Better Off Than Four Years Ago? Better Off Four Years From Now?

In the 1980 Presidential debate (there was only one) between incumbent Jimmy Carter and challenger Ronald Reagan one of the most memorable lines in political history was uttered by Reagan in his closing statement.

"Are you better off than you were four years ago?"

It proved to be a knockout punch on Carter. What was a close election in the polls going into the debate turned into a landslide win for Reagan. That rhetorical question caused a lot of people to reflect on how the four years of the Carter administration had affected themselves personally.

Here is Ronald Reagan delivering that line in the debate.

That has become a fundamental question in Presidential elections in determining whether an incumbent can win re-election.

The most recent RealClearPolitics.com poll average shows that Joe Biden is +9.8 over Trump.

This leads us to the most remarkable poll finding I have seen in this 2020 campaign.

Gallup recently asked the "Are you better off" question as part of a recent poll of registered voters about the 2020 election.

They found that 56% of registered voters stated that they were better off now than than they were four years ago.

Let me remind you that this is in the middle of a pandemic that has disrupted tens of millions of lives in the United States and around the world.

What makes this all the more amazing is that this number is MUCH HIGHER than it was when Ronald Reagan was re-elected in 1984, George W. Bush was in 2004 and Barack Obama was in 2012. Gallup must not have asked the question during the Clinton re-election campaign in 1996.

It is almost 20 points better than what voters said about their personal situation when George H.W. Bush lost to Clinton in 1992 . Bush ended up trailing Clinton by 5.6% in the popular vote that year (43.0%-37.4%) in an election in which 3rd party candidate Ross Perot garnered almost 19% of the vote but earned no electoral votes.

 

Gallup had another interesting question in that recent survey which asked voters to compare the candidates on "Presidential qualities" and the "Issues."

By a 49%-46% margin voters state they agree with Trump on the issues but by a 49%-44% margin voters favor Biden on personality and leadership qualities.

This is less a surprise but may be telling as to what ultimately will be the most important factor in determining someone's vote when all is said and done.

The obvious question here is how can an incumbent President lose when 56% of voters state they are personally better off than they were four years ago and more voters agree with him on the issues than his opponent?

How can that candidate be down 10 points in the polls?

It would seem to be inexplicable in any logical look at the facts.

Some again will point to the pandemic. However, the polls earlier in the year still showed Biden beating Trump without the pandemic when we had record low unemployment and no restrictions on our freedoms.

Source: Financial Times

Many will point to "the way Trump acts" but I don't discern any different personality in Donald Trump in 2020 than what he displayed in 2016. There has been no "bait and switch". He is the same guy who people voted for (or didn't) the last time.

Some will say that is true but he is now President and should act differently.

I understand the point but this is also a President who has been under a constant assault and attack from the mainstream media and Democrats from the minute he was elected. 

Source: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/08/broadcast-coverage-trump-95-negative-new-study-says/

For those who state that the President should soften his tone, I ask them do you honestly think that Trump would still be standing today if he had just sat back and let them do this without fighting back? I can assure you he would be long gone by now.

Consider just the negative media that Trump received compared to Biden during June and July according to research by the Media Research Center. That study found that Trump got 150 times more negative coverage than Biden during those two months.

Consider what Trump has had to deal with since he was elected. He was framed with a false Russian collusion story. He was investigated for over two years by a special counsel who found nothing. Trump  then had to go through a totally politically motivated impeachment.

Facts are now also coming to light that Trump was the victim of a stealth coup attempted by those at the highest levels of our country's intelligence and law enforcement agencies. It is especially tragic that facts around this investigation will not be disclosed to the American people until after the election.

If for no other reason, I want to see President Trump re-elected just to find out the results of this investigation because it would seem unlikely it will ever see the light of day if he is defeated.

A long standing legal maxim has been that "Justice delayed is justice denied." Truer words have never been said as it applies to Trump's re-election. What is his redress (or the American people's) if it is later disclosed that he was the victim of a coup attempt to oust him? 

The fact is that he will have no redress or relief nor will the American people. The sad truth will also be that the conspirators in the deep state and the swamp in Washington who were responsible for it will be totally in control again.

John Hinderaker of Powerline has been looking at the same Gallup poll on the fundamentals and comparing them to Biden's lead in the RCP polls and asking the same questions I am.

How could there be such a fundamental disconnect between how people feel about their personal situation, and their views on the issues, and how they tell us they are going to vote?

Hinderaker ascribes it primarily to the steady drumbeat of negativism by the media and the Washington swamp about President Trump for four years. 

...the Swamp has fought a four-year war of attrition against the president. The Swamp’s major efforts included the years-long Russia hoax and the impeachment farce, but more important than either was the daily dose of negative headlines. And anyone who has consumed popular culture over the past four years has learned that hating the president is de rigueur. The endless assault has taken an inevitable toll, even though the Democrats’ attacks have, on the merits, failed or misfired.

One of Joe Biden’s campaign themes is a “return to normalcy.” He means a return to the days when the Swamp ruled supreme, when politicians like Biden enriched themselves and their families while selling out the interests of the American people. But many voters are so tired of the endless hysteria of the last four years that they are willing to vote for Biden simply to bring it to an end. The howling two-year-old may be about to get its way.

