With both national party conventions over, voters should be ready for a long, hard slog of a campaign. Despite conventional wisdom, I think President Trump has the upper hand over Joe Biden, but a flat convention speech gave Trump less of an advantage than he could have had.
The Democratic convention was a series of false starts saved by superb efforts on each night’s featured speech. The problem, though, was that the overall impression was of a concatenation of grievances, lacking both hope and a discernible agenda.
The Republican convention, although disjointed at times, through three-plus nights largely had succeeded beautifully in making the party’s philosophy look more appealing and, more importantly, in recasting Trump’s image into one of a more empathetic, disciplined, and even kindly figure. If Trump had given a well-crafted, focused, highly thematic, 20-minute oration, he could have emerged with major momentum. Instead, he delivered a rambling, cliched, 71-minute, low-energy snoozer. It wasn’t a disaster, but it was a dud.
Nonetheless, Trump has an edge, despite all his off-putting behavior that has made him thoroughly unlikable, even detestable, to an unusually large number of voters. His advantage is that he is blessed with opponents so in hock to its increasingly hard-left “base” that it continues to encourage “protests” even when the streets of major cities have been in flames for weeks. Hate-spewing thugs harass innocent diners while the crime rate soars in cities that won’t support their police, but Democratic activists are so besotted with their “America is inherently racist” line that they can’t see ordinary people recoil at the anarchy.
Meanwhile, the Democrats’ presidential candidate won’t leave his basement, and his vice presidential candidate was one of the least effective presidential aspirants imaginable.
The Democrats also are in trouble because the public sees them over-blame Trump for the coronavirus, repeatedly talking as if Trump personally caused every virus-related death and every job lost during the pandemic. Democrats blame Trump for not acting more forcefully to shut down the economy but also for the results of the economic shutdown they themselves advocated. Now, Biden is threatening another shutdown, plus higher taxes, plus a “national mask mandate” that won’t exactly play well in largely rural swing states such as Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, or New Mexico.
Most voters, whether right or wrong, think that Trump, despite his flaws, created unparalleled economic success and can do so again once the virus ends. They might not like him, but they think their own financial prospects are far better with him in charge than with Biden and Harris.
Every poll I’ve seen shows that more of Trump’s voters are enthusiastic than Biden’s voters are and that more of Trump’s voters are inspired for him, while a much larger portion of Biden’s voters is less pro-Biden than anti-Trump. Such enthusiasm gaps cause turnout gaps, and they will work to Trump’s benefit. Not only that, but I have seen polling data for months that, extrapolated reasonably, indicate that Trump will do better with both black and Hispanic voters than he did last time, thus counteracting some of the losses in suburbia Trump’s own crassness and mendacity has caused.
Trump’s divisiveness and other flaws still make him eminently beatable by the Democratic ticket. Still, the public’s self-interest in safe streets and economic growth and its perception that Democrats are untrustworthy on both counts should give Trump a slight edge as Election Day draws closer.
