TWO WEEKS OUT: WHERE THE 2020 BIDEN-TRUMP PRESIDENTIAL RACE STANDS

 

                                   WEEKS

Let’s start with three basic truths about the 2020 presidential election two weeks from the day the vote counting starts (millions are voting early and have been for some time):

1.                        Democratic nominee Joe Biden enjoys a solid lead in the polls;

2.                        incumbent Republican President Donald Trump could win, but his path seemingly narrows every day; and

3.                        the factors that swung the 2016 election to Trump have not surfaced so far.

This is the universe in which both nervous Democrats and hopeful Republicans live as the race comes down the home stretch.

Biden’s Lead

As of October 20, two weeks before election day:

*Biden leads in fivethirtyeight.com’s national polling average by more than ten points and just under nine in the Real Clear Politics polling average.

*In the three decisive battleground states Trump won in 2016 by a total of 77,000 votes, Biden leads by five points or more in the 538 and RCP polling averages for Pennsylvania, by six in Wisconsin, and by seven in Michigan.

*Biden holds narrower leads in other battleground states Trump won in 2016 including Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, and Arizona.

*Three states – Iowa, Texas, and Ohio – are essentially tied. Trump won them all last time and he likely has no path to a second term without at least two of them.

Should Biden hold his leads in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin and win the states Hillary Clinton carried four years ago, he need not win any of the toss up states (Iowa, Texas, Ohio) or other battleground states. Right now, Trump doesn’t lead in any state Clinton won four years ago.

 

Trump Could Still Win

Nate Silver’s 538 forecast, based on computer modeling  using polls, gives Trump a 12%

chance of winning. On the eve of the election in 2016, with Clinton leading in the polls, that forecast gave Trump a 35% chance of winning. Trump still enjoys a structural advantage in the electoral college because of small western and southern states he seemingly can’t lose. If he could flip a few states where Biden now leads narrowly, he possibly could pair those with states like Arkansas, Wyoming, and the Dakotas where he’s likely to win by more than 15 points and perhaps cobble together an electoral college majority.

Trump also draws encouragement from the idea of the so-called hidden Trump vote. Supposedly a sizeable number of Trump supporters don’t reveal themselves to pollsters, but will turn out on election day and put him back in the White House.

Evidence that a hidden Trump vote exists is tenuous at best and results from myths that have sprung up about the 2016 election, especially the idea that the polls got  

everything wrong. In truth, the 2016 national polls forecast the popular vote accurately. Clinton held a three-point lead going into election day and won by about 2.3 points, well within the margin of error for any poll.

As Clinton pointed out in her book What Happened, not  many polls were in the field in

the final days of the campaign in states like Wisconsin. They didn’t measure there the drop in her support, seen elsewhere and likely caused by FBI Director James Comey’s reopening of the e-mail investigation.   

Biden’s lead has remained stable. It has endured since the spring and has grown, in part, because of Trump’s abysmal handling of the pandemic. Relying on a hidden vote seems like a fantasy now, but only counting the ballots can tell us if such a thing exists.

Maybe the Calvary Isn’t Coming

Whatever Clinton’s complicity in her loss, and we’ve been unsparing in our criticism of her,

the things that did her in haven’t happened to Biden to this point. First, there’s no Comey on the horizon. Trump’s efforts at creating an “October surprise” through investigations into Biden and his son Hunter, Clinton, and former President Barack Obama have, so far, fallen flat.

More important, demographic factors increasingly work against Trump. Take senior

voters. Trump won them, 52-45 in 2016, but some recent polling shows Biden leading among that group. Trump’s gender gap has only gotten bigger. He lost women, 54-41 2016, and is losing them now, 55-39. He’s not winning men by as much as he did last time. In 2016, Trump carried the male vote, 52-41, but right now leads only 49-45.

Turnout among people of color could decide the election. A decrease in black turnout for Democrats, when compared to 2008 and 2012, hurt Clinton in those critical upper mid-western states. She won almost 90% of the African American vote, 66% of Hispanics, and 65% of the Asian-American vote. Biden seems headed in the same direction, but turnout remains the issue. Early indications suggest a bigger turnout among people of color, though only the counting will tell us for sure.

Long line of African American voters during days of early voting Oct2020

All of this occurs with Republican voter suppression efforts as a backdrop. Trump’s railings about non-existent fraud with mail-in voting also complicate the picture. The country may have to work through all that after election day.

 We should keep in mind the admonition of the great American philosopher Yogi Berra that the game “ain’t over ‘til it’s over.” Fair enough, but Trump has only a few outs left, the game isn’t tied, and he doesn’t have runners on base.            

