The three reasons Donald Trump lost

This morning the lead in Georgia and Pennsylvania shifted to Joe Biden. A short time ago, Pennsylvania was called for Joe Biden, blocking Donald Trump’s path to 270 electoral votes. The election is over and Joe Biden is the president-elect.

There will be many explanations for why Donald Trump lost. The Coronavirus pandemic will figure prominently into many explanations of the Republican electoral debacle, and the pandemic did play a major role, as I wrote last week, but the problem went much deeper than that. I’ve pointed out numerous times over the past year that a majority of voters, 52 percent, told ruby-red Rasmussen in 2019 that they would not vote for Donald Trump. Most of these voters said that they planned to vote against Trump, rather than for the undetermined Democratic candidate. With millions of votes left to count, Joe Biden’s share of the popular vote stands at 50.5 percent.

So, what, even before the deaths of 220,000 Americans, soured voters on President Trump? There are three simple and interrelated reasons why Donald Trump lost.

The first and most egregious mistake that Trump and the Republicans made was to drastically overplay their hand after Trump’s surprise 2016 victory. Donald Trump won the 2016 election through a narrow fluke of an Electoral College, which turned on less than 80,000 votes in three states. Yet, Trump and the GOP moved forward as if they had the broad popular mandate that comes from a landslide victory.

Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 by more than 2.8 million votes. Rather than attempting to build a majority by adding to this base, the president refused to acknowledge the popular vote loss and instead claimed, “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” The president launched a commission to investigate voter fraud, which was quietly disbanded when it could not substantiate the president’s claims.

With the erroneous idea that most Americans supported him, Trump spent the next four years ingratiating himself to his Republican base at the expense of angering moderates and swing voters, the people who decide elections. The president launched many initiatives such as the immigration ban, the government shutdown, funding the wall through a national emergency, declaring trade wars on all fronts, and separating immigrant children from their families. These policies were popular with Trump’s Republican base. The rest of the country? Not so much.

This brings us to the second problem. While all of this was going on, Republican supporters of Trump were living in a bubble of confirmation bias.

Republican thinking was, “I love Trump. My friends love Trump. The talking heads on Fox News, OANN, and the radio pundits are telling me that Trump is the greatest president ever. Therefore, anyone who doesn’t love Trump must be suffering from TDS. The problem is with them and the ‘lamestream’ media, not with me or, Heaven forbid, Donald Trump.”

The problems with polling in 2016, even though mostly confined to four states, gave Republicans permission to ignore any data that did not confirm their belief that Trump was the greatest president since Reagan. Or possibly George Washington.

This attitude persisted up until the election despite polling pointing to a Democratic landslide. It probably won’t go away entirely even now. Some Trump supporters will be so deeply into the pro-Trump propaganda that their minds will not be able to accept the fact that Donald Trump lost a free and fair election. Trump’s own warnings that “the only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged” carry a lot of the blame as well.

The bubble led to the third major Republican mistake of the Trump era. In 2016, Republicans promised to hold Donald Trump’s feet to the fire. This promise did not last long.

As I told my friend and fellow First TV writer, Steve Berman, on his podcast last week, as 2017 drew to a close, I could almost have voted for Trump. There were problems, such as the very questionable firing of James Comey, but there was also the successful passage of tax reform and the party came within a whisker of reforming the Affordable Care Act, before totally forgetting about health care reform.

But then the wheels came off the Trump Train. I think that you can trace the origins of the train wreck to the departures of Rex Tillerson, James Mattis, and John Kelly. These three “adults in the room” had kept Donald Trump focused and out of (at least major) trouble, but by December 2018 all were gone. At the time I wrote that Trump was now “unchained.”

With Trump off the chain and running wild, it was up to congressional Republicans to hold him accountable. While some offered tepid criticism of his excesses and failures, when the rubber met the road and there were votes on official measures to rebuke the president, very few Republicans dared to stand up to him and the party base.

This has remained true since Election Day. Too many Republicans are still afraid to stand up to Prsident Trump, justifying his baseless and evidence-free claims of election fraud at the risk of igniting political violence across the country. This is not the behavior of people who love America.