In the end, if President Trump loses the current election, the lesson will be that one man can’t successfully take on the entire establishment. Trump fought the press, the schools, the dominant tech companies, the Chinese and Russians and those who are in their pockets, the anti-Israel lobby, the no-borders interests, the entertainment industry, the public sector unions, the greedy “green” interests, the useless career politicians like Joe Biden. The American people benefited, but it may prove to have been too much. The president’s epitaph might be: Trump fought the Swamp, and the Swamp won. 

It is rare that people do not vote in their own self interest. Elections have consequences and the cost is high if your candidate does not win. The cost is even higher if you do not vote with your own self interest in mind because you allowed yourself to be persuaded more by a media narrative than actual facts and taking account of your own personal situation.

I have written before that this is the most consequential election that anyone alive has ever voted in.

People are literally betting their lives, their livelihoods, their liberty and the legacy of this country on the choice they make on November 3.

Does anyone remember the media narrative four years ago?

Trump is going to be a disaster.

The economy is going to be shattered.

The stock market is going to crash.

There is no way he is going to be able to renegotiate NAFTA.

There is no way he can bring back jobs from overseas.

There is no way he is going to be able to reduce the unemployment rate of Blacks and Hispanics. There is no way he is going to reduce unemployment for working class people. The economy has passed them by and the jobs aren't coming back.

There is no way he is going to be able to get the individual and business tax cuts passed that he is campaigning on.

There is no way he is going to build any type of wall with Mexico,

There is no way he is going to get Mexico to help us stop the flood of illegal immigrants into the country.

There is no way he is going to be able to put tariffs on China.

There is no way he is going to make the United States completely energy independent.

There is no way he is going to reduce carbon emissions if he gets us out of the Paris Climate Accord.

There is no way he is going to be able to defeat ISIS.

There is no way he is going to be able to make our allies pay more for NATO.

There is no way he is going to be able to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. 

There is no way he can walk away from the Iran nuclear deal.

There is no way he is not going to get us into a war in the Middle East or somewhere else.

Do you remember this narrative?

How wrong was it?

Did any of it come true?

Right now about the only way you could find any truth in any of this is due to the effects of the pandemic that came from China.

Was that Trump's fault? Does anyone honestly believe that Joe Biden or anyone else could have managed it any better? The key word here is HONESTLY!

And who was it who warned us from the very beginning to beware of the motivations of China?

I also find it interesting that despite all of the economic disruption caused by the pandemic the actual unemployment rate in the United States today is LOWER than it was when Barack Obama and Joe Biden were taking office in January, 2013 for their second term.

I find that to also be a remarkable fact that you hear little about.

Of course, the real question that voters need to ask themselves is whether they are going to be better off 4 years from now and whether their children and grandchildren are going to be better off 40 years from now.

When they ask that question they also better consider who is going to have the energy, drive and resolve to get us through what are clearly going to be some very challenging times over the next four years?

This isn't an 8th grade popularity contest for class President.

This is about people's lives.

Are you willing to bet your life on a media narrative and a 78 year old politician who tells you how much is wrong with the country but who spent 47 years in Washington and did little little to fix anything?

Contrast that with someone who has been there 47 months and been attacked and slandered the entire time but still delivered on almost everything he said he was going to do when he ran four years ago.

Are people really going to let the swamp win?

We will find out in three weeks.

May God help us

How Much Can We Trust The Polls?

How much can we trust the polls?

That is a question I hear often.

It is a common question today in that so many people believed that the polls misled them about predicting the outcome of the 2016 Presidential elections.

Who can forget this prediction of the New York Times that was based on polling data that gave Hillary Clinton a 93% probability of winning the election as of October 23, 2016. Trump's odds had improved to 15% as of the day before the election.

Source; New York Times

I am very interested in polls because I love data. Polls are the only real data that one can look at to get a sense of where a political race stands at a point in time.

Of course, polls have several limitations.

First, it is survey taken at a given point in time. It is not a projection of what the election result will be. It merely provides you the opinion of voters at that point in time. Things change and the opinion of voters can change.

Second, polls are always subject to the assumptions that are made by the pollsters. They have to assume what the actual turnout for the election will be over various demographic groups for the poll to be accurate. How many registered Republicans, Democrats or Independents will actually vote? How many women? Men? Young people? Senior Citizens? Blacks? Whites? Hispanics? If the pollster makes a mistake on their assumptions in this regard the poll results will be flawed

Third, you have to remember that polls are paid for by someone. Whoever is doing the survey has to keep that in mind. If the New York Times or NBC is paying for a poll do you think the pollster is going to keep the client happy if the polls show a Republican is winning? Therefore, the survey firms that do this work have to keep their paying client happy but also need to be concerned about their accuracy in the end. That is why you usually see polls get tighter toward the end of most political races. Earlier polls are for the client. The last polls are critical to the credibility of the pollster to get work in the future.

Recent polls show that Joe Biden has widened his lead over President Trump that have been released since the first Presidential debate and the President's Covid-19 diagnosis.

The Real Clear Politics average for today shows Biden up by +9.7 over Trump.

CNN's most recent poll shows Biden +16 over Trump.

Let's put that number in perspective with other Democrat victories in the past.

Barack Obama only beat John McCain by 7 points.

Obama beat Mitt Romney by 4 points.

Bill Clinton beat George H.W. Bush by 6 points.

Bill Clinton beat Bob Dole by 9 points.

Jimmy Carter only beat Gerald Ford by 2 points and that was after Ford pardoned Richard Nixon.

Franklin D. Roosevelt only beat Thomas Dewey by 7.5 points in 1944 and that was in the middle of World War II in which FDR was the verge of leading the USA to victory in World War II.

