Another Republican Recession, Landscape Still Leans Blue

As we’ve written to you before, we aren’t going to be paying too much attention to polling these next few weeks for it will no doubt be very volatile and noisy. Trump does appear to have gotten a small bump in recent days, though the fundamental structure of the race hasn’t changed - he’s minus 4.5 in 538’s job approval tracker, down 9 to Biden in new Fox News polling, and the Congressional Generic remains at -7.4 for the GOP.  The national landscape still favors the Dems. 

We are doubtful that Trump is in for any kind of sustained bump.  Regardless of Trump’s daily pressers, the cold hard truth is that the President failed to take action against COVID-19 when he should have; is playing a dangerous and sadistic game with the states; and his plan is still inadequate for what’s needed today.  The numbers that Americans will be focusing on in the coming months won’t be his daily TV ratings or job approval but COVID infection and death rates, the amount of equipment moved to the health care front lines, unemployment and uninsured rates, and GDP growth.  If these measures are good, he will have a good election.  If they aren’t, he won’t. 

That Trump is the third consecutive GOP President to see a recession and exploding deficits on their watch speaks to something we’ve been exploring in recent years - that the two parties just aren’t the same and aren’t mirrors of one another.  Since this new age of globalization began in the late 1980s, Democratic Presidents have produced growth, jobs, rising wages, and lower annual deficits.  The two Bush Presidents and Trump will have produced recessions and hard times, and W Bush and Trump will have overseen two of the worst economic moments in American history.  That Democrats keep getting the big things right in this new age, and the Republicans so disastrously wrong, simply must be a more significant area of debate and discussion in the months ahead.