The President, the Polls, and 2020

For those who think Donald Trump will be a one term President, I must caution against being smug about that.

If there is anyone that hasn’t noticed what the Presidency under Trump has been like so far, they must be living on Mars.  His Presidency has been everything it promised to be by his behavior on the campaign trail in 2016. I need not go into detail about just how unconventional the President’s behavior has been. Nor need I remind people about his terrible rhetoric. Mostly by tweet but often enough by mouth. (e.g. at an impromptu interview by a reporter, a news conference, and certainly at a campaign rally.)

The conventional wisdom seems to be matched by what the polls are saying. which is that the President will get a drubbing in the election. No matter who his opponent will be.

It is true that a lot of people that weren’t sure about how he would behave once in office, are now painfully aware of the reality. To say Trump isn’t ‘Presidential’ is not only an understatement, he is the opposite of that term.  He dishonors the high office he holds and is an embarrassment to the country.

In 2016 he won the election by a comfortable electoral college margin. Even though it was evident from the start that he was a man whose very persona is the antithesis of the American values of honor, decency, and humility. He is a narcissistic bully; an ego-maniacal bombast who believes in winning at all costs. Even allowing racists to  perceive him as a kindred spirit via comments he makes that are easily interpreted their way. He relishes smearing his opponents with innuendo, exaggeration, and outright lies! Or smearing an unsympathetic media - which he has painted as the enemy of the people!

The electronic media has not been reticent to point all of this out in nearly every newscast. And virtually every column written in the mainstream press that has anything to do with the President has had a negative spin – whether he deserved it on a particular issue or not. Unfortunately the President has made it all too easy for them to do that.

The media has been doing their level best to do that every single day since he has been elected. One particular ploy is, however, particularly annoying to me. Whenever the media interviews a Trump opponent they are usually an articulate educated liberal - often an academic - who makes a seemingly cogent presentation of his anti Trumpian views.  The interviewer always seems to nod in agreement because it is their views being articulated. 

When they interview a Trump supporter, they find the most inarticulate individual they can - whose level of education seems to hardly goes beyond sixth grade with an IQ to match. And if they are bigoted, even better. By using this tactic they imply that only ignorant fools or racists could support a man like this. Which is of course a lie. Unless you think that tens (or possibly even hundreds) of millions of Americans are ignorant fools or racists. 

Have the American people had enough of a man like this? Are the polls right? I am not so sure.

I realize that most of the time polls do get things right. They take the ‘pulse’ of the nation at a given moment in time. If done right using a large enough scientifically selected sample they are more often right than wrong - within the margin of error.  And if multiple polls of this type produce the same or similar results, you would think they would be right every time. 

Well… they usually are. But not always. That was made glaringly obvious in 2016. As far as I know every reliable poll of that sort predicted the President would lose. Some of them saying it would be by big margins. The question is will they be wrong again? The odds are they will not. But I as I said, I’m not so sure.

Here are some of the things mitigating this. 

First, people can change their minds between now and the election. 

Meanwhile, Trump’s base has never been more energized. They will be out in force. Their numbers are huge even if they are not a majority. The more the media attacks their man, the more energized they will be.

Democrats have moved to the left of mainstream America on a variety of issues. The swing voters that usually decide elections may very well vote for Trump – no so much because they support him but because they consider the alternative worse. 

It is also very possible that there are a lot of closet supporters who might say one thing to pollsters and say something else in the privacy of the voting booth.

And then there are Trump’s conservative polices to consider. There are a lot of conservative voters (…people that have been called the ‘silent majority’) whose values are in concert with Trump’s conservative policies and are appalled by what the left intends to do if they win the election.  They will simply vote for the lesser of two evils while holding their nose.

I’m not making any predictions. Nor am I indicating support for anyone. Just analyzing the realities of what I see now.