On October 20, 2016--about 2 1/2 weeks before the election--Nate Silver's operation gave the odds as follows: Trump had a 14% chance of winning, and Clinton was about 7% ahead in the national polls. (Do read the rest of Silver's 2016 analysis for grim amusement: that he thought Clinton's debate performance locked things up shows how little he knows about voter behavior.)
Now here we are on October 21, 2020 (with the election less than two weeks away), and according to Silver, Trump has a 12% chance of winning, although Biden's lead over Trump is about 10%. Pollsters have apparently made changes since their 2016 fiasco, to better account for the votes of whites without college education, so perhaps this year's numbers are better. On the other hand, does anyone think that the 50% of Trump's supporters who believe Democratic and some Republican elites are running a secret child-sex-trafficking ring are the kinds of people who are likely to participate in polls by mainstream polling outfits? The big unknown here is what proportion of the country is bat shit crazy and likely to cast a vote?
On a brighter note, the USC/Dornsife poll, which actually got the 2016 outcome more right than other polls (it had Trump up by about 3% over Clinton at the end--of course, that wasn't the national vote result, but it did capture the enthusiasm of Trump voters), now shows Biden ahead by 11%. (Here's an explanation of how they do their poll, and about changes since 2016.)
Why does all this matter? Perhaps that seems too obvious a question to address, but here are three reasons:
1. Put aside Trump's weirdness and psychological dysfunction for a moment, and remember that on almost every major domestic issue, he basically pursued the pre-existing hard right agenda of the Republican Party, from taxes to court appointments. He even tried to gut the Affordable Care Act, with some modest success. The country can't afford four more years of reactionary social and economic policy. (The only policy arena in which he has defied the Republicans has been in foreign affairs.)
2. There are cultural and social costs to having a monster-child sitting in the bully pulpit--as the QAnon weirdness shows. The country will be less livable and less governable with four more years of the infantile maniac egging on crazies. (Do bear in mind, however, that if Trump loses, we won't be done with him: he will continue to inflame the crazies even while out of office. Until he expires, or lands in jail, he is a threat to the social fabric, such as it is.)
3. Because the monster-child is both stupid and corrupt, four more years would result in further undermining of democratic institutions, from the Department of Justice to the electoral process.
Even if there is a Democratic landslide, this benighted country is far from out of the woods. As long as the stable of reactionary media personalities from Sean Hannity to Alex Jones are out there polluting the public culture and political environment, the Republican Party will be unfit for governance, and something like the Trump phenomenon, perhaps with a less incompetent figurehead, may return in four or eight years.
My bottom line is that I don't think the United States has a civilized future in its current form. For those who have to remain in the U.S., it will be more important than ever before to live in civilized states; for those who can relocate to countries with less severe levels of dysfunction, I would recommend doing so.
Recent Comments