Trump is throwing away election by pandering to adoring fans: analyst

Former President Donald Trump has a big problem.

Columnist Heather Digby Parton argued Monday in Salon that he is too wrapped up in trying to please his crowds of hardcore fans to do any outreach to voters who could decide the election.

"Over the weekend, Trump bagged some more wins in caucuses in Michigan, Idaho and Missouri, all three of which were the result of amateur hour mistakes by local and party officials who messed up the usual primary system," wrote Parton.

"From what we can gather there still exists an anti-Trump vote among Republicans and GOP-leaning independents. We'll see on Super Tuesday if that phenomenon ... continues, even as it's obvious that Trump is the nominee."

This is only made more evident by Haley's win in the Washington, D.C. primary — which resulted in an outpouring of rage from Trump supporters. This is not going to derail Trump's path to the nomination — but, Parton wrote, it reflects a persistent group of Republican voters Trump is at risk of losing, and cannot win without.

Some of Trump's allies, she wrote, "Would like him to make that pivot to the center, the sooner the better. Campaign professionals understand that this Never Trump faction is his Achilles' heel, but his people are committed to 'let Trump be Trump' — mostly because they have no choice. People have tried to get Trump to soften his edges in his previous campaigns and he's simply incapable of doing it."

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And Trump's normal rally routine isn't going to endear him to any of these voters he's missing, Parton said. "He rambles on for hours at a time, often speaking off the cuff about strange notions like magnets don't work in water and suggesting that Abraham Lincoln could have negotiated the country out of the Civil War if he hadn't wanted to be famous.

"He calls the insurrectionists "hostages" and opens his rallies to the recording of the so-called January 6th prison choir. Even weirder, the finales of his prepared speeches are now accompanied by spooky Q-Anon-inspired music, which seems to send the crowd into paroxysms of ecstasy."

The bottom line, she concluded, is that Trump is, "Openly purging his coalition of anyone who isn't MAGA and if these surveys are correct, that means he has no intention of doing or saying anything to appeal to that 10 percent (or more) who say they won't vote for him in the fall. Let Trump be Trump, I say. It can only help the Democrats."