Why The Corona Virus Crisis Will Ensure Trump's Re-Election

Politics & Elections
1

I would like to be very clear here… I detest Trump, more as a human than even as a politician. He is a pathological liar, he is racist (even a cursory look at his history as NYC rental property owner makes this clear) and I would posit that if we had adjusted IQ tests for all the President’s we would find that Trump is about the dumbest POTUS this side of Zachary Taylor (with apologies to GW Bush).

All that said, Trump has proven to be absolutely unflappable in the face of his own lies and a world class showman who has honed his “craft of the con” to a razor sharp edge and has an uncanny ability to just keep denying/lying with confidence and aggression. I mean we still have not seen his taxes despite ensuring the public he would release them after this audit he lied about almost 4 years ago.

For the first three years of his “reign” I was a mix of furious, stunned and embarassed that this man could make some of the boldest lies while at the same time convincing (at least) half of our country just how “tremendous” he is.

But now the realization has set in, he has tapped into a vein of not only the white rich and middle class that generally always vote Team Red but he has also reached (convinced, conned, brainwashed?) a large segment of America’s under-educated and/or over-religious voters - many of which previously voted Democratic - who did and still do see him as a hero during this crisis.

His crafting of the “fakenews” narrative and its entry into the American lexicon has been masterful. Trump’s strong base loves the very sound bites many of us thought would doom him (grab em by the *ussy, all mexicans are rapists, drain the swamp, build the wall).

A quick look at politifact yields a staggering 69% of his statements as Mostly False, False or Pants of Fire False… his true statements? 4%? But his base does not care, half of them think its fakenews, 40% of them just do not care and other 10 percent think the virus is a hoax and/or was created in a US lab.

Trump embodies all the corruption of any President before him but does it in such an unapologetic and confident way that he has truly convinced voters who IMO would fail most ANY voter qualification test.

But this pandemic will end up re-electing him.

Say what you want, I have seen the latest CV ads against Trump (and LOVE them) but facts matter little. Sure, something near half of us get it. I showed them to my wife and other democratic/centrist friends and they seem to drive home his penchant for lies and manipulation THAT HAS COST LIVES… but the other half (maybe more) simply do not care (just build the wall or lock the borders), are forever republican or - quite simply - too ignorant to understand the ramifications. Hell a - not insignificant - number of his base just want to see the world burn anyway.

Biden will not stand to Trump’s attacks, he will crumble, he will have gaffs and Trump will distort and lie as he has for 50+ years. Biden is decent - if flawed - man but if you think Trump in 2016 was aggressive?.. hold on tight, I think the debates will be a slaughterhouse.

My only hope is remembering that Hillary (who is about as unlikeable a candidate as one could have IMO) still got the popular vote. But I am not confident, I think the decline of Western Civilization is at hand and we have to brace for four more years.

2

Indeed, his approval ratings have picked up since the virus’s impact on the US. It was stuck in the 42-43% range for pretty much his whole term, but is now about 45%. His marketing is remarkable. I think calling it an “invisible enemy” and getting himself described as a “wartime president” are brilliant. Inevitably gets a few more suckers on board. It should be noted that no incumbent president has ever been re-elected at such a low approval percentage in recent decades (according to the 538 website).

3

It could go either way.

I think I’ve been on record as saying that Mueller and impeachment wouldn’t bring Trump down, that the only thing could do that is a disaster that has Trump’s fingerprints all over it.

This could be the disaster we’re talking about, but so far, there’s not enough evidence that it is. In fact, he’s kinda getting the benefit of the doubt, which is not unexpected. Anyone who doesn’t despise him and the MAGA movement wants to believe that they still have a president capable of managing a major crisis. And say what you want, his tasteless pressers aside, there’s a lot of congressional activity, there’s a lot of executive activity - it does kinda, sorta look like he’s doing…something.

But the jury is still very much out, I believe. COVID-19 isn’t going anywhere. It’s about to get really ugly. So far he’s avoided giving up the grand slam, but we’re only in the first inning or two.

