The stock market keeps recovering, as I correctly predicted it would. The S&P 500 is at 3070, having recovered most of its Covid losses. All the stockw that for years I have been recommending have done well and some have made news highs, such as Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Tesla, etc. This is why when I say I’m one of the 10 best stock pickers and forecasters alive or possibly who ever lived, it’s not a joke.
With the stock market doing so well, it occurred to me that perhaps the reason why the left is fanning the flames of these protests is because Covid failed to sufficiently crash the economy and failed to tank Trump’s approval ratings, as the left was certain 2-3 months ago would happen. This came as a major setback and letdown for the left, as they were certain that Covid would cause Trump’s approval ratings to plunge. So now they are trying to engender this massive civil unrest.
The fact that the left-wing narrative switched overnight to “We must stay inside!” to “We must go out and protest!” suggests that support for the lockdowns and quarantines was motivated more by politics than public health. By compelling people to staying inside, the left hoped to tank the economy in time for the election. When that didn’t have the intended effect, with the virus being much less deadly than originally feared (.5% infection fatality rate versus 2-5% initial estimates) and the US economy and stock market holding up well, the left turned to civil unrest, with the George Floyd death as the necessary catalyst in order to provoke civil unrest, again, in the hope of making Trump look incompetent and and also to hurt the economy. But according to 538, Trump’s approval rating is still in the same 4-point range it has been since 2017, between 39-43%.
I think the left also feared that virus fears and quarantines would depress 2020 turnout in deep-blue urban areas, so what better way to boost turnout than to get supporters outside and riled-up.
I predict, similar to the Covid crisis, that Trump’s approval ratings will not fall much, if at all, as a consequence of this unrest. Public sentiment of Trump’s jobs performance is divided along predictable party lines, with very few minds changed or undecided voters converted in either direction.