04-08-2020, 10:44 AM
(04-08-2020, 02:49 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(04-08-2020, 02:33 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Donald Trump is definitely a liar.
I know that. You know that. A lot of people know that. Then again, there are those people he is telling what they want to hear...
There just might not be enough of them left for him to win. From the forums of Leip's Election Atlas (my material in blue and bold)
https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.ph...msg7281349
Quote:Ipsos/Reuters, April 6-7, 1116 adults (1-week change)
Approve 40 (-4)
Disapprove 55 (+4)
They have not (yet) published strongly approve/disapprove or RV numbers this week (they're sometimes oddly inconsistent that way).
Quote:To add to the previous post:
The Economist/YouGov weekly tracker, April 5-7, 1500 adults including 1147 RV
Adults:
Approve 45 (-2)
Disapprove 51 (+5)
Strongly approve 26 (nc)
Strongly disapprove 38 (-4)
RV:
Approve 45 (-2)
Disapprove 53 (+3)
Strongly approve 30 (+1)
Strongly disapprove 43 (+3)
2020 (RV only):
Generic D 47 (+2), Trump 42 (nc)
Biden 48 (+2), Trump 42 (nc)
Sanders 48 (+3), Trump 42 (-2)
GCB (RV only): D 48 (nc), R 39 (nc)
No way does the President win with numbers like those. Note well that time is running out on the 2020 electoral season. Disapproval at 51% makes re-election require significant improvement in the view of the President, and disapproval at 55% suggests a landslide loss.
55% disapproval means that GOP support erodes in places in which Republicans are usually safe. It would be difficult on my part to predict where that would happen... maybe white Southerners might become less tribal in their voting habits.
Of course there is no legal difference between winning the White House with 275, 375, 475, or even 525 electoral votes... but at such a point I could even see Doug Jones getting re-elected in Alabama and some surprising losses for Republicans.
COVID-19 has been killing Americans in large numbers (in what epidemiologists call "excess deaths") for perhaps two weeks, and the toll in such a time is beginning to exceed combat deaths in "small" wars. The raw numbers can easily reach those of American combat deaths in the Korean and Vietnam wars. Americans, and people in other advanced industrial societies, do not ordinarily die in large numbers of respiratory infections except as complications of existing (and usually terminal) cases. Pointless death offends us, which explains why we have laws against drunk driving -- let alone murder. Political leaders involved with pointless death such as wars whose purpose few people understand or understand for reasons inconvenient to those leaders, are in deep trouble. Think of LBJ, who actually achieved some very good things for multitudes of Americans.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.