What is inescapably true is that by failing to hold Trump accountable, congressional Republicans did not do the president or their party any favors. Trump’s behavior became ever more erratic as his base cheered him on. Meanwhile, fearful for their careers, traditional Republicans tempered their criticism and held their tongues.     

There is an argument to be made that discretion was the better part of valor for Trump’s Republican critics. Prominent Republicans such as Bob Corker, Jeff Flake, and Justin Amash spoke out against the president and saw themselves promptly removed from Congress. Was it better to openly disagree with the president and then lose your platform or, as others such as Ben Sasse and Mitt Romney did, to pick their battles so that they could keep their seats and maintain their influence? History will ultimately be the judge.

If more Republicans had been willing to stand up to President Trump and the Republican base, the election might have turned out very differently. President Trump’s tenure might have been more tempered and even. Trump might have avoided angering more than half the country and destroying the Republican brand in the process.

But then again, probably not. Donald Trump is a man who values loyalty over reality. He has shown a propensity to ignore dissenting opinions, no matter how valid, in favor of his own often deeply flawed judgment and that of the yes-men who surrounded him. And the same goes for his supporters.

Those of us who tried to point out that the emperor had no clothes were denounced as liberals or sufferers of TDS. When we pointed out the president’s flaws, we were answered with a litany of excuses: But Obama. But the judges. But the economy. But abortion. But socialism.

The harsh reality is that once Donald Trump became the Republican nominee in 2016, the party was going to take a fall. It was just a matter of when. Trump was – and is – simply too bad a person and too far out of the American mainstream to usher the hoped-for era of American conservatism (not least because Trump is not and has never been a conservative).

His my-way-or-the-highway philosophy put elected Republicans between a rock and a hard place. They could distance themselves from Trump and face the wrath of primary voters or they could cozy up to Trump and anger general election voters. They were damned if they did and damned if they didn’t. Faced with this choice, many Trump-skeptical Republicans bailed out of Congress and pulled the ripcord of retirement.

After the soul-crushing Republican loss in 2012, the party commissioned an after-action report to determine what went wrong. Among the recommendations from the report were passing immigration reform, listening to minorities, listening to dissenting voices within the party, and breaking the association of the Republican Party as a rich man’s party. With the embrace of Donald Trump, all of these recommendations were not only ignored, they were tossed out and spat upon.

Some Republicans argue that the proposals in the 2013 post-mortem would require changing their principles, but Republicans have already abandoned many long-held beliefs to follow Donald Trump into oblivion. A better course would be to change back to traditional, limited government Republicanism and pair that philosophy with outreach to minorities that is an ongoing two-way conversation, not merely a pro forma election-year appeal.

Now, as it grapples with the overwhelming rejection of Trumpism by American voters, the Republican Party has a second chance. Republicans can either adopt the new course charted after 2012 or they can double down on the populist, conspiracy-laden, alternate reality politics that brought their party this year’s defeat.

It’s time to burst the bubble.

Originally published on The First TV

Is the Trump campaign a victim of Coronavirus?

When the history of the 2020 presidential campaign is written, the Coronavirus pandemic will no doubt play a prominent role. President Trump has not yet lost the election, but if he does, the pandemic and his reaction to it will take a lot of the blame.

Much of the discussion about Donald Trump’s handling of the pandemic focuses on the early months. Yes, the president restricted travel from China, but the policy had gaps and there were many missed opportunities as well. After the sort-of travel ban was imposed, the Trump Administration seemed to do little for the next two months until mid-March when the president shifted abruptly from “all is well” to a national emergency (this one far more justified than his national emergency on the Southern border). In September, Bob Woodward showed us that Trump had been aware of the Coronavirus threat all along but had been “playing it down.”

At the same time that Trump was downplaying the viral threat, his Administration was apparently ignoring the federal playbook for pandemics. The errors included not placing orders for emergency medical equipment until the middle of March despite having known since January that the Coronavirus was a deadly threat to Americans.

For the first few months, President Trump was the face of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. Rather than boosting the president’s favorability, the face time with American audiences led to a decline in Trump’s approval rating. One of the most memorable moments from the daily press briefings was Mr. Trump riffing on the possibility of injecting disinfectants to combat the virus.

