07-19-2020, 06:49 PM
(06-22-2020, 10:53 AM)Isoko Wrote: Personally I am starting to get sceptical if Trump can win it. After that low turnout in Tulsa, honestly I think he could be done for. I think it all depends on two factors:
1) The Silent Majority. Stay with better the devil you know scenario.
2) Biden and his VP choice.
Ordinarily at this stage in a re-election bid it is an election whose chances for the challenger depend more upon the failure of the incumbent than upon the excellence of the challenger. By most reasonable accounts, Mitt Romney was a far better-than-average challenger; he simply faced an above-average President. I can see Romney having trounced Hillary Clinton had he been the Republican nominee for President in 2016. Maybe his wife's MS kept him from running for president in 2016?
Romney is one of those go-by-the-book, tight-ship leaders who just doesn't give an opening to failure. It's pure speculation on my part... but I can't imagine him as the captain of a Ship of Fools. I can't see him having any use for such types as Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, and Michael Cohen around. The people he would have would more likely be conservative versions of Obama's people. We would be talking about a Romney landslide... maybe 400 or more electoral votes against someone who won the Democratic nomination for President for long and faithful service to the Party, something like Walter Mondale in 1984. This is after Romney (in this scenario) had called together the sharpest minds of medical science, public health, Big Business, organized labor, and political figures from both Parties to squelch COVID-19 before it becomes a real menace and causes lasting harm to the American economy. In the meantime, Romney hasn't made a fool of himself with allusions to crotch-grabbing.
We now have the catastrophic failure of the incumbent. Trump may have gotten away with an attempt to get a foreign leader to aid in the ruin of one of his potential rivals due to partisan voting in the impeachment process -- and through that alone. Just when you thought him charmed, along comes COVID-19. The medical profession, public health, the scientific community, Big Business, organized labor, and (some) political figures from both Parties did their job well. Donald Trump failed about as catastrophically as he could short of dying of COVID-19. How has he not gotten it?
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.