This piece was originally published on Monday, May 18th and updated on the morning of May 21st with new polling data.
Donald Trump has long feared Joe Biden. He hatched a vast conspiracy to extort “dirt” on the Bidens from the Ukrainian government - an illegal plot which got him rightfully impeached and should have ended his Presidency. Faced with weak poll numbers for himself and incumbent GOP Senators, the President now appears to be panicking - and is not just rolling out ridiculous arguments against the former Vice President, but also has launched a sustained attack against Barack Obama, a political figure far more popular and virtuous than he. As a longtime political analyst, it doesn’t make any sense to me why he would begin attacking Obama or bring up his illicit relationship with Putin - but little Trump does makes sense to me. And that’s because despite the bluster he actually isn’t very good at being President or winning over the voters he needs to win.
This organization has never subscribed to the “Trump has magical powers” school of political analysis. In 2016, Trump won with just 46% of the vote and only with the help of three extraordinary, hard to replicate events - Russia’s huge intervention on his behalf, Jill Stein’s just good enough candidacy, and the Comey letter which dropped Clinton’s lead from 6 to 2 points in the last days of the election. When Trump led Republicans into battle in 2017, 2018, and 2019, the Rs had near worst case election results each time. In 2018, the Democrats won the House by 8.6 points (53.4-44.8), a huge margin; and in 2019, the Dems won the governorships in KY and LA, two deep red Southern states. As NDN’s Chris Taylor wrote recently, 2020 looks and feels a lot more like 2018 than it does 2016 - which is why Trump has begun to panic. He’s never actually performed well in an election and he isn’t going to win in 2020 with 45-46% of the vote - his vote share in the 2016 and 2018 elections, and a place where he is struggling to even get to now.
Perhaps no event captures Trump’s ongoing failures more than his historically inept, reckless response to COVID-19. There is simply no easy way to explain his delay in engaging the virus, his lack of a sustained or understandable response, his repeated undermining of strategies which are working, or his promotion of dangerous, untested remedies. We are re-opening the country now without most states hitting Trump’s own published criteria for re-opening, and we still don’t have the basic things that we as a nation need - a national testing/tracing regime and strategies for safe domestic travel/business protocols - in place. We are just re-opening. Our new infection rate per capita remains among the highest in the world, up there with Russia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, and the UK; and while testing has improved, the US is still only around 40th in the world in per capita testing - a very, very low number given that the virus may have spread further and deeper in the US than in any other country in the world. And of course the nation is looking at Great Depression level unemployment rates and banana republic levels of debt.
As bad as his day-to-day management of COVID has been, his political management of it has also been an extraordinary failure. Many polls and analyses have captured this failure, but let’s look at new numbers out this morning from the Navigating Coronavirus project:
- Trump’s handling of coronavirus - 41% approve, 55% disapprove
- Has Trump’s management of the coronavirus been a success or failure - 38% success, 51% failure
- Should stores require masks - 84% yes, 16% no
An excellent new Huffington Post poll on masking has similar numbers. Perhaps the most important is the question about the whether Trump himself and othe elected officials should be wearing a mask - 63% yes, just 7% no. It's hard to put into words how far outside science, reason, common sense and public opinion the President's crusade against masks is. It's just breathtaking.
A new Washington Post analysis finds that Trump's approval of his handling of COVID is lower than EVERY GOVERNOR with the exception of his close ally, Governor Kemp of Georgia. The data is staring him right in the face - thos governors who've aggressively fought the virus have been rewarded in the polls. Those who haven't, haven't. To me his siding with the “Liberate!” protesters has been one of the craziest events of his Presidency - it not only makes the spread of the virus more likely, it's operating at the fringe of our politics and has helped drive his numbers down. The number of people in this hard core Liberate! camp could be as low as 15% of the public, and is certainly no higher than 30%. What exactly are you doing Mr. President? Why haven't you course corrected, for your sake, and for ours as well?
The President is losing the election. The Senate is imperiled too. His ridiculous response to COVID has crashed the economy, let the virus run wild, left us without a serious strategy to defeat the virus, and is deeply unpopular. A second wave may hit us this fall, just as people go to vote. From where Trump sits now, things are not looking so good. Hence the “Obamagate” absurdity and new Biden slanders. It isn't going to help him win, but apparently it is all this spent, failed leader has got at this point.
In the midst of this pandemic, we all deserve better, much much better.