4

Could be, but I doubt it. First of all, nothing that happens in March matters nearly as much in a November election as people in March expect it to matter; secondly, Trump has not actually shown any signs of knowing what he’s doing, and you can only get by for so long on bluster without competence; thirdly, he’s really, really bad at projecting empathy, which is a skillset that presidents need in a national tragedy.

Certainly, he could get lucky – the pandemic could turn out not to be as bad as expected and it might be all over by early fall with a rebounding economy, in which case he might well get the credit for it. But things would have to fall out just right for the coronavirus to work to his benefit; it’s by no means a foregone conclusion.

5

I feel much the same way about Herr Drumpf that the OP does and I’m not optimistic that he’ll be beaten in November, either, not least because the Democrats did their usual LOUSY job of coming up with a presidential candidate. Could “Gaffey Joe” win in November? Sure. I suppose anything’s possible. I mean, even the Mango Moron didn’t actually believe he’d win last time. But am I expecting Gaffey Joe to win? He’s a limp noodle with absolutely NO message to sell to the U.S. electorate so - Nope. Not at all. Again, thanks, Democratic Party. . .for absolutely NUTHIN’.

6

I feel the opposite way. I think the coronavirus crisis has really put the nail in Trump’s coffin. Because it was unexpected.

I’ve said before that a lot of Trump’s supporters have stayed loyal, in the face of overwhelming evidence, because they don’t want to admit they were wrong. But the corona virus gives them an excuse to defect. They can now say, “Hey, Donald Trump was a great choice back in 2016 and I was totally right to vote for him. Because who knew how bad he was going to be when that Chinese disease hit us? It was something nobody could have predicted. So I can now say that Trump is a terrible President without it reflecting badly on me for having said how great he was in the past.”

It’s nonsense, of course. Plenty of people were pointing out how bad Trump was back before he was even nominated. He’s just been living out those predictions throughout his presidency. But this rationalization gives his supporters the excuse they need to abandon the sinking ship without feeling bad about it.

7

Here’s what you guys sound like. Cheer up. Biden is not Hillary. There are more people that hate Donald now then before he “won” the election. His handling of Corona makes W’s handling of Katrina look like a smashing success. Suburban women fucking hate Donald. You’d be hard pressed to find one person in your circle of friends that didn’t vote for him in 2016 that will vote for him in 2020. Democrats are energized. It’ll be fine.

8

There’s a phrase for what you posted. It’s “wishful thinking.”

9

Appreciate the pep talk, OP, but I’m going to give it a couple of months before I start licking subway banisters and stall door handles in airport bathrooms.

10

Was your post based on some knowledge gained via time travel?

11

Let’s not forget that Clinton got more votes than Trump did. He’s nowhere near as popular as he likes to pretend he is.

12

I’ve been noting this in other threads. One article said that no president has ever failed to gain less than 10 points when a crisis hit. Trump has gone up no more than 5. This is remarkable. It’s true despite him declaring he’s a wartime president, despite him prancing in front of the television cameras every single day to huge ratings. None of it is moving the majority that has always been against him into his turf.

This may of course change at any time. People want to see their leader, want to be reassured that they are being taken care of, want to respond more to signals and emotions than to facts.

But it could also break the other way. Trump is already backing off his nonsense about reopening the country on Easter. His plan to sort areas by counties has no chance to be taken seriously even by his most worshipful governors. His vow to not give governors what they want if they aren’t nice to him is exactly the sort of stupidity that all his actions stink of. When people start dying does he really think that the response from their relatives will be “the governor should have been nicer to you, dear leader” rather than “you could have saved them, you jerk”? What if he cans Dr. Fauci? What if a coronavirus case is found inside the White House?

There are a couple of ways this could go very well for Trump. There are a hundred in which the bottom falls out. I’ll take those odds.

13

That’s supposed to make us feel better? Hillary was a thousand times the candidate that Biden is, and she couldn’t pull off a win.