At a time when Americans needed to trust the president for life-and-death advice, Mr. Trump was a veritable fountain of misinformation. The president had a long and committed love affair with hydroxychloroquine. Even after it became apparent that the drug was ineffective against COVID-19, the benefits of hydroxychloroquine were an article of faith for Trump supporters. Likewise, the president told us that the virus could go away in the summer (spoiler alert: it did not), that it was like the flu (it is not), that children cannot catch the Coronavirus (they can), and that the virus would magically disappear (it has not done so yet).

Of all the former Trump staffers who have warned against re-electing the president, Olivia Troye is one of the most damning. The former aide to Vice President Pence and member of the Coronavirus Task Force said in a Twitter video, “It was shocking to see the president saying that the virus was a hoax, saying everything was okay when we know that it’s not.”

“The truth is that he doesn’t actually care about anyone else but himself,” she added.

Now, some of the Trump strategy is explained by a new recording from Bob Woodward in which Jared Kushner said last April that Donald Trump was taking control back from “the doctors.”

“We’ve now put out rules to get back to work,” Kushner said. “Trump’s now back in charge. It’s not the doctors. They’ve kind of – we have, like, a negotiated settlement.”

So now there is evidence of what many of us have said all along. President Trump was substituting his own “very, very large brain” for the medical expertise of America’s best doctors. The result was not only that the United States became one of the worst-hit countries of the pandemic, but the looming disaster was so transparent that Trump’s poll numbers were impacted very early on.

As far back as April, older voters, a core Republican constituency and the highest-risk group for the virus, were deserting President Trump in droves. A variety of polls from the swing states showed Trump’s support among seniors collapsing and the pandemic was undoubtedly a major reason why. The trend apparently started before the Coronavirus hit the US, but the pandemic accelerated the movement away from Trump.

The pandemic also erased much of Trump’s advantage on his signature issue: The economy. Fox News polling from the swing states in September found Biden and Trump almost equal on the economy while voters strongly preferred Biden to handle the pandemic. In truth, the president’s trade war pushed the economy into a recession in February, a month prior to the widespread outbreak of the virus in the US, but the economy would be much stronger without the added impact of the virus.

Mr. Trump’s reticence about masks and social distancing ultimately led to an outbreak in the White House that extended to his own family. In all, at least 36 people were infected in the White House outbreak. No deaths have been linked to the outbreak, but several, including the president, were hospitalized. Chris Christie spent seven days in intensive care.

Even contracting the disease himself, President Trump has not learned to take the pandemic seriously. The White House resisted contact tracing to limit the spread of the outbreak and on Sunday Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that the Trump Administration had essentially given up on containing the virus and was going to concentrate on treatment at virtually the same time that the White House claimed that “ending the COVID-19 pandemic” was one of President Trump’s major first-term accomplishments. After being exposed to the virus by his chief of staff, Vice President Pence continued jetting around the country and making campaign stops rather than submitting to quarantine.

The mixed messaging comes as COVID-19 cases are spiking once again just prior to the election. New cases have surpassed the records set last summer. Even as the president says that the country is “rounding the turn,” the virus is spreading faster than ever before. The prospect of a long, deadly surge this winter and its associated effect on the economy seems to have ended the optimistic summer stock market rally.

Which brings us to what may be the final nail in the coffin of the Trump campaign. Last March, Congress passed and President Trump signed the CARES Act. The bill provided one-time checks to Americans and six months of relief for qualified American companies. Those programs expired in September.

After spending like drunken sailors (sometimes without congressional authorization) for four years, Republicans and the Trump Administration suddenly rediscovered fiscal conservatism when it came time to pass another pandemic relief package. Although talks with congressional Democrats have continued sporadically since July, the Senate has now adjourned until Nov. 9, ensuring that no relief bill will pass before the election. The failure to reach an agreement means that thousands of American businesses are at risk of failure and tens -if not hundreds- of thousands of American workers may lose their jobs. Right before an election.

There are many reasons that Americans are not voting for Donald Trump. The president has never been popular outside his own party. Rasmussen, a Trump-friendly pollster, found in September 2019 that 52 percent planned to vote against Trump. Still, the Trump Administration’s many failures in response to the pandemic did not win over many voters, if any.

