Sounds like Clint Eastwood to me, but I have no idea how much he has in savings. His “empty chair debate” in 2012 says to me he’s a bit wanting in the scruples department.
Since he’s 90 years old he better have a good VP candidate
I don’t think this is the case. While the number of vote flippers will indeed be relatively low, I find it hard to believe that there will be more disillusioned Democrats than Republicans. I also find it hard to believe that there will be more people staying home because they think Trump’s already lost than did because they thought Hillary already won. Fool me twice, can’t get fooled again.
I agree entirely with your acessment of what happened in 2016, but entirely disagree with your assertion that it will hold in 2020. After the 2016 debacle, I don’t think that there is a single person on the left who is complacently convinced that Biden’s going to win. If anything they are shell shocked into thinking he’s likely to lose despite the large number of polls saying the opposite. If Democratic voting is down, its will be due either to disenfranchisement efforts of the Republicans, or fear of Covid-19.
There are the people who just wouldn’t vote for a woman, even if they didn’t admit it to themselves.
Not everyone who voted for Trump in 2016 was a Trump cultist. There were a significant fraction of anti-establishment votes. 2016 had a very anti-establishment zeitgeist, and the democrats decided to run the most establishment candidate of all time, only amplifying Trump’s outsider appeal. A lot of people thought “things aren’t going well for me now, I feel like I’m getting screwed, let me vote for the guy who’s a wildcard who’ll shake up the system and see what happens”
But now Trump is the establishment, and he’s done nothing good for those voters. They have no reason to be loyal to him in 2020. He was essentially a failed experiment to them. That’s a significant number of voters.
On the other hand, Trump picks up some Republican voters who didn’t vote for him in 2016. That seems bizarre to say, but I think there was a much bigger never-Trump movement in 2016 than there will be in 2020 among conservatives. Not because 2020 Trump is any better - on the other hand - he has met or exceeded most of our predictions of disaster. But the never-Trumpers thought they could move their party away from a Trumpian direction, and they failed. To most of them, being part of their tribe is more important than their principle, and since they’ve decided that this is just how it is now, they’re going to hop on the Trump train. This is exemplified by people like Lindsay Graham who was vehemently anti-Trump and now is his biggest nutstool.
Ultimately, I think Biden would win a fair election by a comfortable margin. Outside the scope of this thread, but I do not believe that we will have a fair election. The GOP has de-funded and de-tasked election security over and over again, and they’re not doing that as an idle gesture. In addition to the voter suppression and foreign social media influence, they plan to do (and/or to invite) real-deal vote changing election interference. Why wouldn’t they? Concern for rule of law? Adherence to the values of democracy? Their loyalty to their country? Their sense of normalcy? Their fear of consequences? All of these things have gone completely out the window in the last 4 years. They will do anything to serve their own power. The 2020 election will absolutely be rigged.
Edit: Accidental double post due to board performance.
“democrats decided to run the most establishment candidate of all time” in 2016. Hilary was not in DC from 1973 to now like Biden. 47 years in DC and counting for Biden. A lot of voters were not even born when Biden went to DC. I’m not young and I could not vote until 1978.
I thought it would be clear that I meant as of 2016, when she ran. You could make a case that Biden is more establishment. But the perception of being “establishment” isn’t necessarily only the length of your tenure, but how the public regards you. Hillary has been a fixture in politics over two decades at that point and was well known as being a newsworthy position in various prominent positions. I would think that the perception of Hillary and association of her with the establishment is stronger than that of Biden, even if it’s not technically true.
In any case, I said specifically that the 2016 election had the zeitgeist of anti-establishment behind it, not the 2020 election. I don’t think “establishment” is a big driver in this election. It’s about a walking disaster trying his best to destroy our country, and his cult versus everyone else. Very different feel. The democratic primary definitely had an aspect of establishment vs antiestablishment, but there’s no reason for that to carry over into the election. Trump IS the establishment now, and he’s a walking disaster. People who vote for Trump are not doing it to be anti-establishment, and people voting against him think “being establishment” is about 7500th on his list of flaws.
What this election needs is a democrat that can make people like him, who seems like someone they could tolerate voting for if they can’t convince themselves to vote for Trump. Biden isn’t the worst candidate in this regard (whereas Hillary was the worst candidate in regards to being establishment in 2016), but the democrats could’ve done better. Any sort of generic white guy who people like could’ve done it. You might say that’s Biden, but it’s not. If they were confident he could do that, he wouldn’t be hiding away in this prime moment. If Pete Buttigieg was straight he wins a landslide easily.
My worry is the current events will make Biden go far left on many issues that he was more centrist about. The cult of Trump think he is the best president ever. They will never change. Middle right republicans might vote against him for someone like Biden. They won’t vote for Biden if he starts sounding like Bernie.
A small percentage have died since then so they’ll be voting Democrat this time around.
I reluctantly voted for Trump in 2016, because I so loathed Hillary. But I’ve come to really appreciate him since then, and will enthusiastically vote for him this year. I doubt that I am alone.
Hurr durr, because it’s not like virtually all voter fraud occurring in recent years is Republicans or anything.
I think Biden would have a well over 2/3rds chance in a fair election, even given this far out of a timetable and all the weird stuff that can happen in the meantime.
But I think his actual chances are only slightly above 50%, due to election interference. Actual vote tampering is possible these days given the lack of a paper trail, but I think we’ll see more of a surge of last-week poll closures and movements and secret voter roll purges demographically targeted by Big Data. I’m just not sure that this will be enough to pull off a win, because you’ll have to find enough compliant election officials to turn the tide.
Republicans only commit voter fraud to prove that Democrats are doing it.
[/sarcasm]
Do you at least understand the strong opposition to Trump by many, for things like his praise of the white supremacists at Charlottesville, his bragging about sexual assault and violating consent, his general misogynist and racist statements, his use of brutality to clear peaceful protesters for a photo op, his deliberate separation of migrant families because he wanted to use harming children as a disincentive to future migrants, his lies and misinformation about COVID, and things like that? Or is that impossible for you to understand?
Oh, let him have his little victory. It’ll be his last for quite some time.
Forget it, iiandyiii. It’s Homer Simpson wisdom all the way down.
Out of curiosity, what is it that you appreciate about him and that’s compelling you to enthusiastically vote for him in 2020?
I’m pretty centrist or even a little right of center on some issues, and a consistent Republican voter until about 2012, and I’m not seeing a lot of Trump wins over the past 3.5 years. Or even any unqualified ones to be honest.
Maybe you can shed some light on this? From my perspective, his administration seems like a series of policy gaffes seasoned with unhinged, inappropriate, and unprofessional (certainly un-Presidential) comments and Tweets, as well as blatant attempts to distort the truth and outright lying. Hardly the sort I’d choose to re-elect.
Not many but since he lost the popular vote and only won the electoral college by the slimmest of margins, even without acknowledging that Joe Biden is not nearly as polarizing a figure as Hillary Clinton ever was, he cannot afford to lose even a small percentage.
Trump loses Michigan’s 16 electoral votes with just 1% less votes.
Trump loses Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes with just 2% less votes.
Trump loses Florida’s 29 electoral votes with just 2.5% less votes.
Trump loses Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes with just 3% less votes.
Even though we award the office with EVs rather than popular vote, each state’s results is not completely independent of one another. So if just 3% of Trump voters from 2016 do not vote for at all, even assuming every one of them doesn’t vote for Biden (which is unlikely; some Trump voters will peel off for Biden), it makes winning the election exceedingly difficult for him.
Those ex-factory workers in the Rust belt, who trump lied to- and they beleived out of desperation. They wont be fooled again.