Why Trump will win

The morning after the 2020 election—even before all the votes were counted—I had a flash of insight that the result was actually bad news:

Early in the evening I was rooting for a Biden win. But when I saw how close the election was, I wondered if we’d be better off with a Trump win. That would mean at most 8 years of Trump, then we get the virus out of our system.

Now with a “stolen election” we face a scenario where Trump returns in 2024 (possibly from jail, just as Napoleon returned from Elba) and runs against an old and likely unsuccessful Democratic president, who disappointed his supporters by being unable to get anything through the Senate. Or perhaps against a minority woman candidate. Trump will say, “Remember how good you had it in 2019!”

Meanwhile, we face 4 years of non-stop Trump tweets. A grand total of 12 years of Trump trolling. You heard it here first; Trump wins the 2024 election. (From the guy that was wrong about 2016 and (probably) 2020.)

But I’m actually feeling pretty good about my prediction for this election. I predicted a huge gap between the roughly 8% lead that Biden had in the national polls (at 538) and the final outcome in the tipping point state—perhaps a 5% gap. Now it looks like the actual gap will be at least 7%, as Biden will probably win the tipping point state by about 1%, if not less.

I still believe that, although now I have poll numbers to back it up. Forget about the small lead Trump has in national polls, Biden would need a lead of about 6-8 points to win again. He needs to win by 3-4 to offset the Electoral College advantage of the GOP, and Trump consistently does better than the polls in national elections. Trump is actually far ahead.

But why will Trump win? Both liberal and conservative intellectuals keep telling us that he is beyond the pale. They told us he was finished after the November 2020 election, again after January 6, and once again after the 2022 midterms. And then after he was indicted for multiple felonies, for which he could spend the rest of his life in prison (but won’t.)

By a wide variety of metrics, Trump presided over the worst economy since Herbert Hoover (very slow GDP and job growth, etc.) He was far and away the most corrupt president in history–literally attempting to abolish democracy and make himself dictator. So what are the pundits consistently getting wrong about Trump?

I don’t believe the pundits are wrong about Trump, I believe they are wrong about America. This is no longer the country that forced Nixon to resign back in 1974. Trump would have had no chance in the America of my youth. This is banana republic America, and our pundits are stuck in pre-banana America. They think we are still like Canada, but we are more like Mexico, or Hungary, or Turkey.

American voters no longer care about procedural niceties like democracy. They want a strong man who will bring prosperity. Trump is not that man, but he seems like the guy they want. Banana republics like the Philippines elect empty headed TV stars as president. Trump was a failed businessman who played a successful businessman on TV.

But what about the horrible economy under Trump? Voters forgive him for that outcome, attributing it to the effects of Covid. The economy actually did fairly well during Trump’s first three years.

You could argue that in not blaming Trump for the severe 2020 recession, his voters have a relatively sophisticated understanding of the economy. But that’s setting the bar very low. A truly sophisticated observer would note that Trump set us on the path to fiscal disaster with his reckless late 2010s budget policies, and also appointed Jay Powell to head the Fed. But even Powell wasn’t dovish enough for Trump—who pressed Powell to juice the economy even more aggressively.

So while it is true that Trump is not to blame for the bad 2020 economy, it’s equally true that Trump is to blame for the 2021-22 inflation surge. Indeed he and Biden are pretty much equally to blame, as they share almost identical fiscal and monetary policies. But voters are not that sophisticated. They understand enough economics to know that Trump didn’t cause the 2020 recession, but not enough to know that he did cause the 2021 inflation.

All of the preceding is only half the story—Trump also benefits from an exceedingly feeble opposition. The Democrats seems determined to commit mass suicide.

Consider the issue of crime. The crime rate soared dramatically higher during the Trump administration, and has fallen back over the last two years. So that should be a huge win for the Dems—right? Actually, the crime issue favors the GOP, due the the almost unbelievable incompetence of the Democratic Party.

The Bill Clinton Democratic Party is dead. No more “era of small big government is over”. No more pro-consumer antitrust approach. No more free market prosperity. No more welfare reform. No more balance budgets. No more tough on crime. No more Sister Souljah moments. That party would have destroyed Trump in a general election.

But it’s long gone—replaced by an enfeebled woke Democratic party. The modern Democratic Party worships those who fail and has contempt for the successful. It is seen as being unwilling to prosecute the sort of crimes that make urban living a hassle. It is seen as wishing to prevent some students from being more successful than others. It is are seen as favoring deadbeats who won’t pay their student debts, or who won’t pay their rent. Some of this is unfair (Biden is not particularly woke), but just enough is true that the charge sticks.

Given a choice between a party that favors those who fail and a party that favors those who succeed, modern America will choose the party of success. In the 1930s, most voters would have chosen the party that defends the weak. Biden doesn’t realize that this is not the 1930s, it’s the 2020s.

Of course all thinking people will vote for Biden next year, despite his pathetic performance as president. But to paraphrase Adlai Stevenson, the problem Biden faces is that he needs a majority.

PS. Trump now claims to despise all of the “RINO” Republicans who managed his first administration (and trash him in private.) I find it amusing that half of his supporters think he’ll recreate the success of his first term, and the other half think he’ll dump the Mike Pence approach to policy and replace it with a Steve Bannon approach. I will derive great amusement watching the frustration of whichever group ends up being disappointed.

Voters prefer Trump on the economy because he gave them a big tax cut without reducing government spending. But the next president will be faced with the choice of either doing the reverse, or having America’s banana republicanism spread from the political sphere to the economic sphere.

Either way, it should be great fun to watch!