I REVISIT MY PREDICTION FOR THE 2020 ELECTION. YOU MAY WISH I HADN’T.
If you’ve been following this blog for any time at all, you know that I’ve been predicting a Trump re-election in 2020. Now that we’re down to the wire and Trump is down an average of eight (8) points in the polls below Biden, the obvious question is:
Would I care to change my answer?
Well, if that’s not a blog post, I’d like to know what is.
1. As others have pointed out, Hillary Clinton had a pretty comfortable lead around this time in 2016. We saw how that went.
Granted, there are some differences - for one thing, Biden is relatively more well liked than HRC, and the battleground states that Trump won last time appear to be turning against him in 2020. And of course voter turnout may be historically the largest ever - which Republicans openly admit works against them (hence their utterly transparent attempt to keep as many people as possible from voting).
So in that sense, I think a Trump re-election victory is less likely than 2016. But it’s certainly not impossible. An 8-point spread is not all that big - especially when by all rights, given Trump’s record, it ought to be much larger.
2. Consequently, the spectacle of Republican politicians and conservative institutions reportedly turning on Trump is small comfort for me. I have no way of knowing how many of them are sincere, and how many are simply trying to avoid becoming collateral damage. My hunch is it’s a mix that skews towards the latter group, most of whom I’ll bet will still secretly vote for Trump - and if he wins (fairly or otherwise), they will be right back in his corner as though they had always supported him all along.
3. For everyone who is looking around them gesturing vaguely at everything and thinking “HOW CAN HE POSSIBLY STILL WIN AFTER ALL THIS”, hey, welcome to American democracy, where people vote for the damnedest reasons.
Most voters don't deep-dive into this stuff. According to the NYT, somewhere between 80% and 85% of Americans either follow politics casually or not at all. My own anecdotal experience more or less backs this up. I know people who only care about one issue and will vote accordingly. I know others who picked a party ages ago (to include independent parties) and stick with it no matter what. I know others who don’t follow politics because they have more pressing concerns, while others used to follow politics to some degree but now don’t follow it at all because of ALL their hyper-political friends posting nothing but furious political memes on Facebook all the live long day.
So, you know, while it may be obvious to me that Trump is a racist, sexist, fascist trash fire who now primarily sees being POTUS as his only chance of staying out of jail and avoiding his creditors, it’s by no means obvious to everyone else.
And of course, let’s not forget that some people like him precisely because he’s a racist, sexist, fascist trash fire - either because they agree with him, or they want nothing more from a POTUS than someone who rips into every liberal/minority group they hate with insult-comedy routines.
So I wouldn’t count on Trump’s obvious awfulness being a deciding factor in 2020.
4. There is, of course, the additional possibility that Trump will cheat his way into a second term. We know he (and the GOP and his minions in general) are doing everything they can to keep as many people from voting as possible and disqualifying as many ballots as they can. We also know that Trump plans to contest his defeat, and is banking on SCOTUS (which now sports three of his own appointees) to back him up, and even to stop the vote tallies while he’s ahead.
Of course, this could backfire spectacularly if Biden is leading by a landslide at 11:59pm Nov 3. Indeed, any Trump strategy to steal the election hinges on a close race. Also, while the notion of a GOP-heavy SCOTUS handing a Repub candidate victory is not without precedent, it’s not pre-ordained either.
Still, the going wisdom is that with an 8-point spread, Trump’s chances of stealing the election are slim, but it’s by no means impossible.
And Trump has done the impossible once already.
5. So basically it’s hard to say how this will play out - there are too many “what ifs” to contend with.
I can predict two things with confidence: (1) Biden will at the very least win the pop vote, and (2) as welcome as a Biden victory will be, it will not solve America’s most fundamental problem, which is this:
The GOP is a weird white supremacist hate group that lives in an alternate reality and believes (or pretends to believe) every fool word Trump says. It has been totally remade in Trump’s image, and a Biden victory won’t change that.
Moreover, these people have been primed by both Trump and conservative media outlets to expect (and accept) nothing less than a Trump landslide. Any other result will be deemed proof of a Democrat conspiracy to rig the election. Even if that doesn’t result in wholesale violence, this is the opposition party that Biden and the Demos get to deal with. And he can expect the same treatment from the GOP as Clinton and Obama - total obstruction, batshit conspiracies and endless investigations into Hillary’s emails. And they’ll make Trump into a martyr even (and especially) if he ends up in jail. Kamala Harris will have it even worse because - unlike Handsome Joe - she’s both a woman and a black person.
So here’s a prediction: no matter who wins, 2021 is going to be worse. Either Trump wins and drags us further down the plughole into authoritarianism, or Trump loses and his MAGA cult will dial the culture war up to 11, which will inevitably include some level of attempted extralegal violence. The Proud Boys may not get the Boogaloo they imagined, but it won't be for lack of trying.
I have never wanted to be as wrong about anything in my life. But the fact is that America’s two-party democracy is fundamentally broken, and I’m not sure Biden knows how to deal with that - although to be fair, I don’t think any major Demo candidate does.
This interview with political scientist Pippa Norris gives a good breakdown of the problem - along with possible solutions, though again, it all depends on what happens after Election Day. But the point remains that the US flavor of democracy is in really bad shape, and it won’t take much to send it into a fatal tailspin.
Screwed, glued and tattooed,
This is dF
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