I disagree. Hillary was neither a gifted nor inspirational speaker. She would have been a good president, but she wasn’t good at running for president. She had a lifelong obsession with being the first woman to break that glass ceiling, but gave no compelling case why people should vote for her. Much of it was not her fault, there were 25 years of constant Republican lies about her. That turned her persona into a pretty protective posture and she gave the impression of being cold and aloof. She ran against the most unqualified candidate for elective office in the history of civilization and still lost. You don’t win the presidency by acting like it’s your birthright, and that’s how she came across.
Biden is a worse candidate than Hillary. He’s older and is just plain boring. At least Sanders had a personality and Biden does not.
Biden is likeable and Sanders wasn’t, outside of his small base. That was true of Clinton as well. She just didn’t come across as likeable. Likeability is an enormous plus.
You’re giving Trump voters way too much credit to think that they are capable of that much self reflection, even subconsciously.
Sorry, I got interrupted.
Let’s look at the numbers again. Trump won in 2016 by the skin of his teeth. Everything had to break right for him. Clinton seemed well ahead until she got sandbagged by Comey in the last week. No poll predicted that. Few polls predicted the drop in African-American turnout. But even after a campaign of vileness, Trump won by a margin of 77,000 votes in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, each less than a one percent margin.
Can he do that again? I look at RealClearPolitics (RCP) and FiveThiryEight (538) for recent polls. Michigan is gone; RCP has Biden leading by 10 points, 538 by 5. Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are closer, with Biden leading by about 3 points in RCP but Trump by a couple in 538, so within margin of error.
What about other close states? Interestingly, there are very few. Trump won Florida by 1.2% and RCP has his polls are about that although 538 shows Biden leads in March polls. Trump won Arizona by 3.5 points. RCP has Biden up by that, 538 has them essentially tied.
Can Trump win back any states that Clinton won by a narrow margin? She won New Hampshire by .4 points but there’s no recent polling. She won Nevada by 2.4 points but there’s no recent polling. She won Minnesota by 1.5 points but there’s no recent polling. Weird.
All the other margins are over 5 points so they would require a major swing. It looks very much like the whole election comes down to the handful of “battleground” states again. So forget what the national picture looks like. Concentrate on Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, and Minnesota. Maybe add on Arizona and Nevada.
If Biden wins Michigan and Florida and the others stay in their columns, he wins 272-269. If he can’t win Florida then he has to win Pennsylvania and either Wisconsin or Arizona.
Florida and Pennsylvania are where the action is.
And don’t ask me what happens with the 6% of votes that went to other candidates. Will they play a part or be scattered to the winds? No idea.
I think another big factor was that a lot of people just assumed Clinton would win. Trump was so clearly unfit, we thought nobody would be stupid enough to actually vote for him. Now we know better. We’ll be taking Trump seriously in this election.
It is way too early to tell how this will effect the election. People are judging how the response is on a daily basis. If Trump somehow manages to hit that sweet spot between overreaction and downplaying the crisis then he will win. If bodies are stacked up in halls or there is martial law without many being visibly sick then he loses.
One huge mistake that many on the left and many on this board make is to think that his base is monolithic and in favor of authoritarianism. That’s far from true. If you look at the areas of the internet where they congregate you will find many are anti-government libertarian anarchists. They bought into drain the swamp and believing a non-politician was the answer. They blind themselves to his flaws but not when it intrudes on their worldview. They pepper their posts with “taxation is theft” and “bootlicker” towards anyone who is in favor of government. This base already turns on him over issues like bump sticks and so-called red flag laws. They are already calling the stimulus bill and the government checks socialism. They are calling COVID-19 a hoax. They are seeing signs of martial law and calling for resistance.
Is that part of his base going to switch to Biden? Of course not but they may stay home. It may not be a huge swing in the popular vote but it may mean a big difference in certain swing states.
The bottom line is if Trump stumbles into following the best course for COVID he will win. That’s a big if.
What about dismantling the pandemic response before our pandemic? Whatever he has already done he will get a mulligan for?
In that case there would be no sense in discussing what he could do to lose. He can’t under this defintion of reality.
He has stumbled a lot already and can’t right himself. But with our “help” he could lie himself through while we say he is stumbling correctly?
