Robert Reich: Trump’s GOP dominance won’t make him 'unstoppable through the general election'

Supporters of Nikki Haley are hoping she will pull off a major upset in the GOP's New Hampshire presidential primary, weaken presumptive nominee Donald Trump and go on to defeat Democratic incumbent President Joe Biden in the general election. But a Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll released on January 21 showed Trump with a 19 percent lead over Haley in New Hampshire. And a Washington Post/Monmouth University poll released the following day showed Trump leading Haley by 18 percent in that state.

Many pundits have been arguing that if Trump defeats Haley by double digits in New Hampshire, he is all but certain to become the nominee.

But in his January 23 column for The Guardian, liberal economist Robert Reich stresses that dominating the GOP primary doesn't necessarily mean that Trump will perform well in the general election.

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"Of course Trump will be the Republican nominee," Reich argues. "Trump was the party's presumptive nominee before he even announced he was running again…. The danger in the mainstream media's awestruck coverage of Trump right now — making a big deal out of his winning the Iowa Caucuses, dominating the polls, pushing out all rivals except Haley, and almost surely winning today's New Hampshire primary — is that it creates a false impression that Trump is unstoppable, all the way through the general election."

Reich continues, "But no one should confuse Trump's performance in the Republican primaries for success in the presidential election."

The 77-year-old economist, who served as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton during the 1990s, argues that Trump will be going into the general election with considerable baggage.

"When Americans actually focus on the presidential election and the stark reality of choosing between Biden and Trump," Reich predicts, "I expect they will once again choose Biden. Even if Trump is not yet criminally convicted, I doubt that a majority of Americans will want for their president a man who has 91 criminal charges against him, who has been impeached twice, who has orchestrated an attempted coup, who has profited financially while president, who has stolen top-secret documents, and who has been judged to be a rapist."

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Robert Reich's full column for The Guardian is availableat this link.