Trump is winning in Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin and Michigan. He’s winning the popular vote. Biden is winning nowhere. Biden is on a path to defeat. How do you feel about that?
Are you in denial? Are you questioning the polls? All of them which are all sending the same message? Do you think the pollsters are using bad samples?
I’ll tell you what. This isn’t a situation where things will change once voters get to know the candidates better. The electorate is very familiar with both these candidates. Hell, they’ve actually seem both in the office of the presidency, so they have a unique ability to do a side-by-side comparison. Right now, the voters want Donald Trump to be president and they don’t want Joe Biden to be president. That’s clear. It’s fairly narrow, but it’s uniform across all swing states and in the popular vote.
How is this possible considering everything we’ve seen and know about Trump both in and out of office?
I honestly do not know. It makes me not want to live, frankly. But Trump is beating everyone. He’s beating Fani Willis and the media, and the Democrats and the too-late Justice Department and their special prosecutor. It’s true that he’s taken a massive half-billion dollar financial hit, but who cares when you’re about to be the most powerful man on Earth again?
I can’t say Trump is really doing anything right other than escaping justice, but perhaps Biden is doing something wrong. I thought he State of the Union speech was really strong and encouraging, but he got no real bump out of it all. At least, it was smaller than average.
There’s really nothing that’s going to be left of this country if Trump is reelected. So, with the stakes as high as they can get, it’s probably best to ignore the polls as best you can and get to work trying to help Biden get votes. Whatever else you might think is a higher priority for you, your career, your daughter’s wedding, you’re wrong about that.
Trump has to lose. That comes before everything else.
5
“How is this possible considering everything we’ve seen and know about Trump both in and out of office?”
1) It’s seven months before the election and low-information voters aren’t paying attention yet.
2) There’s a solid 2-3% (maybe slightly more?) of voters who are principally “throw the bums out” voters. They voted for Trump in 2016 because Clinton was the de facto incumbent. They voted for Biden in 2020. Now they’re likely to vote for Trump (or any Republican) unless something really shakes up their view of the election.
3) It may be that the polls are right *and* that they won’t change, and that Trump gets elected. If so, we’re going to have to figure out how to deal with it. (Note: there are precedents: e.g., the end of Reconstruction. Black people didn’t wither up and die. They figured out how to persevere, build institutions that helped them survive, and ultimately seized their opportunity post-WW II to dismantle Jim Crow.)
4) It may be that the polls are right *and* that a good campaign can make a difference before November.
5
You are right, Boo Man. The world is ending. Right around our little ears. It’s all over. We should give up. I couldn’t have said it any better.
4.5
I don’t see how this is hard to figure out.
Both Biden and Trump are more disliked than liked, so similar to 2016 those that actually like one candidate votes for that one, and those that dislike both split. Best way to win is to get people to actually like you.
Last summer Biden was – according to the approval ratings 538 tracks – only 10% under water, and Trump was about 15% under water. So Biden was leading in the polls. Then came October 7 and the genocide Israel got going after that. As people who left the state departement wrote, as people who has left the campaign has said: aiding and abetting a genocide is morally wrong and also makes you unpopular. And they were right, now Biden is 15% under water, and Trump is just 10% under water. Last I checked Biden had the lowest approval ratings of any president at this point of his presidency, since approval ratings started being measured (Truman).
Genocides are unpopular, they make the president unpopular. If you want to stop that, stop the genocide. Even if it means criticising your own party leadership.