The election is not over yet. Donald Trump may ultimately squeak out a victory and stay in office for another four years. If he does manage another fluke, it will be despite his handling of the pandemic rather than because of it.

President Trump took a gamble on pushing to reopen the country and ignoring medical advice about the Coronavirus so that he could be, in the words of Jared Kushner to Bob Woodward, the “open-up president.” In terms of the pandemic, the president lost his bet. The gamble cost many Americans their lives and their health. It may cost President Trump re-election as well.

Originally published on The First TV

Why I’m skeptical about Trump leaving the hospital so soon

 President Trump and his doctors have announced that the president will be discharged from the hospital on Monday afternoon. Information about Trump’s condition has been somewhat contradictory for the past few days but hopes are high that the president is recovering swiftly from a mild case of Coronavirus. Even so, the president’s quick discharge is controversial.

After speculation over the weekend that the president might go home to the White House on Monday, Trump tweeted that he would be checking out of Walter Reed Medical Center Monday afternoon, saying that he felt “really good.”

Nevertheless, many doctors have raised a red flag on Trump’s early discharge. The Washington Post reported earlier today that Trump’s reported treatments, which included remdesivir and dexamethasone, are inconsistent with the rosy White House reports about the president’s condition, which reportedly included two incidents of plunging blood oxygen levels.

“For someone sick enough to have required remdesivir and dexamethasone, I can’t think of a situation in which a patient would be okay to leave on day three, even with the White House’s medical capacity,” said Robert Wachter, chairman of the University of California at San Francisco’s department of medicine.

Under the circumstances, the country should be prepared for the president to possibly be readmitted if his condition worsens in coming days. While most Coronavirus cases are mild, a large share of patients experiences a second wave of symptoms five to ten days after infection. A study on Wuhan patients described in Business Insider notes that many patients were not admitted to hospitals until about day seven with some patients not developing the acute respiratory distress syndrome associated (ARDS) with COVID-19 until two weeks after infection. Suffice it to say that President Trump is not out of the woods yet and will certainly be under close observation, even as he returns to the White House.

The second concern is whether President Trump will take the pandemic more seriously after he recovers. Those of you who have followed me at The Resurgent know that I’ve been critical of the president for not taking the pandemic seriously enough. This has been especially true after the revelation of the interview tapes with Bob Woodward where the president admitted that he knew COVID-19 was seriously but chose to “downplay” it.

The Trump Administration’s tendency to be dismissive of the danger from Coronavirus is directly responsible for the president’s illness. The failure to wear masks and social distance, as evidenced by numerous videos of the Rose Garden even for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett. In the video below, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) is seen holding his mask in one hand while he shakes hands with and hugs guests. Another man is caught on camera wiping his nose with his bare hand. Lee is now one of three Republican senators who is known to be positive for Cornavvirus.

Unfortunately, the president’s tweet indicates that he is not serious about the disease yet. President Trump seems to be exhibiting the tendency that I’ve seen in other people who have survived mild cases of Coronavirus. They assume that their experience is typical for everyone infected by the virus. If it wasn’t bad for them, it’s not serious for anyone else either.

In reality, that is not the case. COVID-19 is a strange disease. About 80 percent of its victims have a mild reaction, but the other 20 percent have serious, often life-threatening complications. The current statistic of 210,000 US deaths for 7.45 million known cases represents a 2.8 percent death rate for confirmed Coronavirus cases. By any standard, that is serious and should be treated as such.

In fact, Trump’s failure to treat the pandemic with adequate gravity is the most serious factor behind his flagging campaign. Fox News polling from last month found that swing-state voters prefer Joe Biden to handle the pandemic over Trump by large margins. More recently, an NBC News/WSJ poll found a 27-point shift away from Trump and towards Biden by senior voters since July. It is probably no coincidence that older Americans, once a core Republican constituency, are at the highest risk for COVID-19.

There is still a short time to turn these alarming numbers around. One strategy that might do the trick is for Donald Trump to change course, admit that his administration has handled the pandemic poorly, and promise to do better. It would simply be a matter of acknowledging what everyone already knows. If his brush with death becomes a come-to-Jesus moment in which Trump realizes how much Coronavirus frightens much of the country, the president’s illness might possibly end up reinvigorating and saving his campaign.

