I wish I were as confident about the November election as Daniel Drezner. Most of the time, I am, but the 2016 hangover is real. When you’re lying in bed and your head is pounding, that’s not a sign that you’re delusional, but that something really bad happened the night before. It’s a lesson that if you drink that much again, you’re going to pay a heavy price. So, do we dare get drunk on optimism in 2020?
As an analyst, I try to give you things straight, regardless of what I might hope will happen. I did this in my coverage of the Democratic primary, where it was not my preference that the finals come down to a choice between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. I told you that would happen because that is what I believed. Part of me is happy to be correct, although another part would have been happier to be wrong.
The truth is, Trump has no business even coming close to getting reelected. Drezner is right about that. But he also has no business leading in the polls in a couple of dozen states. He’s maintained a level of support in the low-forties that seems impervious to any event or any calamity. The Covid-19 outbreak will put that basement floor to the test, but the fact remains that he hasn’t cratered so far in any kind of proportional way to his performance in office.
Still, despite being the incumbent and armed with a huge money advantage and organizing head start, he’s not currently the favorite. It’s just that he still has a puncher’s chance, and he shouldn’t.
As many long time residents of The Pond know, I live in one of the most consistently red, pro-Trump areas in Ohio, and probably one of the most pro-Trump in the nation. I have spent my entire life here, with the exception of about 10 months in Virginia after I was born to a dad and mom in the Army at the time. I graduated from high school here, attended a local university, and in that time have lived in just four different places within 30 miles of each other. With that being said, I have also had the privilege of traveling and working around the world for my jobs over the last 3 decades. So I have had an adult life which parallels, in some small way, a lot of people who live in more diverse, urban areas with a significant mix of cultures around them. I have had the privilege of exposure to much that many local people here have never experienced. And that has helped shape some part of my worldview, though I am largely who I am by virtue of the personality type with which I was born.
I have always known, since I was a teenager, that there was a plurality, if not a majority, of local people who held consistenly deep seated racist, xenophobic, homophobic, and anti-Semitic views. I grew up hearing all the jokes, the stories, and the sideways glances at anything non-white, non-heterosexual, and non-Christian. All of this has always been around, but when you are growing up you don’t pay much attention since your worldview is so limited. And to be truthful, in my growing up there were only about half a dozen African American kids in my high school of about 1000 students over 4 grades, only “suspected” gay people, and no one who deigned to be outwardly non-Christian. But as I grew older, and experienced a wider variety of what the world has to offer, I began to get more and more uncomfortable with what I was seeing and hearing from everyone around me; people I had known all my life. I was considered to be “in the club” since I was a lifetime resident, but as the years went by I felt more and more like an outsider.
It saddens me more than I can say to see the level of unquestioning support, and almost cult-like allegiance by my hometown, to the principles that are exhibited in the person of Donald Trump. In my mind, he exemplifies almost all of the evils that my life experiences have shown to be simply horrifically inhuman and representative of the darkest side of our human nature; what one might call our animal nature. Locally, most people still practice, on the surface, those inherent midwestern niceties that are so much a part of our social DNA here. But one doesn’t have to scratch far below the surface to find some characteristics lurking which, every time they bubble to the surface, leave me with such a sickening and repulsive feeling toward almost everything about my community. I know this broad brush of mine doesn’t apply to everyone. But the simple fact is, when the time comes for all of them to make the most important choice in their lifetime to determine the direction this country will go for the rest of most of their lives, we will still see probably at least 65% of them fill in the little oval next to Donald Trump’s name. How am I supposed to interpret that, given all that we have seen from this singularly dangerous and evil man over the last 3 1/2 years? It makes many of them comfortable, I guess, to call it “just a difference of opinion”, but the complete and total blind spot that all of these people have to the completely inhuman aspect that drives this man’s behavior and actions is simply beyond the pale of characterizing it as nothing more than an ideological debate. I think i knew that these people were irretrievably lost when I got so much pushback on kids in cages at the border. That was like a seminal moment for me, when I realized that I had to pull away from them. It was evident that we simply do not share common ground on even the most rudimentary aspects when it comes to our shared humanity.
These last 3 1/2 years have pretty much put to rest this whole idea of American exceptionalism and the possession of any moral high ground by our country. The fact that we went from 8 years of Barack Obama to 4 years of Donald Trump indicates that we are still a divided nation, even after more than 240 years of triumphs and tragedies, and hundreds of thousands dead in a civil war, we still cannot come to a basic agreement on where we stand as a people on something as simple as the basic humanity of our fellow man. We might well vote out Trump in November, but I have little hope that even doing that will put to rest the demons that have been unleashed on us. We are destined, I am afraid, for another serious national reckoning on who exactly we wish to be as a people. It is apparent that a significant percentage of us want to be what most of us thought we had abandoned a while ago. The darkest side of our national character still has an allure to a plurality of our fellow citizens. How we settle this argument remains to be seen, but I have significant doubts that we have the capacity anymore to settle it in a non-violent and compromising fashion. The genie is not going to be put back in the bottle. Either the genie dies, or the genie wins. Only time will tell which outcome is delivered.
Trump still certainly has a chance of winning, that’s true. However, I do find it annoying that people seem to treat him like some Unstoppable Juggernaut, like he’s Mike Tyson Circa 1988 stepping into the ring with Michael Spinks. The fact of the matter is he’s not even the equivalent of Tony Tubbs. He’s a ridiculously flawed, weak opponent. And if any Democrat, certainly Barack Obama, had the identical polling numbers that Trump has right now, and was facing the same economic situation Trump is facing right now ,the entire narrative in the media would be that Barack Obama is dead man walking. That he has absolutely no chance. Yet, Trump continues to be treated like a favorite. And that does help him. So yeah, be afraid that he might win. He certainly can. But don’t curl up in the fetal position like you’re going up against some swirling Vortex of Unstoppable kick ass. You’re not. He’s a shitty, weak opponent.
Yes, too true. I mean, I’m frightened as shit that he hasn’t been able to push 27-28% approval. However, he has a true floor of 40-43%. That’s not a juggernaut. That’s a weak incumbent. In today’s environment that is a true low, that is Herbert Hoover low (and he got 40%!).