Is it possible he can win-back enough votes to win a second term?
Trust me, I don’t want that clown to win (even being a Canadian the impact to me personally is questionable, but I can’t stand to see him in power).
What I’m getting at is: if Trump now says everyone wear a mask, and Trump supporters actually listen and start wearing masks. If because of this proclamation the curve flattens, Trump would definitely take credit for flattening the curve (if he would have said this 4 months ago the curve would have flattened and 100,000 people wouldn’t have died.
Could this be enough to right the ship and get him re-elected?
But if Covid seems like a much lesser problem in Nov (which I somehow doubt) it certainly couldn’t hurt him, no. I have little doubt he was pressured to do this based off poll numbers, my bet is he will get a small bump from this by Nov.
If he stayed on-message about masks, consistently encouraged people to wear them, wore a mask consistently when around other people (and was photographed doing so), and even supported a federal mask mandate…then, yeah, maybe it’d make a difference in people’s views of him and how he’s handling the pandemic.
But, he won’t.
A big chunk of his base undoubtedly still refuses to wear a mask, regardless of what Trump said the other day, and he will very likely waffle on the mask issue, if not backtrack, because he will think that that will make his base happy.
And, he, personally, hates looking weak, and he’s clearly felt that wearing a mask is some sort of sign of weakness.
I simply don’t think he’s capable of being consistent with this.
I don’t think so, the damage is already done. Even if everyone wore masks starting today, we’re still on pace for well over 150,000 deaths and maybe 4 million confirmed infected. Trump can’t get over that hump. His fate was sealed by April.
I think that if he pushed hard on wearing masks, pressured states to have a mask mandate, and was seen leading by wearing a mask, he could make a very significant difference on the path of this pandemic. We could have much of the country re-opened by November and people would be dancing in the streets. The markets would be doing better, unemployment would be high but moving very much in the right direction.
If he did that, he would be reelected, in my opinion.
It’s not like the anti-Trump people are going to stop wearing masks to own the Trumpers.
You’re expecting Trump to stick to a coherent program of sane science for the next four months while forcing it down the throats of Republican governors?
I know you’re Canadian, but have you been in a mine in Sudbury for the past three-and-a-half years?
I think Trump had to reverse course, but I don’t think it will help. It’ll just confuse his supporters (“wait…are we supposed to wear masks now??”) his opponents are not going to be impressed, and is anyone undecided in regards to how he’s dealing with the pandemic?
Plus, mask use alone would only have a significant effect if everyone did it properly, all the time, along with other social distancing practices. If Trump’s example “inspires” 20% of maskholes to start wearing masks half the time, the results won’t even be statistically significant. And there would still no excusing the tens of thousands of lives lost because of his previous idiocy, encouraging states to re-open early, etc.
Trump’s base will agree that anything Trump does is evidence of genius - even when it contradicts what he did last week, which was also evidence of genius.
Outside of Trump’s base, most people are going to see this for what it is; a very belated acknowledgement that Trump has been wrong for months. And that’s not something that will win him votes.
Six months after being told that Covid19 would be a crisis and what measures he should take, Trump has finally acknowledged that Covid19 is a crisis and he will begin making plans for responding to it.
Imagine what would have happened if the President in office at the time had taken a similar delay in responding to the Pearl Harbor attack or the Cuban missile crisis or the 9/11 attacks.
I read a suggestion that Trump should have been promoting MAGA masks, or even Trump/Pence 2020 masks. In short, encouraging his people to wear masks because they like the message conveyed on them. And if he makes money, who cares?
He still hasn’t done anything about his Russian Master’s payment of bounties for the lives of US Soldiers. That is what lost him a sizeable chunk of his base. The remainder are just going to get ticked off that he is “giving in” on the mask issue.
They go hard to defend his ridiculous claims, again and again. And then he just changes his mind without even acknowledging the inconsistency. Even the least self-aware person will eventually recoil from the cognitive dissonance.
He already didn’t. Just hours after he tweeted that masks were patriotic now, he was seen as some kind of fund-raiser without one. I mentioned this (with link) already in two other threads. Hold on, I’ll see if I can find it again . . .
. . . ah, yes, here is one cite. Google (or DuckDuckGo) turns up a page full . . .
With the turnaround on masks, resuming the daily briefings, shutting down the Jacksonville convention, etc., Trump is obviously attempting to be perceived to be more serious about confronting coronavirus. Will it work? We’ll see, but I think the people scoffing at his “turnaround” do so at their peril. Biden isn’t going to maintain a 15 point lead for the next four months. A lot of right-leaning voters who have been backing away from Trump over his handling of the pandemic may be recoverable. These are people who want to vote for Trump, but even they have a hard time swallowing his performance to date on COVID. If he can put on a semi-credible show of taking the pandemic seriously – and even better if case numbers start to decline in late summer/early fall – they’ll have all the excuse they need to vote their hearts.
It’s astonishing how terribly Trump has handled the Covid19 crisis. It was a great opportunity for him. In the middle of a serious crisis, people naturally rally to their leader. All Trump had to do was say yes to the minimum necessary steps that other people had set up for him and make a couple of speeches where he pretended to care about people. He’d be twenty points up in the polls right now.
No, Trump has never had a chance of winning this election. He needs all of his 2016 voters not just most of them. And then he needs a bunch of people who voted against him in 2016 to change their minds and decide to vote for him in 2020. That’s not going to happen.
Trump’s only chance is for Biden to lose; to do something so incredibly dumb that it blows his lead. Not just telling a stupid joke; it’s going to have to be dead hooker level at this point.
Or the Republicans will have to steal this election harder than they’ve ever stolen an election before.