14

I’m afraid OP is correct. Excepting Bush-41 — when after 12 years the voters were overdue for their usual party-switch — Jimmy Carter is the only incumbent President since Herbert Hoover to be defeated, and he was defeated by someone far more charismatic than Biden.

Biden might have a good chance in a fair election, but this one will not be fair. The Republicans are already playing hardball and will exploit every trick they can think of, criminal or not. Expect selective quarantines to suppress voter turnout in D-leaning precincts. Key swing states including Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, North Carolina and Florida all have legislatures controlled by the Rs: they will refuse to enact laws to make voting easier during the lock-downs.

With gatherings or even simple contacts inhibited by contagion concerns, the Ds will lack news-making opportunities. Thus the news will follow the White House even more closely than usual.

The Betfair prediction market shows the Rs as 51% to win the November Potus election; on February 8 this was 62%. The punters there may have reacted to the pandemic and the looming economic depression, but they still have Trump as slightly favored.

15

There is typically a “rally around the leader” effect during a crisis. It is happening with leaders around the world, often a bigger bump than the 2-3 points that Trump has gotten. It happened with Carter during the Iranian hostage crisis too. Over six months or so as Covid-releated problems continue to fester, the bump will probably vanish and may well turn negative especially given Trump’s highly erratic handling of the crisis.

16

9/11 ratcheted up Bush’s popularity, and he did get re-elected, but it declined over the course of the protracted Middle East war. And that was a war that was far away and involving only a tiny portion of America’s population (the military.)

Imagine if 9/11 was only the beginning of the terrorist attacks, and every week thereafter, for several months, another building in a different city was blown up, killing hundreds or thousands of people. And no progress was made, at all, in catching the terrorists and stopping the bombings. Do you think THAT would raise or lower his approval?

With that being said, I still consider Biden to be weak as hell and his election chances to be AT BEST even with Trump’s.

17

Hillary Clinton lost because she was a woman. That’s all there is to it.

I’m not saying it was a mistake to run her-- the mistake was not taking Trump seriously back in the primaries.

That said, though, the point about incumbents not losing is a good one. I’m not sure Biden could have defeated Carter or Hoover. But I don’t think Sanders is any better.

The sad fact is that by picking someone with broad appeal, we ended up with someone without strong appeal. It’s like when you serve vanilla ice cream because while it isn’t anyone favorite, no one hates it, the way there are both people who love and hate Rocky Road, or Rainbow Sherbet. Biden is about as vanilla as it gets.

The only hope the Democrats have is convincing people who didn’t vote in 2016 to turn out in droves. Before the primaries even happened, I think most voters were committed to either Trump or not-Trump. But that still leaves a whole lot of eligible voters who aren’t even registered.

If enough of them lose a grandparent or parent to the corona virus, and can be convinced that it was Trump’s bungling that caused it, yes, this could undo him, but not a lot of people are that good at cause and effect, and even fewer are good at saying “Let’s not make the same mistake again.”

18

It is very possible that in November, Trump’s approval rating is somewhere around 40% (because that’s where it has been pretty much the past 3.5 years), the DOW is under 20K (OK, this is hard to predict), the GDP is quite negative (recession) and the unemployment rate is 10% or higher.

How the hell does anyone get reelected at those numbers?

19

I take his attacks on Michigan’s governor and GM as growing resignation that he believes he might have lost Michigan already and that there might be no way to get it back, regardless of who the nominee is.

But I wouldn’t rest easy because he might try to move the map around - Parscale’s a wizard when it comes to this. So instead of winning in Michigan he could try to steal another state like Minnesota or New Hampshire.

Trump will lose the popular vote again, even if Biden croaks and Bernie becomes the nominee. Trump’s game is electoral math. He might only need 42-45% of the vote to pull it off.

20

I really doubt that is his calculation. He either isn’t thinking about consequences that far down the road at all, or he’s looking at the last 3-4 years of personally being rewarded for his vindictive behavior.