This goes to show just how far out there a +16 margin would be.

How does CNN get such a result?

They assume that Democrats will have a +10 turnout advantage at the polls.

The poll shows that women support Biden 66%-32% over Trump.

The polls shows that those over age 65 support Biden 60%-39%.

How do these numbers compare to 2016 based on CNN's exit poll?

Democrats only had a 3 point advantage in turnout in 2016.

Trump lost the women's vote by 52%-41% in 2016.

Trump won the over age 65 vote 52%-45% over Hillary.

In order to believe that CNN poll you have to assume that Democrat turnout is going to increase by 7 points, You have to also assume that Trump is going to lose women by an additional 20 points and he is going to lose the age 65+ demographic by 21 points when he won it by 7 points in 2016.

If all of these things occur, Trump is undoubtedly going to lose in a landslide of epic proportions. There is simply no way Trump can win if he loses women by 30 points and he does not get majority support of those over age 65. 

However, take a step back and ask yourself if any of this is consistent with what you see around you on a day to day basis.

As I have written before, I do not personally know anyone who told me they voted for Trump last time that regrets their vote and is going to vote for Biden this time. I also knew a fair number of people who swallowed hard and voted for Trump even though they had a lot of reservations about him. Every one of them has told me Trump has exceeded their expectations

Conversely, I know people who were never Trumpers in 2016 who will enthusiastically vote for him in 2020 because of what he has done as President.

Yes, I know all of my observations are anecdotal but we have continued to see unprecedented enthusiasm for Trump in his rallies over the entire 4 years and it is hard to see where there is any enthusiasm for Biden at all.

Further, Republican registrations are up compared to Democrats in many important battleground states.

This yard sign seems to sum up the sentiments of many Biden voters.

I know "hate" is a powerful motivator and many voters are voting against Trump rather for Biden.

Here is an example of someone seems like that at a home I drive by often.

If you can't read the yard signs in the image below they read...

"And one day like a miracle he'll be gone."

"Veterans for Biden. No bone spurs here."

"Make truth great again."

These people seem to put up a new sign every day. They also have a standard Biden/Harris sign in their yard which I simply could not get in the shot.

This Biden supporter does not appear to know that Joe Biden received five draft deferments during the Vietnam War as well. He received a medical deferment for an asthma condition he had as a teenager. Trump received a deferment for bone spurs.

This is the same Joe Biden who has bragged about his summers spent as a lifeguard at a Delaware swimming pool where he said he faced down local gang leader "Corn Pop" by telling him that he would put a chain around the man's neck. Yes, "Corn Pop" was an African American. No one could really make up the stuff that sometimes comes out of Biden's mouth.

And while we are talking about truth, Joe Biden is also the guy who has said he will ban fracking to one group and says he won't ban it to another. He also will not say whether he would support packing the Supreme Court if he wins because he doesn't want it to become an issue and distraction in the campaign. 

Didn't the Democrats already make it an issue by suggesting they wanted to do it? As Joe is the "head of the Democrat party" shouldn't he be truthful about his position on the issue? 

Make truth great again? Really? 

When people make decisions like this on emotions rather than facts, the result is usually a poor decision.

When there are voters out there like this it is clear anything can happen. However, is disliking someone enough to get someone to the polls over someone who really likes a candidate?

On the other side of the CNN poll is a survey that was published by the Democracy Institute which is  sponsored by London's Sunday Express. The pollsters behind this survey correctly forecast both Trump's 2106 win as well as the Brexit vote.

The most recent poll released by the Democracy Institute last Sunday put Trump up 46%-45% over Biden. That poll assumes a 2 point sample advantage for Democrats instead of the 10 points in the CNN poll.

This poll also shows Trump up by an aggregate of 4 points in the battleground states of Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Michigan, Minnesota and New Hampshire.

As to my point above on enthusiasm this poll found that 83% of Trump voters were enthusiastic about their choice compared to 49% for Biden voters. Will Biden voters really show up to vote (or vote by mail) in this election? Turnout is always crucial but it is going to be especially important in the Covid world we live in today.

The most interesting survey number I saw in the poll is that 87% of Biden supporters said they were "comfortable with relatives, friends, coworkers knowing how you vote." But only 22% of Trump supporters said the same.

That is an astounding difference and I think all of us can understand where that is coming from. How many people do you know who are willing to put a Trump bumper sticker on their car or a yard sign up considering what we see going in our society today?

One of the questions that is still vexing pollsters in this election is trying to determine how many "shy" Trump voters there are. In other words, those voters who are not going to talk about it but are going to vote for Trump in the end.

The Trafalgar Group had some of the most accurate polling in 2016 and a lot of it was attributed to the fact that they asked the following question in their surveys to try to find out what voters were really thinking.

They figured that some people might now want to say who they were voting for but would be much more honest when asked who they thought their neighbors were voting for.

Therefore, they asked this additional question.

"Who do you think your neighbors are supporting for President?"

Other pollsters are now asking the same question this election cycle.

For example, here are the results from the most recent Fox News poll to that question.

This would have Trump up by 11 points which is more than double his margin in August.

However, the actual polling of voters, when asked how they will vote, shows Biden leading Trump 53%-43%.

Go figure.

How much can we trust the polls?

I don't have a lot of trust in what I am seeing right now.

It would be hard to argue that Joe Biden is not leading when you look at the data from so many national polls.

