Trump feels entitled to the nomination, but voters may want him to earn it
Zachary Faria
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Former President Donald Trump thinks he is entitled to be the GOP nominee, but his nonexistent campaign may lead to him sleepwalking into the same fate as his good friend Hillary Clinton when she thought she was entitled to win in 2016.
Trump has refused to commit to any GOP primary debates and will, of course, be skipping the first debate on Wednesday. And yet 66% of Republicans think Trump should participate in the debate, including 77% of his supporters. This presents an even bigger problem when you consider that the first state on the GOP election calendar is Iowa, which expects candidates to put in significant work.
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Trump’s most significant moments in Iowa thus far include canceling a rally over some weather concerns and showing up to the Iowa State Fair for less than an hour with his campaign surrogates before taking them back to Florida. While he holds a 26-percentage-point lead in Iowa, according to the RealClearPolitics average, an NBC/Des Moines Register poll found that 31% of caucusgoers want a new leader and another 26% think Trump was a good president but that it may be time to move on. That means at least 57% of Iowa Republicans are already considering non-Trump candidates.
This has been a matter that has popped up in polls that delve into just how committed Trump’s supporters are. A large chunk of the GOP electorate has slotted Trump in as their pick almost as a placeholder, given his universal name recognition and the fact that he was already president. The Iowa caucus is just under five months away, and the debates haven’t even started. There is a lot of time for things to change.
That is bad news for Trump at his current campaign pace. He is near nonexistent on the campaign trail, and the reason he is openly giving to voters is that he doesn’t feel he needs to earn their support. He thinks their support is owed to him, which is a mindset that voters don’t usually appreciate. Clinton’s campaign may not have chosen “because it’s her turn” as the official slogan, but that is the attitude that permeated her 2016 campaign. We all remember exactly how that played out.
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Trump could be walking into that same trap. He may have his polling lead now, but when voters notice the absences piling up and the sense of entitlement growing, that is when the polling lead starts to bleed. All it takes is one loss, say in Iowa, for the snowball effect to begin in national polls and among the electorate.
Politicians who run on the concept of “it’s my turn” quickly wear out their welcome, and all the signs are there that Trump may be strolling down the same path as Clinton did. The question will come down to just how long GOP voters feel like they owe Trump more than he, as a former president running again for the office, owes them.