It looks like Biden is going to squeak a victory.
Why wasn’t it a landslide?
In many ways Biden couldn’t have had more favorable circumstances. In the middle of an epidemic – clearly poorly handled by the sitting president, and with a significant crash of the economy (which was doing reasonable badly before).
So what played in Donald Trumps favour?
According to a survey, the first reason is unreliable polls. Now while this is obvious – Trump was supposed to lose by a wide margin, but he didn’t. Certainly with such an odd approach, and with Trumps strange mix of support, the polls are still missing how much he still has.
Number two was biden’s relationship with black people. I suppose if you feel you have are aggrieved against someone, this can overrule common sense. In way how could a Biden presidency be worse than the trump want for black people.
Number three was very enthusiasm. I suppose there’s on this front it is entirely understandable. An awful lot of the votes cast for Biden actually cast against Donald Trump. Wow you would expect this to be enough for Biden to win it is not a good platform to be trying to win election on.
Biden’s economic message came in number four. Well he was seen as a more competent pair of hands his green revolution is going to hit certain states hard. I have to say that this one is a bizarre one, there are constant horrific predictions is to what global warming is going to do particularly to the USA, yet someone who promises to take action barely gets in. What is causing this? Is it merely that people are voting for their financial interests? Or is it also partly due to the fact that large numbers of republicans have listened to trump’s lies on this front and have been taken in?
Trumps trade narrative:as far as Trump is concerned what is needed to bring jobs that have been shipped abroad back to the USA. Looking at it logically this is a complete absurdity, unfortunately this seems irrelevant. Large numbers of people in the former manufacturing parts of the USA are voting for trump on the basis of these jobs returning. They won’t- jobs in industries such as coal and manufacturing are increasingly disappearing. Coal can’t compete with solar and wind, forget it environment impact, is it can’t compete financially it’s doomed. As for manufacturing, with the increasing advance of robotics and the beginning of 3D printing, it takes far fewer people to build things than it used to. Of course the fact that products could be made with labour dramatically cheaper in Asia means that where are manpower is required it is not asked for in the USA (and unless US citizens are willing to work for 20% of what they currently are paid this is not going to change). In a market driven economy, manufacturing occurs where it is cheapest, no amount of presidential bullying can change this fact.
The next reason in this survey was found to be age and health. While I understand this one looking at Biden on his own, when comparing him to Trump this makes no sense at all. Biden is fit, he can run up and down stairs and generally shows vigour. This can’t be said for Trump, someone who is clinically obese eats extremely poorly and apart from his rounds of golf has extremely little exercise -there really isn’t a comparison on this front.
The next reason seems quite alarming. This one is focused on the pandemic, any rational person would therefore assume that this is going to play against Trump -having said that it was just going to go away we are approaching quarter of a million dead in the USA and it seems to be getting worse. The survey suggests the trump’s and mantra “we cannot allow the cure to be worse than the illness” has been taken to heart by republicans and some swing voters. This is patently absurd- it doesn’t matter how much trump shouts and complains,a scientifically based approach to this is always going to beat one that is purely decided on political grounds. If biden does get to the White House, and he takes dramatic action to deal with Resurgence, he may well take a hit in the polls however he will certainly save lives (this in itself seems bizarre to people outside the USA).
There also appears to have been some level of irritation with Trump’s habit of taking credit for everything that goes right but blaming the states for everything that goes wrong.
Ninth reason: Economic growth- this frankly is insane.the historic growth that the America has had in the last month or two, where the economy grew by 33% in 1 months was entirely down to the significantly higher fall in the previous month during lockdown. This bounce back was going to occur whatever, and it should be pointed out that the bounce back was nowhere near as the big as the full that preceded it. Many other countries had a far smaller collapse in their economic health, so this bounce back is not a sign of good handling of the economy.
But anyone pointing to a growth in the first 3 years of trump’s presidency, should also look properly at the reality of the situation. Obama had to rebuild the economy, and as trump came to power many of the policies he had put in place started to take effect. Indeed if you look at a line of economic growth the growth trump’s or in the early part of his term continues on almost a perfect straight line. Indeed to give him credit is more foolish given the facts that as he started to do things, like the huge tax break this growth fell off a cliff.
Finally number 10 they talked about the supreme court. It is certainly true that trump has done well on the supreme court. From taking advantage of the behaviour of Mitch McConnell keeping a supreme court seat open for more than a year, to his completely contradictory behaviour that of course we can fill the seat even in the last week before an election. The thing that you should bear in mind on this front is Trump has destroyed all norms, do the republicans really believe that the biden administration will go back to keep them all. It is highly likely that given a chance the democrats will have to do something to overcome the incredible stacking at the supreme court.Given the fact that they weren’t able to take the senate this may not be as easy as it could otherwise have been, they are however highly likely to take it in 2 years.
As I argue in the last article my big concerned is how low on the agenda climate change and paying attention to scientific predictions seems to count. Global warming is coming, trump ignoring it will not change anything. Without substantial action, America is going to be hit harder than almost any country in the world, burying your head in the sand on this front should not lead to your re-election – and this election is going to be far too close to make clear that the Americans feel this way.