However, in the battleground states right now, Trump is down 4.6 points in the RCP average. He was down 5.1 points at the same time in 2016.

The only poll that counts is still 25 days away. That is still a lifetime away based on what may still transpire in 2020.

How Much Do You Know About Kamala Harris?

How much do you know about Kamala Harris?

It is an important question as there has never been an election in which there was a higher likelihood that the Vice Presidential candidate would eventually become President.

You merely have to look at Joe Biden's age, his past medical history and his diminished mental abilities to understand the probabilities.

Most people had limited exposure to Harris during the Democrat nomination process since she dropped out of the race over a month before the first primary votes were taken due to poor polling numbers and weak financial support.

Kamala Harris at one of the Democrat debates in 2019 before she dropped out of the Presidential race

The Vice Presidential debate Wednesday night will undoubtedly provide many voters with the closest look at Harris they have had.

However, we are only talking about 90 minutes of air time in what will be a carefully staged performance.

What do we really know about Kamala Harris?

The most important thing to know about Harris is that she is undoubtedly the most far-left candidate to ever appear on the ticket of a major political party.

For example, here are the 2019 ideology scores for Senators done by govtrack.us. A score of 1.00 would be a pure conservative on every issue. A score of 0.00 is a pure liberal.

Kamala Harris was judged to be the most liberal member of the United States Senate in 2019 in this ranking. 

Harris was further left than Bernie Sanders, Kirsten Gillibrand or Cory Booker who also ran for President. She was much further left than Elizabeth Warren or Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Here are the scores for those ranked furthest to the left in the Senate in 2019. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee had the highest conservative score. She was a 1.00 on the scale to Harris' 0.00.

The platform that Harris ran on for President reflects these far-left views.

• She was in favor of the Green New Deal.
• She was strongly in favor of gun control and wanted to see mandatory gun buy backs for "assault weapons".
• She wanted to substantially reduce the defense budget.
• She was in favor of some form of reparations for African Americans.
• She was in favor of free college at public institutions.
• She was in favor of abolishing the death penalty.
• She was in favor of re-examining ICE and was opposed to building the border wall. She wants to allow more refugees and immigrants into the United States and is against sending illegal aliens home. In fact, she compared ICE to the KKK.
• She was in favor of decriminalizing illegal border crossings.
• She was in favor of providing free health care coverage to illegal immigrants.
• She was in favor of a $15 national minimum wage
• She was in favor of abortion up to the time of birth.
• She was in favor of repealing most of the Trump tax cuts and would like new taxes on banks and financial institutions.
• She was is favor of reinstating the Iran nuclear deal.
• She was against the China tariffs and also opposed the new USMCA trade agreement that replaced NAFTA.
• She was a co-sponsor of Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All bill that would have eliminated private health insurance and required a new payroll tax on employers and employees to fund the cost on top of the current FICA taxes. When criticized about eliminating the option for private insurance during the campaign she changed her position and stated she was open to merely creating a "public option".

During her ill-fated Presidential quest she did not have a specific position on the Black Lives Matter movement or calls to defund the police.

Harris has tried to avoid speaking to the issue since she became a VP candidate. However, in June she applauded the LA mayor on on his decision to slash that city's police budget by $150 million.

Harris has also praised the "brilliance" and "impact" of the Black Lives Matter protests deeming them "necessary".

Harris, like Joe Biden, has said almost nothing to condemn the rioting, looting and violence that have plagued large Democrat-run cities such as Seattle, LA, Portland and Chicago over the last several months.

How many of these positions will Harris admit to during the debate? Watch closely.

A big difference between Biden and Harris is that the actions of Biden in this campaign can generally be described as an act. On most issues today, you can find Biden on the opposite side at some point in the past in his 47 years in Washington. Biden was once against gay marriage, he was very pro-police, he was against school busing to achieve integration and he was for building a border wall. Biden even voted for the Iraq war during the Bush administration.

Biden is a pure politician who adjusts his views and values as he thinks he needs to in order get the votes of Democrats and the necessary independents in a general election.

Harris is more of a true believer.

Her father was an economics professor who was known as someone from the "Marxist school of economics."

Here is an article from the Stanford Daily announcing his hiring.

Source:https://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2020/08/what-father-of-kamala-harris-thinks.html

 

This is a direct excerpt from the newspaper article.

Don Harris, a prominent Marxist Professor, has been offered a full professorship in the Economics Department here, Department Chairman James Rosse confirmed yesterday. Rosse said Harris has not yet accepted the offer, but he "expects to hear from him this week."

Harris who still holds a tenured position at the University of Wisconsin, has served as a visiting Professor here, and is currently teaching at the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica.

The appointment is the direct result of student pressure in recent years to hire more faculty who favor an "alternative approach" to economics, said Economics Prof. John Gurley, who now teaches the only undergraduate course in Marxist economics. 

Gurley said the appointment of Harris was the culmination of the six-month "round-the-world" search for the most qualified Marxist professor available.

I have found that most of those with far-left views can be traced to something in their upbringing.

However, Harris is also a politician and very much a political opportunist who is very much driven by ambition.

As the campaign and Democrat debates progressed it was clear that not many people were buying what Harris was selling.

I saw early on that the biggest problem that Harris had in the debates was that she just seemed very unlikeable.

At one point in the debates she tried to resurrect her fortunes by essentially calling Joe Biden a racist.

In a later debate Tulsi Gabbard effectively ended any hopes that Harris had by pointing out some of the questionable things she did as Attorney General of California.

