Lion is confident Trump will lose and likens the administration to a slow-motion trainwreck in regard to its mishandling of Covid-19.
In regard to Trump losing, Lion has no way of knowing yet he speaks with such confidence. As discussed a few weeks ago, in spite of the negative press (since when has the press ever been positive about Trump?) and the increase of Covid-19 cases in the US, Trump’s odds are still quite good, or at least relative to that of Romney in 2012, Dole in 1996, McCain in 2008, etc. The dems know this and are in panic mode. That is probably why they are so aggressively trying to censor content, within reason, on YouTube and Twitter by conservatives. Similar to Hillary, they know that voter turnout will suck under Biden, and that the election will be very close regardless of how big of a lead the polls give Biden now.
Lion lists his reasons for Trump losing, which are easy to refute:
1. Trump supporters are disproportionately old. People who voted for Trump in 2016 have died off since then (my prole uncle unfortunately among that number). Millennials who came of voting age since 2016 are anti-Trump by a wide margin.
Yes, old but reliable in key swing states, whereas Biden supporters are less reliable at the polls and mostly concentrated in deep blue states (hence, why Hillary’s turnout was so much worse than Obama’s, and why Trump won by a large electoral margin despite Hillary winning the popular vote).
2. More non-white immigrant citizens since 2016, they will disproportionately vote for Biden.
Like above, these tend to be unreliable voters and or in already blue states.
3. Can you I imagine anyone who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 voting for Trump in 2020? I can’t. OK, so there are a small number who probably will do that, but the number of 2016 Trump voters who will not vote for Trump again is a lot larger. It doesn’t matter that the vast majority of people who voted for Trump in 2016 will vote for him again; if 6% jump to Biden, Trump loses.
Given that more people voted for Hillary than Trump, if an equal % of each party defect, Trump stands to gain from this.
4. Trump’s big selling point a year ago was that the economy was doing great. The economy is now the worst economy since the Great Depression. Sure, it’s not Trump’s fault that there’s a pandemic, but it is most certainly Trump’s fault that the United States response to the pandemic has been the worst of any developed country. But regardless of fault, history has shown that the current president benefits from a good economy and gets voted out of office because of a bad economy, regardless of fault.
The S&P 500 is only 5% away from new highs. The Nasdaq made new highs weeks ago and keeps going up. Although the stock market is not the economy, the two tend to be correlated. By comparison, the S&P 500 was 50% off its highs when McCain lost in 2008. Much of the job loss due to the pandemic are low-paying jobs in blue states, and poorer people tend to vote democratic anyway. The economy is in worse shape now than it was a year ago, but it’s still a long way from being in free fall like it was a few months ago.
In regard to Cvoid, in spite of rising number of daily cases, no one really cares about it anymore. Of course, policy makers will continue to milk it for years to come to justify their overreach for power, and corporations will keep milking it for virtue signalling points and to justify moving the workforce online to save costs, but for most Americans the virus has transformed from being an acute concern to now something that sorta exists in the periphery, much like the flu does. This 180-degree change in psychology from fear to complacency/indifference also coincided with the stock market bottom in April.
This is because the more testing that is done, the more apparent it has become that Covid is only maybe 5x as deadly as the flu (a .5% IFR) instead of 50x as deadly as originally feared in Feb-April (5% IFR). A 90% reduction of mortality from a psychological standpoint is a huge relief even if the number of cases continues to rise.
The turning point came when two key studies were released, in April, which showed that the the Covid infection fatality rate had been vastly overstated: an April 25th report that showed that out of 3,300 inmates in an Ohio prison who tested[positive for Covid, only 4% had symptoms; and second, an April 17th report that showed that 4% of Silicon Valley residents may already have Covid, suggesting that the virus is more widespread but less deadly than originally believed. This was reported by many mainstream publications such as the WSJ.
If the election were held in April 2020, yeah, Trump would have been in much worse shape, but right now things are looking up. By November, Covid will still be infecting a lot of people, but the death rate will still be around 500-1,000/day, which is tolerable.
5. Trump’s horrible handling of the pandemic means that his own words will be used against him in highly effective negative campaign ads. We haven’t seen these ads yet, but they are coming very soon.
The media has been trying to use Trump’s word’s against him since the pandemic began, yet 538 still shows Trump holding above 40% approval, so their efforts have obviously reached the point of diminishing returns. The Lincoln Project has been running ads against Trump for months, yet Trump continues to poll well among his supporters. These ads tend to affirm the views of those who already dislike Trump, than convert people who are undecided or support Trump. Also, much of the response to Covid is at the state, as opposed to federal level. Without legislation, it isn’t like Washington can force state governments to not reopen.
6. You would have thought that BLM riots would be a big opportunity for Trump to regain popularity as a voice of common sense and law and order and exposing Democrats for being crazily to the left of mainstream America, but Trump managed to blow that opportunity.
The riots are already subsiding and by election will mostly be forgotten. The media has largely stopped covering it anymore. Without constant coverage, BLM stands to gain nothing by continuing to cause disruption. Trump’s ‘wait and see’ approach seems to have been a success.