:smack::smack::smack:
If she lost because she was a woman, then it was a mistake to run her. Full stop.
Old is not a negative to most voters, plus he is male and not a Clinton. It’s not even close between him and Hillary.
Yes he gets a mulligan.
If history teaches us anything about elections it’s about what is happening to the voter the day of the election. What happens two years ago or two months ago isn’t as important as that day. How that voter feels Trump did about the pandemic when thinking about it in November is what’s important. It’s the results and not the foundation that will matter. Personally I think he will cock it up by trying to play to his anti-government base and also try to follow what the experts are saying at the same time. But time will tell.
Of course I’m not talking about the significant number of people that already know who they are voting for. This is about the people who may change their vote or stay home. Some like to dismiss that as insignificant but I see that as the difference in the election.
Nobody could know that before it happened. People said that Obama couldn’t win because he was black. Yet he did. People said an ignorant narcissistic moron asshole with zero political experience couldn’t win. Yet he did. Nobody could truly know the answer until it was tested.
It will be tested again in the future with a gay nominee, or an atheist nominee, or a Muslim nominee. Maybe even gasp a socialist nominee. Nobody will know whether they are electable until after the election. And even then, the other variables might swamp that particular one, as it almost certainly did with Clinton.
The sad reality is that by November a lot of voters will have seen a friend or a family member die. Trump’s failure to lead on the Convid-19 crisis isn’t going to be a distant issue to people in this election.
It might come down to how this virus plays out.
Democrats frankly, better start hoping for bodies so they can blame Trump for not taking this seriously enough right away and imposing nationwide quarantines. If however numbers begin to stabilize and businesses sue to be able to reopen, Trump will get the credit.
All over the nation its been democrats imposing lockdowns and chaining playgrounds and parks. People will remember. I dont think our youth will forget the bashing they got from democrats and their allies in the MSM for doing spring break.
Thing is if Biden is elected this virus will probably come around again next winter and he will have to deal with it.
Every couple of decades there is a generation of voters that believe “doesn’t matter who is president, they all suck equally bad” and/or “Imagonna do a protest vote” and/or “i’m only voting because candidate X is for this crazy far out thing Z that I really like”, or they stay home 'cause it doesn’t matter. A generation of these folks learned with Bush Gore that maybe their approach was not the best. I like to believe a generation of folks that threw in for Trump in 2016 have learned their lesson. You know, “Black people, what do you have to lose, vote for me” or my favorite was a large group of Mainland Chinese immigrants with special needs kids that went in big for trump, only to receive racist backlash and cutting of services for the handicapped.
I don’t know how the rank and file military view trump? Generally, they lean Republican. But military leadership are disgusted and repulsed by bone spurs blowing up the chain of command to pardon war criminals.
trump has kept his core, but has lost those “undecideds” and I’m sure lost anyone that expects leadership during coronavirus. Christ, $100 billion in testing kicked off in February would save us trillions in lockdown and millions of lives.
Don’t say shit like this. Nobody is “hoping for bodies.”
He dismantled our pandemic response, jsut before the biggest one in 100 years. He owns this forever. It’s on the march. How does he get a do over for it just 8 months from now?
Not to mention all the civic chaos we will have til then.
He doesn’t get a do over from you. Enough people will care about how things end and not how we got there to sway the election. To believe otherwise is wishful thinking.
If it makes you feel better he’s probably going to continue to screw it up so it will be a negative for him come November. It’s only a positive if he stumbles into getting it right somehow.
And quite frankly, we all want the eventual end result of the Covid situation and response on the health side to turn out for the best even if by sheer utter luck. I’ll take my chances on fighting him over that the economy is still ailing and/or that he has managed to insult everybody in the process of blindly flailing for a response while it was the governors finally got it right and/or that Brady left the Patriots. I don’t want to beat him over the bodies of my neighbors.
Hm. I’m just trying to get my mind around that someone thinks he has not fatally stumbled yet.
It has yet to be demonstrated that he is teflon and can kill americans en masse.
If the public memory of turmp is “amnesia” but that of Hillary or obama is “forever” then we have had it as a two party system. We’'ll have to reform (voting, gerrymandering, terms, scotus, potus) or be moving to soft fascism.