In addition to calling Biden a racist, Kamala Harris was one of the few Democrats to come out and say that she believed the women who have accused Joe Biden of inappropriate conduct.

It makes you wonder why Kamala Harris would want to have anything to do with a man she has essentially called a racist and a pervert, doesn't it?

This is at the core of probably the most common criticism that I have heard about Harris.

She is said to be an opportunist that will do most anything to further her ambitions. Those allegations date back to the 1990's when the 30-year Harris was the girlfriend of the 60-year old Speaker of the California House, Willie Brown. Brown appointed Harris to two high-paying patronage positions while they were dating. 

The relationship with Brown and the the appointments helped to launch the political career of Harris in which she was elected District Attorney for San Francisco in 2003 and later California's Attorney General before running for the U.S. Senate in 2016.

The "opportunist" label was also fed by how Harris seemed to shift positions on a number of issues while she was running.

This is what Politico says about Harris and her shifting positions.

Harris’ shifting positions on key policy matters undermined her short-lived run for the presidency. A former California attorney general and district attorney, Harris faced criticism over a prosecutorial record that doesn’t always match with the progressive positions she espouses today. On health care, her waffling on “Medicare for All” during the presidential primary revealed a candidate torn between appealing to progressives demanding structural change and moderates favoring incrementalism — and satisfying none in the process.

Kamala Harris did not marry until 2014 when she was 50 years of age. She has no children of her own but her husband, Douglas Emhoff, has two children from a previous marriage. The children were late in their high school and college years when they married.

I find it interesting that suburban soccer moms are supposedly so taken with Democrats like Kamala Harris and Supreme Court justices like Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotamayor. These suburban women seem to trust these liberal women about the policy choices for their country, for them individually and for their children.

However, none of these three liberal icons has ever had their own children. There is nothing wrong with that choice, and for some that choice is denied them, but as anyone who has ever had children understands, the experience changes you. It forces you to be more humble. It forces you to look at things differently. It forces you to look beyond yourself. It forces you to look at the world and the future differently.

I was struck during the Amy Coney Barrett announcement that Barrett, if confirmed, would be the only mother of school-age children to ever serve on the Supreme Court. Barrett is the mother of seven children which includes one special needs child and two children adopted from Haiti.

President and Mrs. Trump in the Oval Office with Amy Coney Barrett and family

If anyone has a good perspective of the challenges of motherhood and raising children in today's world it would seem to be Amy Coney Barrett.

I urge you to watch the Vice Presidential debate but put the things that Kamala Harris says in context at that debate and compare them with her past record.

Do the same when Amy Coney Barrett begins her confirmation hearings. Kamala Harris is on the Senate Judiciary Committee and will be questioning her. Judge both women against what you know about their backgrounds.

How much do you know about Kamala Harris?

You should know more after reading this blog post.

You should know even more after Wednesday's debate.

Carefully consider all of it as one of the biggest decisions you will ever have to make looms large four weeks away.

Even the Biden campaign's recent advertising is signaling who the real candidate is.

When have you ever seen this?

Think about it.

The "What If" Election

As if 2020 could not get any crazier we now have Covid-19 directly impacting the President.

What does it mean and how will it affect the Presidential race that will end (hopefully) four weeks from now.

At the end of July I wrote that it was impossible to predict who would win the election because 2020 was proving to be such a chaotic year and there were still 100 days to go before election day.

I think it is almost impossible to predict what is going to happen in November considering what is going on in the country right now.

The pace of events is overwhelming. In fact, it would not surprise me if we have yet to see what historians will later point to as the most consequential issue in this election.

Here are some examples that are not too far-fetched.

Joe Biden or Donald Trump comes down with Covid-19 or another health issue.

It is still impossible to predict what is going to happen 30 days out. I continue to believe we have yet to see the most consequential event or issue in this election unfold.

How do I see the Covid-19 diagnosis of President Trump impacting the race?

That is also impossible to predict.

This tweet sums it up better than I can and this guy does a lot of work with polling models.

What are some of the "what ifs" that make it imponderable?

What if President Trump makes a quick recovery and is able to debate on October 15?

What if President Trump recovers and is able to debate on October 15th but Joe Biden refuses to do so?

What if President Trump recovers and Joe Biden then contracts the virus?

What if Biden (due to being even older than Trump) has a tougher time battling the virus after Trump has recovered?

What if Biden is in the hospital at the time of the election?

What if the President's condition worsens and he ends up in the ICU just as occurred with Prime Minister Boris Johnson of the UK?

What if this occurs and there are calls to invoke the 25th Amendment that would result in VP Pence assuming the duties of President while President Trump is considered incapacitated?

This is just a small sample of endless exploding "what ifs" that give rise to so many imponderables that make it impossible to predict how this all ends up.

We also have another set of "what ifs" relating to the upcoming confirmation hearings and Senate vote on Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.

Three Republican senators have recently been diagnosed with Covid-19 (Mike Lee-UT, Thom Tillis-NC, Ron Johnson-WI). As a result, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has announced the full Senate will not conduct any business until the week of October 19. However, the hearings on Barrett are still scheduled to begin the week of October 12.

It has been reported that Barrett and her husband already had Covid-19 late this summer so that should remove a major concern to moving forward in the confirmation process. In any event, Barrett is also reportedly still undergoing daily testing during the confirmation process. 

However, what if Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tested positive?

