Certainly, nothing tops the U.S. Presidential election of 2016 for sheer stunning surprise. The 98% ‘Sure Thing’ as trumpeted by the New York Times, was firmly shared by essentially every poll. All the learned pundits sagely furrowing their smug brows over the calamity candidate that was Donald Trump, predicted years in the wilderness for the Republican Party for having recklessly gone down the path of nominating a braggadocio dumpster fire. Hillary Clinton spent her last week locking down money for her “cause” and measuring the drapes of the oval office, while the dumpster fire Trump worked tirelessly in the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. The November 9th,2016 morning after hangover for the experts was something to behold, as the stunned country woke to find the dumpster fire candidate, the President of the United States – and it wasn’t that close.
So, here we are in 2020 with less than a month to go and it looks like almost a mirror image of the October, 2016 story. The President, despite four relatively impressive years of accomplishments behind him, is in a world of hurt in polls, and amazingly still considers himself the ‘Outsider’. Despite the gravitas that would normally go with position of President, Trump continues to rail against the ‘deep state’ as if he was the challenger, careening down the public avenue with his bullying style, brash mouth, and juvenilely disciplined twitter feed. The establishment candidate is Joseph Biden, an elderly gent that sits on the front porch of the country eerily like a 1920 Warren Harding preaching a return to normalcy, pleasantly confused, and avoiding at all costs, any actual interactions with public. The polls, well, they have coalesced even more in the Biden camp then those enjoyed by Hillary, projecting a 10-15% national lead and a landslide in the Electoral College. Once again, we are told the coronation is a done deal.
What are we to believe, the polls, or our own lyin’ eyes? The one definite clarity provided by the last five years of the Trump phenomena is that there is no way to predict the Trumpnado. Has the country gotten its fill of the Trump sales pitch, or is it only getting started?
2020 presents many dilemmas for the earnest political watcher. The United States used to have an election day, and the momentum swings were clarified by a single event in time, and a single accounting of the population. The Covid pandemic has been a godsend to those who see democratic elections as a political journey not an event, and seek to harvest whatever vote count they can, over as many days as they can, until the outcome is adjusted in their favor. Provided by the pandemic with political cover to flood prospective voters with mail in ballots, some 20% of swing state voters have already voted weeks before the election, allowing campaigns to determine who has voted and who has yet to vote among their supporters, allowing continual harvesting of the residual crop, hoping to lock in a majority victory before the actual election day. The Covid crisis remains foremost as a scare tactic to suppress election day votes, in hopes that the traditional laissez faire democrat voter can be accounted beforehand, and the traditional election day republican voter convinced to sit this one out and avoid risk of the virus. The difficult thing to predict is whether a two month long voting spree will actually create some unpredicted enthusiasm gap. The door to door get out the vote registration effort by Trump’s campaign has been spectacular, the effort by the Biden campaign, mirroring its moribund leader, has been non-existent. Has the country grown beyond the idea that all politics is retail, and a simple passive internet and mail push will do the job? Will late reactions and events instead drive new core value voter enthusiasm for late in person voting that will overcome the complacent vote from home effort?
The Donald Trump response to his Covid -19 infection was classic Trump. He caught the virus and literally beat it into submission in five days. The anticipated ‘deathwatch’ by mainstream media, hoping for a ‘just desserts’ moment for the heretofore disease-insolent Trump, instead, now have to deal with the release of the Trump Kraken from the depths of the illness, fully rejuvenated, and twice as motivated. The extreme juxtaposition of the basement hiding Biden and the resurrected Trumpnado over the next few weeks may be just the positive juice the Trump candidacy needed for impact on election day.
Elections have always been determined by economic factors, personal sense of well being through law and order, and confidence in the candidate. Trump’s balderdash has had the apparent poll measured effect of having people weary of the constant drama, and wistfully but passionlessly envision a more “normal” alternative in Biden. When push comes to shove, does Biden’s near catatonic campaign style, generally absent from the fight, and when present, laconically emoted in front of minuscule crowds, sufficient to have people forget the constant radical violence, the proposed massive tax increases, the return to open borders, and the unsettling of the world order on the Obama model? When push comes to shove, can Trump somehow articulate his successful formula without the constant turn to self aggrandizement and self pity, that steps on every advantage he has in his actual stands on issues versus Biden?
We must look to the unpredictability this year produced by an electorate that no longer has a defined middle. Is Trump hatred a voting strategy that overcomes a litany of socialistic nonsense? Are there sufficient “shy” Trump voters that would possibly surmount the uniform congealing of polls pointing toward a Biden landslide? Or as the polls seem to imply, its time to turn out the lights, the party’s over?
No one was able to foretell the outcome of 2016 through polling. For 2020, therefore, as Peter Townsend of the Who so presciently wrote, we “Won’t Get Fooled Again”.
There’s a lot of October left. The drama has only begun.