Thought: Trump's trials and scandals don't hurt him more because they don't affect daily lives

[President Johnson]

I thought about this for a while. First off, I'm neither saying the trials don't hurt him at all, nor that there's a hardcore base that doesn't care regardless of what outlandish stuff Trump says or does.

However, I usually would assume that the trials and all the scandals should hurt Trump much more with anyone not his cult, which is no more than 35-40% of the electorate. But he's not at that rock bottom in the polls and neither was he in 2020. He wouldn't even get that low in defeat against Biden in November. That only leaves me with the conclusion the remaining votes he gets or may get just don't care because it doesn't affect their daily lives. Most of them I guess are "normies" who don't care much about politics other than their pocketbooks, and the cost of living is still a major issue for them (and is to a wide extent outside Biden's influence). They also don't read all the nonsense he posts on his Truth Social or listen into his unhinged rallies. Additionally, folks just have gotten numb to Trump's nonsense after nine years of this s-show and even the most depraved things aren't worth much outrage anymore. Especially since the standard for him as been extremely low to begin with. Furthermore, lots of average folks believe all politicians are corrupt liars anyway, so Trump or not Trump doesn't seem to make a difference (heck, he even said that he was defrauding the public by not paying taxes and the "career politicians" wrote the lousy tax codes).

At this point, and the media backs this narrative, several people just seem to think the economy/cost of living was better under Trump before the pandemic, which is why Biden is struggling regardless of the actual economic data showing the US economy is good shape. Of course, that's unfair because Trump inherited much from Obama and failed the biggest test of his administration. People seems to have forgotten Covid or at least don't blame Trump for it (additionally some may feel he wasn't totally wrong because Democrats in their view overreached with restrictions).

Does that explain why this race is still competitive and/or Trump even slightly favored according to polling? I think this is more difficult to understand for guys on a forum like this, who daily follow Trump's scandals and trials unlike average folks. Could also be that the average Atlas user is well educated and therefore has fewer economic struggles than the Average Joe who works as a bus driver or at Walmart.

Thoughts?

[President Johnson]

Biden is actually polling better than almost any Western Leader right now , so the question should be why is Trump not polling better than he is. The reason is because Trump's election denialism and scandals do hurt him but its just that general dissatisfaction is so high its not enough to defeat him currently.

I think the partisan polarization and division in the US basically prevent any president from polling lower than 33-34% regardless of how lousy their job performance is. Even Trump never came close to 20s territory on his worst day.