Trump’s Tweets Are Hurting Him With the Voters He Needs Most

Source: Politico | November 18, 2017 | Jim Messina

Trump’s social media rampages aren’t just damaging him, they’re causing swing voters to reevaluate both his priorities and the very health of the economy.

It seems that virtually every day Donald Trump and his administration are embroiled in a new fiasco. The Mueller investigation is ongoing, indictments are coming out, and the president can’t help himself from picking fights on Twitter. His targets run the gamut, from the New York Times and CNN, to NFL players and ESPN hosts. There’s even friendly fire directed at fellow Republicans like Mitch McConnell and Ed Gillespie.

What Trump may not realize—and what new data shows—is that he may be tweeting his way into losses in 2018 and 2020.

Ten months into his presidency, the failure of any one single scandal to sink his administration has led some in the media to suggest that Trump is like “Teflon,” with the grime that would stick to (and ruin) other politicians simply slipping right off. But the numbers show that nothing could be further from the truth—Trump’s scandals aren’t just damaging him, they’re causing swing voters to reevaluate both his priorities and the very health of the economy.

The Messina Group recently completed a long-term research project looking at a specific group who helped decide the 2016 election: white voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin who supported Barack Obama in 2012 but in 2016, did not vote for Hillary Clinton, instead choosing to either stay home or vote for Trump or a third-party candidate. What we found—combined with this month’s election results—should worry Trump and every ally who has hitched their wagon to his fast-burning star.

Among the swing voters most critical to his viability, Donald Trump isn’t just vulnerable, he’s harming himself. Even as Wall Street reaches new highs in profitability and Trump endlessly brags about his stock-market numbers, these voters aren’t seeing the improvement in their own lives. And, most worryingly for Trump and Republicans, the president’s outlandish statements cause the voters we spoke with to believe that he’s focused more on his own petty dramas than on improving their families’ lives.

Trump’s behavior and the endless parade of controversies he drums up? They’re how he loses.

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