Originally published on The First TV

The Election Is About To Turn Ugly

I wrote earlier this week that the Trump campaign was being buried under a tsunami of bad news. Since then, the news has only gotten worse for the president and it doesn’t look as though things will be changing anytime soon.

The most obvious piece of bad news from today is the revelation that the president and First Lady have tested positive for COVID-19. Although I have frequently offered criticism of the president and his Coronavirus policy, I am not one of those who delight in this news. I pray that President and Mrs. Trump will have a mild case and recover swiftly.

President Trump’s infection does put him at a severe disadvantage for the last month of the campaign, however. It is likely that, with the president and much of his staff under quarantine, the remaining debates, rallies, and appearances will be canceled even if Mr. Trump never develops symptoms. The president’s disdain for masks and insistence on holding mass rallies made it likely that he would contract the virus, but the timing could scarcely have been worse.

Broad polling over the past six months has shown that voters don’t believe that Trump has handled the pandemic well. His diagnosis will not help matters and especially if the president’s case is severe, many voters will see it as confirmation that the Trump Administration did not take the Coronavirus crisis seriously enough. The diagnosis also raises concerns about the president’s long-term health.

If, God forbid, President Trump dies or becomes incapacitated before the election, the Republican National Committee could replace him with another candidate. Professor Richard Pildes, an election law expert at NYU, described in the Washington Post how the 168-member RNC would cast votes to select a new nominee with each state getting the same number of votes that they cast at the nominating convention. Vice President Mike Pence would be the obvious choice.

If Trump wins the election but is incapacitated, the Electoral College might choose another candidate. However, in this scenario, the Republican electors, who would constitute a majority, would probably select Mike Pence to succeed Trump.

Even before the news about the president’s battle with Coronavirus came out, his re-election campaign was in trouble. After Tuesday night’s debate debacle, the president seems poised to plunge in the polls. The first post-debate poll was released Thursday by Change Research and showed a 13-point lead for Biden while a new Georgia poll showed the Democrat up by two points in the Peach State. A handful of other polls released on Friday show Biden with a lead ranging from 8 to 10 points, indicating that the Democratic candidate has received a slight boost from the debate.

As Biden surges, Trump’s COVID quarantine means that he can’t hit the campaign trail to stem the tide. If the nation sees the president suffering from a severe case, his decline in the polls is likely to be accelerated.

The flip side, however, is that Trump’s enforced isolation may help his campaign. I’ve said for years that he would be more popular if he could simply shut up and stay out of the spotlight. A Coronavirus quarantine may help him do just that, but it may be too late.

The bad news does not end there, however. The CARES Act, which was passed in March, is expiring and the White House has not been able to reach an agreement with congressional Democrats to pass a new relief bill. Without new federal funding to keep employees on the payroll, the country will take another economic hit as businesses begin to lay off employees. The more than 30,000 airline employees who have received furlough notices are merely the tip of the iceberg.

The effects of these massive numbers of layoffs will likely cascade through the economy if Congress and the president cannot reach an agreement. Consumer spending will fall, which could lead to more layoffs in retail stores as well as manufacturing. Mortgages, rent, and other loans will go unpaid. Ultimately, the unemployment crisis could cause a collapse in real estate values.

It is difficult to say how quickly the economic crisis will spread, but, for a president already lagging in the polls, tens of thousands of newly unemployed workers is not a good sign. This is especially true if the newly unemployed view the president’s party as the obstacle to federal programs that would have kept their paychecks – or enhanced unemployment benefits – coming.

The president’s campaign has been in trouble for quite some time, but the new round of bad news is shifting the election from a Republican loss to a rout. At this point, it looks as though the swing states are gone and red states such as Georgia, Iowa, and Texas are within Joe Biden’s grasp. Meanwhile, quarantined in the White House, all President Trump can do is tweet about it.

Originally published on The Resurgent

The One Key Takeaway From The Debate

 he presidential debate is over and, as usual, both sides are claiming victory (including in a Trump email that went out before the debate). In the debate that Jake Tapper called a “hot mess inside a dumpster fire inside a train wreck” there was no clear winner. There was a clear loser, however.

