In his 2016 campaign, President Trump ran as a relative moderate among Republicans — opposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare, talking up federal efforts to rebuild the nation’s roads and bridges, staying away from culture war issues such as same-sex marriage. But in office, Trump has aligned himself firmly with his party’s right wing. …
And, yet, the evidence suggests that the public still sees Trump as the relative moderate of his campaign, not the hard conservative of his government. That points up a failure of his Democratic opponents and a dilemma for whichever of them wins the 2020 nomination.
The latest evidence on how voters view Trump comes from this week’s USC Dornsife/L.A. Times poll, which asked a large sample of adult citizens to rate themselves, the leading Democratic candidates and the president on a 0-100 scale, with 0 as the most liberal and 100 as the most conservative. CONT.
David Lauter, Los Angeles Times