THE FIRST PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE: JOE BIDEN AND DONALD TRUMP – A TRAIN WRECK IN CLEVELAND

Farce. Debacle. Disgrace. And those were the kinder terms applied to the first presidential debate held September 29 in Cleveland. Commentators expressed shock and dismay

at how the proceedings disintegrated into a shouting match involving President Donald Trump, Democratic challenger former Vice President Joe Biden, and moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow declared, “This sort of debate shouldn’t happen in a democracy.”

                 

It unfolded as it did because Trump wouldn’t comply with the rules. He constantly interrupted Biden and engaged in verbal battles with Wallace. Trump behaved that way

so consistently, he must have gone in with a strategy of provoking Biden into a temper tantrum or making him appear mentally unstable. For the most part, Biden kept his cool and, under trying circumstances, demonstrated command of his faculties.

The rules had been worked out between the parties, with each candidate given two minutes of uninterrupted time for responses to

questions from Wallace on six broad topics, followed by a discussion period. Instead of adhering to that, from the beginning Trump talked over Biden’s answers and sparred with Wallace about the nature of questions and his efforts to enforce the rules. At the end, many who watched found themselves exhausted and embarrassed. One of our daughters sent a text saying that after 45 minutes she’d broken into the wine and “tapped out.”  Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville said, “I was being paid to watch and I had a hard time getting through this.”

 

A Few Memorable Moments

Presidential debates often become known for a memorable line or a gaffe by one candidate. Who can forget Gerald Ford in 1976 claiming

the old Soviet Union didn’t dominate Poland? Or Ronald Reagan in 1980, telling Jimmy

                                                   

Carter, “There you go again?” Then there was George H.W. Bush looking at his watch in

1992, suggesting his impatience with being on stage with Bill Clinton and H. Ross Perot.  No such moment occurred in this debate. The closest anyone came was when Biden said about Trump’s handling of the pandemic, “It is what it is because you are who you are.” But there were things people will remember.

First, Trump wouldn’t, when given a direct opportunity, condemn white supremacy. Instead, he urged that a right-wing group known as the Proud Boys, “stand back and

stand by,” an ominous warning seemingly inviting preparations for future mayhem. Trump’s pass on condemning white supremacy earned him widespread condemnation in the media and from anti-hate groups.

Second, Trump wouldn’t recognize the military service of Biden’s late son, Beau.  When Biden told Trump his son wasn’t a “loser” or a “sucker” as Trump reportedly  described fallen

American soldiers, Trump attacked Biden’s other son, Hunter, for alleged improprieties in connection with business activities in Ukraine, allegations that have proved unfounded despite several investigations.

Finally, Trump demonstrated an astounding lack of respect for American traditions and empathy for people lost in the pandemic. Biden showed the opposite on both counts.   

Impact on the Race?

Beforehand, we laid out objectives each candidate might have, with the idea we’d look for how each did or didn’t achieve them. We quickly realized we couldn’t do that kind of analysis. Trump’s behavior defied a rational

accounting of objectives set versus objectives achieved. Trump took the role of Disrupter-in-Chief and the debate resembled a wrestling match with a pig in a mud puddle.

Dramatist George Bernard Shaw once warned about the danger of getting into such a contest. “You get dirty,” he said. “Besides the

pig likes it.” Biden did his best, succumbing only a few times to the  frustration. He had good moments when he faced the camera and spoke directly to the American people about race, the pandemic, their economic concerns, and climate change.

The entire ugly affair was so far off the norm of presidential debates there’s no framework – historical or otherwise – for  evaluating it. Biden

won a CNN “instant poll” of debate watchers, 60-28, but that wasn’t a sample of the electorate in general. Few pundits believed Trump’s bullying won him support anywhere except with members of his hard-core base. It will take several days before new polling tells us what the country as a whole thought.

Biden reportedly raised a record amount of money from on-line donations the night of the

debate, meaning his spending advantage should continue as the campaign moves into its final days. That fact made it more likely Biden can keep the advantage he began the debate with, a seven-to-eight-point edge in the polling averages published by websites like FiveThirtyEight.com and Real Clear Politics. That doesn’t address the damage the spectacle did to American democracy and our image in the world.   

Any More?

Currently, the schedule calls for two more

presidential debates – a town hall October 15 in Miami and another six topics-with-a-moderator encounter October 22 in Nashville. On October 7, vice presidential candidates Mike Pence and Kamala Harris square off in Salt Lake City. How much of that will actually occur?

After the Cleveland fiasco, cries rang out for calling off the remaining debates. That

probably won’t happen, but the possibility of a repeat of the first debate left a bad taste in many mouths.

Killing microphones when it’s not a candidate’s

turn to speak was suggested for the remaining debates. Everyone knew Trump wouldn’t agree to that, since disrupting things is his objective. But that suggestion made contemplating more debates palatable.

Advice anyone?