What if Senate Judiciary Committed Chairman Lindsay Graham did?

The Democrats are already saying that the positive cases in the Senate should cause the confirmation process to be delayed until after the election. What if there are additional cases?

What if there are no more Senate cases but President Trump remains hospitalized and the confirmation process moves forward? Will the Democrats feel as if they can be aggressive in attacking his nominee under those circumstances? How will that be looked on by the voters?

How will voters respond to some of the nasty things that Democrats have already said about the President? What if that starts to backfire on them?

This is an example. This is the former national spokeswoman for Hillary Clinton. She also used to be a staffer for President Obama.

Notice that it got 124 likes.

The tweet has since been deleted. 

 

There are plenty of other examples about venom coming out in the tweets of leftists about the President and First Lady. 

Of course, some of the people who are saying this stuff also have these signs up at their home.

We live in a strange country right now.

There are just so many "what ifs" in play.

The biggest question underlying on all of this is what is the prognosis of President Trump in dealing with the virus?

This is the best graphic I have seen on the different paths that we see with those infected with Covid-19.

The next 5-7 days should tell us a lot about what path President Trump is on.

President Trump's age of 74 indicates that there is more risk to him than to the First Lady who is 50.

This is clearly one reason why President Trump has been hospitalized in an "abundance of caution" and Melania is still back at The White House.

You can clearly see the risk profile in the latest infection fatality rates (IFR) from the CDC.

Of course, those age 70+ rates are skewed upwards by those over age 80, those with multiple comorbidities and those in nursing homes.

We are also talking about the President of the United States who has a full-time physician whose principal job is to care for the commander in chief.

Yes, Donald Trump is the President of the United States, which may have dictated more caution in hospitalizing him this early. However, when I first heard he was being transferred to Walter Reed I believed that Trump had to also be exhibiting some worrisome symptoms that were concerning for that step to be taken 

Donald Trump is not one who likes to exhibit weakness of any kind. He would not have agreed to go the the hospital unless there was a good reason.

The fact that doctors were so quick to use the experimental drugs Regeneron and Remdisivir also suggested more than normal concern. He is also reported to be taking " zinc, Vitamin D, famotidine, melatonin and a daily aspirin" according to White House doctor Sean Conley.

That there was more concern about his condition on Friday now seems to have been confirmed today by the doctors attending to the President.

I also found it interesting that President Trump has not been given hydroxychloroquine after all that Trump said about it earlier in the pandemic. Is this because he already took it as a prophylactic earlier and it was determined to not be effective for him? Or is there some other reason?

For example, as I have written before, all of the vaccine work and the use of therapeutic drugs such as Regeneron and Remdisivir can only be used under the "emergency use authorization" exception to the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act "when there are no adequate, approved, and available alternatives".

If 74-year old President Trump quickly recovered by only taking HCQ, zine and an Z-pac would that not make it difficult to argue that there were "no adequate, approved and available alternatives" available?

It is difficult to imagine that the President did not ask about the use of HCQ for his treatment considering his earlier statements about it. You have to know that he would have liked to confound his critics. However, it is also not hard to see that he was also told what that might do to the fast-paced vaccine development plan that Trump has been pushing so hard for.

Right now I believe all of this plays to Biden's advantage.

The biggest benefit to Biden is that he can continue to stay in his basement and off of the campaign trail. Voters will not see the marked contrast between Trump's enthusiastic rallies and the almost nonexistent Biden campaign. 

Here is a "Biden rally" hosted by Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire yesterday.

I still have not figured out why the Biden campaign sent Jill Biden to Nebraska for this event while Biden was in his basement. Nebraska allocates its electoral votes by congressional district. Trump won this district and the one electoral vote by 2% in 2016. Why Nebraska and not Florida, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina or Ohio?

On the other hand, this is a crowd that gathered outside Walter Reed Hospital yesterday to support President Trump. This is in Bethesda, MD which is not exactly "Trump country". Hillary Clinton got 76% of the vote in Montgomery County which Bethesda is a part of.

Source:https://thepatriotsreport.com/2020/10/03/americans-bring-rally-to-trumplarge-crowd-stands-outside-walter-reed-hospital-chants-usa-usa-video/

The fact that Trump cannot campaign allows Biden to avoid that comparison and it also means that he will not have to have campaign and stand up in media events where he risks making mistakes and gaffes.

For example, here is Biden in Grand Rapids, Michigan on Friday where he is essentially addressing an empty parking lot.

You have to also ask if the American people will accept this from their President?

Since we hear from many that the threat of Covid-19 is not going away soon are we to expect a President Biden to spend most of his time hunkered down in the White House because he is fearful of catching the virus?

If he is unwilling to take much risk to be President why would he take any risks if he is President?

It may start occurring to people that if Trump pulls through this we will have a President who will have had the virus, has antibodies and is presumably immune. There will be nothing to prevent Trump from fully discharging his duties. Can the same be said about Biden?

That is another "what if" in all of this which I can see developing as a narrative over the last weeks of the campaign if Trump pulls through with no lingering effects from the virus.

The 2020 election has become the "what if" election.

If anyone tells you they can predict the outcome right now just walk the other way.

There is simply no way they can have any idea with so many "what ifs" in play.

The Debate and Beyond

The first Presidential debate is behind us and what more do we know today than a couple of days ago?

First, the debate garnered many fewer viewers than was predicted.

TV viewership was over 10 million fewer than watched the first Clinton/Trump debate in 2016.

