Uninformed Commentary on the Uninformed

 

I have a basic rule for this blog: unless I have some special insight, I do not comment. Why waste your time?

I’m breaking that rule right now.

I have no idea what is going on with the polls in the US right now. They all show Biden winning handily. It makes no sense to me.

The favoured explanation on the right is “shy Tory” voters. Voters afraid to admit they like Trump, in this current climate in which admitting as much risks losing your job or getting shot. But even if the polls are somewhat wrong, I can’t see why Trump isn’t walking away with this election.

I had long thought that Biden was the wrong candidate to run against Trump. You shouldn’t run a buffoon against a buffoon. If people want a buffoon, Trump is best at it. If people want a return to normalcy, you want a candidate who suggests quiet competence.

You might respond that the Democrats don’t have any such candidates. Sure they did. These are the very candidates their establishment turfed out of the race: Tulsi Gabbard and Andrew Yang. Mike Bloomberg might have worked. But Gabbard or Yang could also have contrasted with Trump on youth versus age.

On top of being a bad contrast to Trump on persona, Biden is evidently senile. How can anyone responsibly vote for a senile president?

On top of that, there are the allegations of groping and rape against Biden. I have always felt that sexual misconduct is irrelevant to public office. Nevertheless, how to justify the double standard? Whatever happened to #Metoo?

Biden has barely been campaigning, while Trump is holding mass rallies. When Biden does show up, few voters seem to. At a recent event in Arizona, featuring both Biden and Harris, campaigning together for the first time, nobody showed up. Trump gets large crowds. How does this tally with the polls?

Nobody is paying much attention to Biden’s platform. Nobody can really know what he will do in office, because he has changed many positions even since the primaries. If he has broken all previous promises, why would you expect him to keep any now? Voters are essentially giving him a blank cheque.

Biden will not even give a position on packing the Supreme Court. “You’ll find out after I’m elected.” In other words, he and the Democrats are actually explicitly demanding a blank cheque. How can a responsible voter accept this?

Biden offers no sense of unifying vision or theme. No “hope and change,” no “make American great again,” no “morning in America.” Nothing, at least, that resonates. He has “build back better.” Which is mostly an appeal to the past. It seems to be only “vote for me, and return to the status quo ante, because I’m not Trump.” By the standard rules of political persuasion, this should not work. People want optimism and a sense of purpose.

Studies of the positions of the two parties show that the Democrats have moved away from the centre and further left over the last few years. The Republicans have not moved, and are on the whole closer to the centre. If Biden is fairly moderate, Harris is not, and Biden is not obviously in command of his party. By all the standard assumptions of politics, this should mean the Democrats lose support; they should not have gained support since 2016.

Trump won in 2016, many say, because he broke the taboos of political correctness. And people were fed up with it. Political correctness has become more demanding since, and polls show the general population is at least as opposed to it as ever. So why would the general population turn against Trump now?

The core reasons Biden gives to justify his candidacy are that Trump is a racist, and that Trump botched the response to COVID-19.

But neither of these charges are coherent.

Biden’s evidence that Trump is racist, at least his core example, repeated often, is that Trump called neo-Nazis and white supremacists “fine people” after the Charlottesville demonstrations. Yet Trump actually said that neo-Nazis and white supremacists “should be condemned totally.” There is video; there is a transcript. How is he getting away with this? How has this not been generally exposed, and why has Biden’s campaign not imploded as a result?

Meantime, Trump is making an open play for black and Hispanic votes, and reputedly doing better than any other Republican among them. He is pushing school choice, the ultimate solution to the plight of African-Americans, and something most African-Americans want. He has moved the US Embassy to Jerusalem. How can this charge of “racist” stick?

Biden’s second charge, that Trump botched the response to COVID-19, also makes no sense. Nobody knew what we were dealing with or how best to respond. Why would Biden have done better? Biden’s stated plan for dealing with the virus is actually, in all details, the same as Trump’s. All Biden has is the slogan, “listen to the experts.” But the experts disagree on everything, and their advice changes by the week.

Biden and allies have made much of the Woodward revelation that Trump “knew” the virus was airborne and highly infectious already in early March, and did not tell anyone. This is nonsensical, because the CDC and WHO still will not confirm that it is airborne. If they do not know now, how did Trump have some privileged information then? Where did he get it, if not from them? How would he have known more than Congress, or the CDC, or the WHO? Or if they all did know this, why was it incumbent on him to tell everyone, and not on them?

Can’t anybody think any more?

Until COVID hit, Trump’s record was impressive. Despite unprecedented harassment from the House of Representatives and the “deep state,” the Russia hoax and the partisan Ukraine impeachment, Trump has presided over a great economy and record low unemployment at home. Abroad, he is the first president since Carter to engage in no new wars. Despite this, he wiped out ISIS as a territorial entity in weeks, without a single US casualty. He has cut new trade deals with Canada, Mexico, and China, apparently improving the US position. There are signs of a breakthrough to general peace in the Middle East.

Objectively, aside from partisan considerations, who has ever done a better job in their first four years?

It should be obvious to anyone that Trump bears no responsibility for COVID itself: it came from China, and everyone in the world has been hit. It makes no sense that COVID should change our perception of this record. Yet Biden has actually accused Trump of responsibility for every single American who has died of COVID. How can he get away with it?

There is widespread disorder in the streets. Biden and the Democrats have been, on the whole, encouraging and supporting it. They have called for defunding the police. Trump is calling for a reimposition of order. I cannot fathom how people cannot be alarmed by this. Why are they not supporting Trump on this basis? How can Biden get away with blaming Trump for violence against Trump? Are Americans really going to vote for a protection racket?

There are reports and poll results showing Trump with record levels of support, for a Republican, among African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans. Why does this not show up in the general polls? Is it really plausible that he is losing, at the same time, a larger number of white voters? Are white people who voted for him last time really less likely to vote for him this time? His personality has not changed; and his record since seems to be one of accomplishment.

If this is all explained by “Shy Tory” voters, they must be present in unprecedented numbers. But perhaps they are: we have never before seen a climate as poisonous as this one, for those who do not toe the “progressive” line. At the same time that the “progressive” line has grown narrower. The times are unprecedented.

It might also be that those opposing Trump are low-information voters, unengaged and unaware. They haven’t really been paying attention; they are only reacting to finding Trump’s manner abrasive, or to what they hear everyone on the mainstream media telling them they are supposed to think. They may not even have seriously looked at Biden.

There are signs the Democrats are making this assumption. For example, when Biden actually refuses to give his position on the issues because this would be a “distraction.” And the cynical ploy of redefining “pack the court” to simply mean appointing judges. They seem to be assuming their supporters are not going to know the difference, or bother to look it up.

It is terrifying, and an indictment of democracy, that such voters might determine the election. If they can determine this one, they presumably determine all of them. And they are easily conned.

I have never understood the idea that people should be urged to get out and vote, or should consider it their civic duty. It seems to me the opposite is true. If you do not have a good command of the issues or the candidates, your civic duty is to abstain.

On the hopeful side, this type of voter is indeed less likely to actually get out and vote. They may show up in the polls, but not at the polls. Especially given the fear of COVID.

New rules have expanded the ability to vote by mail instead. This is an awful idea on several levels; but the process for doing so correctly is apparently complicated. This may also weed out careless or uninformed voters.

I have no insight here.

It looks something like a national IQ test; and, sadly, as someone once said, you never go broke by underestimating the intelligence of the general public.