Happy Monday.
Last week we were treated to the Democratic National Convention, a formal virtual event where Joe Biden was nominated as president and Kamala Harris was nominated as vice-president. The Biden-Harris ticket will represent the Democrats on November 3.
This week we will be treated to the Republican National Convention, which will have some limited in-person attendance at the Charlotte Convention Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. The theme is, “Honoring the Great American Story.”
Monday – “Land of Promise”
Tuesday – “Land of Opportunity”
Wednesday – “Land of Heroes”
Thursday – “Land of Greatness”
Trump is expected to accept the nomination on Thursday night live from the White House in front of invited guests.
Click here for more details about the convention from Fox News.
While there’s no doubt Trump will be the Republican candidate, I don’t know what to think about Trump’s chances to win a second term. Lord knows that’s what I prefer.
Most of the professional polls have Biden ahead of Trump. FiveThirtyEight has Biden ahead by ten points, 52% to 42% of likely voters. CNN’s “polling of polls” is nearly identical, with Biden ahead 51% to 42% as of August 17. The Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds that Trump’s support is at 41%, 9 percentage points behind Biden. 270ToWin.com provides a “Consensus Electoral Map” which favors Biden. RealClearPolitics keeps a running summary of polls and has Biden up by +7.6.
This is hard to understand, given the circumstances, starting with Biden himself. The man has been very limited in his public appearances and, when he has appeared, he frequently speaks incoherently and cannot seem to form simple sentences. Or if he is in dialogue with someone he makes offensive statements like, “if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.” It’s clear he’s in some kind of cognitive decline.
Biden did not receive a post-convention bump in his lead over Trump, although voters view him more favorably than they did pre-convention. However, Morning Consult found that “Biden is in a significantly more commanding position coming out of his party’s gathering than Hillary Clinton was four years ago following the Philadelphia convention.”
Bernie Sanders supporters are angry that Biden was chosen by the party apparatchiks for the second election cycle in a row. His former campaign press secretary, Briahna Joy Gray, refused to endorse Biden because he isn’t progressive enough.
There’s also an “enthusiasm gap” that favors Trump, not Biden. As YouGov reports,
During July, better than two-thirds of Trump supporters (68%) felt “enthusiastic” about him compared to 40 percent of Biden supporters who felt the same about him. Enthusiasm for Biden has grown over the last month (from 31% in mid-June), but the large gap between the candidates on this measure remains.
They are quick to note, however, that “the lack of enthusiasm for Biden may mask the motivation his backers feel about voting against Trump.” In other words, it could be that while people aren’t enthused about Biden, they are enthused about kicking Trump out of office.
But when I think of the rallies Trump has held, with standing room only inside and just as large a crowd outside the convention centers and then compare that to Joe Biden’s in person gatherings of just a few dozen people, I don’t understand where the support is coming from. Who are the pollsters talking to?
Then there’s the violence and looting of BLM and Antifa, the anti-semitism, the threats to gun ownership, the radical abortion laws, the demands for socialism, for free health care, for free college and the lock down orders from mostly Democrats and their sympathizers over the Asian Contagion. You’d think America is tired of the chaos and unreasonable demands coming almost exclusively from the Left.
So does Trump stand a chance? The Primary Model, which has correctly predicted five of the six previous US elections, including Trump’s surprise win in 2016, doesn’t just think there’s a chance he’ll win—it’s predicting that he has almost no chance of losing. According to the Primary Model, President Donald Trump has “a 91% chance of winning the 2020 presidential election, with Democrat Joe Biden having just a 9% chance. Trump would get 362 electoral votes, Biden 176. This forecast is unconditional and final; hence not subject to any updating. It was first posted March 2, 2020, on Twitter.”
Talk about confidence. I suppose this is one way it could work:
One other thing that might be relevant here. In 2016, all the polls showed Hillary Clinton beating Trump by a wide margin and all of the conventional wisdom, as it turned out, was wrong. There might be a similar dynamic at work this time.
By the end of this week, Trump will be the Republican nominee, and then the major push will be on in earnest to November 3. Lots can change in that amount of time, but according to the conventional wisdom, Trump faces an uphill battle.
We’ll see. Just don’t get cocky.