Does this suggest that a lot of voters have made up their minds and don't see the need to spend their time watching the debate drama?

Interestingly, I found in talking to a number of friends that most only watched the first half of the debate. Most said they got tired of the back and forth bickering and changed the channel. 

Second, we know that the Donald Trump that ran in 2016 is the same Donald Trump that stood on that debate stage this week. His personality and his unique brand of politics has not changed. He is brazen and blunt. He does not politely sit back. Trump is a fighter to the core, and if he is not punching his opponent, he is counter punching.

I personally believe that Trump would have been better served by letting Biden make his points despite the fact so much Biden said was untrue. Trump should have taken note of what Biden said and then come back with a stinging rebuttal instead of butting in and challenging Biden. 

However, the debate format was not set up to facilitate this very well. There was no real time for rebuttal before Chris Wallace came in with his own follow-up questions. This effectively introduced a third party to the debate and Wallace was not there to do any favors for Trump. 

Third, Joe Biden survived the night without any major gaffes or brain freezes. This by itself made the debate a win for Biden. He could not afford anything that fed the narrative that he was not up to the job.

However, at the same time, the general reaction I got from talking to friends was that Biden looked old, weak and fragile compared to Trump.

On balance, I would give Biden a win on points for the night but I doubt anyone will remember this debate in a week or so.

Other events will intercede and prove to be much more consequential in determining the final outcome of this election.

Why do I say that?

Let's go back four years ago.

The first Clinton/Trump debate had just taken place.

Hillary was consistently considered the winner of that debate by almost everyone.

In fact, I wrote a blog post after that debate in which I criticized Trump entitled "The Counter Puncher Forgot To Punch Back".

Donald Trump has famously stated that he does not punch first. He only counter punches when he is attacked first.

In the first Presidential debate tonight it seemed to me that Trump forgot who he was.

Perhaps it was because he had been told incessantly that he had to show a Presidential demeanor and a calm demeanor. It might have been because he did not expect so many offensive blows from Hillary.

The reason does not matter.

What I saw tonight was a counter puncher who forgot to punch back.

Hillary Clinton was on the offensive with every answer.

However, instead of counter punching, Trump looked like he was employing Muhammed Ali's "rope-a-dope" strategy where he just went into a reflexive defensive strategy.

Let's not forget that this was all before the Access Hollywood tapes were released and Republican officeholder were distancing themselves from Trump as fast as they could.

However, right on the heels of that disclosure Trump went into the second debate with Hillary. In one of the great performances I have ever seen under pressure, and with the stakes so high, Trump turned the race around that night which ultimately led to his election.

That is one of the reasons I don't second guess or underestimate Donald Trump.

Trump does not do things the way I would do them but he is still standing despite the fact that almost the entire media, bureaucratic and political establishment has been trying to take him down since he first ran for President.

It just might be true that Donald Trump knows better than anyone what works best for him. Too many people get too wrapped up in the style of Donald Trump when they should be focusing on his substance and the results that he gets.

Perhaps Donald Trump is not as focused on winning over undecided suburban women as he is in turning out his base of voters? How many true undecided voters are out there right now anyway? 

Perhaps Donald Trump is more interested in getting the votes of Black and Hispanic males, who clearly benefited greatly from the Trump economy the last three years, than trying to swing more independents his way?

Perhaps Donald Trump is focused on getting more non-college educated working class people to vote. Only 55% of these people voted in 2016 compared to 72% of college-educated Whites.

It seems that you can find most any poll result you want when you survey those who watched the debate. I have found that most of the time people tend to think that their candidate "won" the debate.

However, there was one poll after the Trump/Biden debate that I found particularly interesting.

It was conducted by Telemundo which specifically targets Hispanic viewers. Bear in mind that this was a "click" poll and was not a scientific opinion poll. However, it was still rather astounding.

66% of the Telemundo viewers who participated saw Trump as the winner of the debate.

 

Many polls have shown that Trump has improved his standing with Black voters over the last four years.

For example, I cited this Rasmussen poll in a blog post in late July that showed Trump with a 49% approval rating with Blacks and a 57% approval rating with other non-White (principally Hispanics) likely voters.

Approval scores do not necessarily translate directly to votes. However, they certainly indicate that there are potential votes to be had if there is approval of the job performance of the incumbent President.

As of October 1, Rasmussen has Trump's overall approval rating at 49%. This is exactly where Barack Obama stood in 2012 on the same date when he was running for re-election against Mitt Romney.

Source: Rasmussen Reports

Most polls right now are showing Biden ahead of Trump by about 6 or 7 points. At the same point of the race with Hillary Clinton, Trump was down 3 or 4 points. However, after the Access Hollywood tape was released Trump's deficit grew to 7 or 8 points.

As I have written many times before, the biggest factor in any election involves turnout. Political races are primarily won when you get your voters to turn out. You lose when your voters stay home.

For example, a big reason that Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 was due to the fact that Black voters did not turn out to support her like they did for Barack Obama in 2012. 67% of registered Black voters turned out to vote in 2012. Only 57% turned out in 2016.

Turnout also explains the GOP Congressional losses in 2018. A substantial number of the people who turned out to vote for Donald Trump in 2016 simply did not turn out to vote for GOP Congressional candidates in 2018. As a result, the Republicans lost the House.

An incumbent President also can only be defeated if those who voted for him the last time turn against him four years later. The polls suggest that this has occurred. However, I just do not see evidence of that in the people I know and talk to.

