 votes. And somebody else, named Hillary Clinton, with 17,857,501.
According to Real Clear Politics, Hillary finished 2016’s primary race with 15,729,913 votes, 2+ million more than Trump (hence Trump’s insecurity on the issue) and Bernie Sanders with just under Trump’s total, with 12,009,562. Put in perspective, Trump’s self-aggrandizement seems unwarranted.
Never mind a fact that “slips” Trump’s mind: he didn’t face all 16 candidates in the primaries. His chief opponents were Ted Cruz, John Kasich, and Marco Rubio, who all managed a few million votes apiece. The others all less than a million, from Ben Carson’s 825,501 to Rick Santorum’s 16,625. If anything, the quality of Trump’s opposition makes it a surprise he did not do better. At least, if he’s as “yuge” and successful as he claims.
And here is another problem with Trump’s math: if you take all the votes cast for the other Republican candidates, you get more than 15 million votes against Trump: 15,284,153 just between Cruz, Kasich, and Rubio, not including the second tier candidates. Trump, as he is eager to point out, had 13,406,108.
So the number of votes against? That’s another record. One you won’t see Trump bragging about.
Trump’s need for affirmation is best shown, and the whole silly charade exposed, by a retweet, however: “WHERE IS THE REPORTING,” lovusa4 asked in the original tweet. According to lovusa4 (and apparently Trump – he retweeted it after all), Trump got “MOST VOTES FOR PRESIDENT IN HISTORY OF USA.”
As Philip Bump of The Washington Post pointed out,
“That record is held by Barack Obama, who received 69.4 million votes in the 2008 general election.”
But nobody wants four more years of Barack Obama? The guy with the actual record number of votes cast for him? Whose approval rating keeps going up and up?
The fact is, Donald Trump is nowhere near as popular as he claims. He is at least, if not more unpopular than he is popular. Which will be a problem in the general election. Philip Bump points to the primary election totals (excluding the Democratic vote in the District of Columbia) which are 28.9 million and 29 million for Republicans and Democrats respectively. Meaning Trump is going to have to find more voters. He sure isn’t likely to engage anymore at the rate he is going.
What he’s done so far is about the best he is likely to do as he continues to offend just about everybody who is not one of Fox News’ demographic of “white Christian males.” And there are plenty of Christians who aren’t impressed with Trump’s alleged embrace of their religion.
If Trump wants to turn the 2016 election into a referendum on Barack Obama, he might have bitten off more than he can chew. Because not only does Gallup show Obama’s approval rating up to 53 percent as of Friday morning – higher than Ronald Reagan’s 50 percent in June 1988 – but the trend has been steadily upward since November 2015.
Hillary Clinton is leading Trump in three national polls on top of it all. The results of her Twitter trolling of Trump yesterday are unequivocal: Trump’s response netted him far fewer retweets and likes than Hillary’s original tweet.
Let’s face it: her outperforming Donald Trump in the primaries is just the icing on the cake. Unfortunately for Donald J. Trump, it looks like Americans would be plenty happy with four more years of Obama, or, as he puts it, “Obama Plus.”
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