The bar was set very low for Joe Biden. Going into the debate, the Trump campaign had been attacking the former vice president’s mental abilities for months, often using deceptively edited videos. They’re still saying it, but after last night it’s a lot less believable

Biden was the old Biden. He stumbled on words a few times but showed plenty of stamina, energy, lucidity, and good humor in the 90-minute debate. Biden did lead off with attacks in the first few minutes of the debate calling Trump a “clown” and a “liar” at various times and asking at one point, “Will you shut up, man?“

Although Biden’s temper flared on occasion, the way he often turned away Trump’s attacks with patience and laughter reminded me of the 1980 debate in which Ronald Reagan laughed off Jimmy Carter’s attacks with a patronizing, “There you go again.” This is probably the only way that Biden reminds me of Reagan.

Trump was also the old Trump, and that was the root of his problems. It is difficult to tell whether Trump prepped for the debate or whether he just winged it after watching Fox News.

The president came across as angry and combative. With his continual interruptions and breaking of the mutually agreed-upon rules, Trump placed himself in the position of having to debate both Biden and moderator Chris Wallace.

In the midst of the brouhaha, Trump missed an easy layup when Wallace asked him to condemn “white supremacist and right-wing militia.” The resulting soundbite will get a lot of airplay.

Trump’s response was, “Who would you like me to condemn? The Proud Boys? Stand back and stand by. But I’ll tell you what, I’ll tell you what. Somebody’s gotta do something about antifa and the left, because this is not a right-wing problem, this is a left-wing problem.”

“Stand back and stand by” is not a repudiation of anything.

Trump also made a YUGE tactical error in accusing Biden of supporting the call to defund police. Biden got his message out that he is “totally opposed” to defunding police and took the opportunity to distance himself from the radical left.

Trump took Biden’s statement that he opposed defunding as a victory. The president seemed to think that it was an “aha” moment and argued that saying the words “law enforcement” would cause the Democrat to “lose all of your radical left supporters.”

In reality, the exchange likely hurt Trump. Joe Biden was not the pick of the radical left. He was the moderate pick. The radical left already knows that Biden is not one of them. The people who didn’t know that Biden was a moderate – uninformed voters and Trump supporters – will realize this after having watched the debate, which further undercuts the Trump campaign’s claims that Biden is a radical socialist.

The radical left’s dislike of Biden pales in comparison to their dislike of Trump. After 2016, few leftists will stay home or vote third party, and now, thanks to Trump, Biden’s moderate position was highlighted before a national audience. By definition, moderate voters are those in the middle. They decide elections.

Having said all that, the one key takeaway is that the debate will not help Donald Trump, but it will make people feel easier about Joe Biden. The bar was set so low for Biden that all he needed to do was string together a few coherent sentences without drooling. He far exceeded that standard and held his own against the bombastic Trump.

On the other hand, Trump needed to seem rational, competent, and in control of himself. On that score, he failed miserably. The president was the proverbial bull in the china shop. He seemed totally lacking in even basic self-control. Donald Trump came across as a male “Karen” (please excuse the expression, I have the utmost respect for real Karens that I know) who has control of the nuclear codes.

For the most part, I disagree with both candidates on policy, but Donald Trump clearly lost the debate based on his poor form and displays of unpresidential temperament. The evening will not help the president with undecided voters and will not win over Biden supporters to his camp. That’s what counts.

In reality, most unaffiliated voters don’t care much about policy anyway. And if they did, it was hard to hear any serious discussion of platforms over the cross-talk and arguing.

Trump supporters are claiming that the president won the debate, but they know better. The tell is that Team Trump immediately started attacking the moderator. If they were happy with their candidate’s performance, they wouldn’t need a scapegoat. The truth is, as Erick Erickson humorously tweeted, that Chris Wallace did about as well as anyone could have under the circumstances.

There were no clear winners in the debate, but there was a clear loser. Donald Trump’s performance underscored the urgent need to remove him from the presidency. If he can’t control himself for 90 minutes, why should he be trusted with four more years?

Originally published on The Resurgent