I know many people who were on the fence about Donald Trump four years ago. Most reluctantly voted for Trump. I do not know one of them who regrets their vote. Most say he has far exceeded their expectations.

Most still don't like the way he behaves or his tweets. However, they are not going to vote for Biden over Trump. That is especially true as they see what is going on in the country right now. Most see Trump as the person that is needed to protect and preserve civil society. Most of those late converts to Trump would not have believed they would see him that way considering what they were thinking four years ago at this time.

In fact, I think most everyone would also have to admit that there has not been a President in our lifetimes who has governed and followed a policy agenda that has deviated less from what the candidate ran on than what we have seen with Donald J. Trump. 

There are people who may not like what he has done. However, it is hard to find almost anything that Trump has done that was not in his original political platform.

There has been no bait and switch.

You have not seen Trump say one thing when running for President and do another thing as President.

What you saw when he ran in 2016 is what you have seen for the following 47 months. We saw that again at the debate this week.

There have been no surprises.

Let's look at how important some of these factors above play out by looking at an interesting interactive tool that NBC News has developed for their election coverage website to see if we can understand where all of this leading us to in the election. It may allow you to better understand what is really driving the campaign strategies of the candidates.

It is called "Swing the Election" and it allows you to input different turnout and vote totals for different demographic groups to determine what effects they may have on the 2020 election results.

For example, here is the electoral map for 2016 that ended with Trump winning with 306 electoral votes with 49% of the popular vote.

If you merely adjust for population and demographic changes since 2016 this tool suggests that Biden would capture 52% of the vote and 307 electoral votes. It projects that Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin would all move from Trump to the Democrats.

These are the underlying assumptions based on that conclusion. 

For example, it assumes only 8% of the Black vote and 28% of the Hispanic vote are for Trump which were the totals in 2016. However, these groups have a bigger percentage of the population today.

Let's leave everything else the same but adjust Trump's share of the Black vote to 12% (+4 points compared to 2016) and his share of the Hispanic vote to 32% (+ 4 points). 

These don't seem unreasonable considering some of the approval scores we have seen for Trump recently.

Trump now retains Florida and Michigan and wins the electoral college according to the tool. He loses Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

If Trump does that and also gets a higher turnout with non-college White voters (his most reliable demographic) by 4 points (from 55% to 59% turnout) the electoral college results are identical to 2016 and Trump actually gains in the popular vote.

If you merely have 4% lower turnout among the age 18-29 demographic than we saw in 2016, Trump would also retain all of the states he won in 2016 plus pick up New Hampshire.

This is not far-fetched considering that Joe Biden is not exactly the type of candidate that seems able to create a lot of enthusiasm with younger voters. You also have the added factor now that many college students are not on college campuses in states like New Hampshire. They are more likely to vote in their home states if they vote at all.

There is something else you should be aware of when seeing poll numbers involving the national popular vote. Due to the fact that so many Democrat votes are concentrated in large states like California, New York and Illinois, you cannot assume that a popular vote win will translate into an electoral vote victory for Biden.

Nate Silver calculated the chances that Biden would win the election based on his popular vote margin. 

As you can see, Biden needs to be up by about 3 points in the popular vote to have a better than even chance of winning the electoral college according to Silver. Keep this in mind as you see the national polls leading up to election day.

The big point in all of this is that there is a lot that can still happen in the weeks leading up to the election. 

As you can see in my use of the interactive tool, this election will also be determined by small changes at the margin among many voting groups.

There is a reason that Biden and the media want to falsely allege that Trump is a racist white supremacist sympathizer.

There is a reason that Biden will never say anything remotely negative about Black Lives Matter.

There is a reason that Biden wants young voters to know that he his working with Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on their agenda and he does not want to call out Antifa as anything but an "idea".

There is a reason that Trump went after Biden aggressively on issues like law and order, the Green New Deal, defund the police and packing the Supreme Court at the debate.

There is a reason that Biden is trying to play both sides of these issues.

That reason is in the numbers above.

The Democrats are trying to hold a very, very fragile voter coalition together for Biden to win.

They need high turnout among Blacks, Hispanics and young people and they cannot afford to lose any that voted for Hillary to stay home in 2020 (or even worse) to switch to Trump.

Trump needs to maintain the energy and commitment of his base first and foremost. 

If every voter who voted for Trump the last time does it again, he will be tough to beat. If he does this, and can make inroads with Black and Hispanic voters and get more working class voters to the polls that have stayed away in the past, he will be impossible to beat.

Fasten your seatbelts. 

It is going to get even more interesting before it is over.

After all, it is 2020.

UPDATE:

Shortly after I published this post it was revealed that President Trump and First Lady Melania have tested positive for Covid-19.

Didn't I just say it would get even more interesting before it is over?

The question is quickly going to be asked as to when the President can be allowed to resume normal activities.

The CDC guidelines (follow the SCIENCE!) state that he could be back on the campaign trail 10 days after the first symptoms appeared and at least 24 hours after any fever is absent without the use of fever-reducing medications.

If no symptoms ever present themselves the President can resume normal activities 10 days after his positive test. Note that the CDC now does not require that additional negative tests be obtained before discontinuing home isolation after a positive test. These would only be required if one wanted to cut short the 10 day home isolation period.

Source: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/disposition-in-home-patients.html

Assuming all goes well this means the President could be back on the campaign trail by October 11.

The next debate is scheduled for October 15. The final debate is October 22.