US election 2020: Can Trump really still win?
Amid reports of a looming ‘blue tsunami’, Donald Trump is fighting for his political life. But with his fanatical supporters, and a Biden scandal to exploit, he isn’t beaten yet
Donald Trump is nervous. Beneath the bombast and the boosterism, the US President worries about losing the election in two weeks’ time. It is starting to show.
“Could you imagine if I lose?” he told a rally in Macon, Georgia, on Saturday (AEDT). “I’m not going to feel so good. Maybe I’ll have to leave the country, I don’t know.”
Democratic contender Joe Biden, he assured the thousands gathered on the tarmac at Middle Georgia regional airport, is the “worst candidate in the history of presidential politics”.
But that makes the spectre of defeat all the more troubling: “I wish it was a good candidate, it puts more pressure on when you’re running against a guy like this.”
Are these the last days of the Trump presidency? Is this how it ends, with the sun glinting off the top of Air Force One and the faithful gathered to see one final performance by their vainglorious champion? Are these airport rallies, which Trump is hosting daily as he storms across the battleground states, a curtain call for the tumultuous Trump show?
Or can this Barnum & Bailey President somehow conjure up a miraculous second act? Does America have enough energy to stack its chips on Trump once again and sign up for four more years?
The wonks and forecasters put Biden almost out of reach. The Five Thirty Eight forecasting website gives him an 87 per cent chance of victory at this stage. The Economist’s model is even more bullish, putting Biden at 91 per cent.
There really is not much good news for Trump in any of the battleground state polling and even Republican senators have begun to break ranks, with Ben Sasse of Nebraska warning supporters of an oncoming “blue tsunami” of Democrats and savaging Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
Yet the forecasters were wrong last time and the polls have been off before. This is a pandemic-stricken nation with shifting political coalitions and a creaking electoral system. Biden may be well ahead, but nothing is certain.
“My expectation is that the race will tighten,” says Sean Trende, elections analyst for RealClearPolitics. “Even with the polls where they are now, Trump’s chance of winning is about the same as having three kids and them all being boys. Which I promise you isn’t that unusual. I have them right here.”
Trende believes there are still some positive signs for Trump. Republicans have an edge in voter registration numbers in swing states, where Democrats have been slow to knock on doors during the pandemic. Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts may also have been hampered by the party’s Covid caution.
Trump’s job approval is still ahead of his polling numbers, suggesting some undecideds may break for the President, as they did last time. “At the end of the day, if you like the job the candidate is doing, you’re going to vote for him,” says Trende. “There is some evidence of that shy Trump voter effect. The economy is growing again. I’d bet on it tightening.”
For all his flickers of anxiety, Trump certainly is not giving up. He is throwing the kitchen sink at re-election and showing no signs of long-term effects from his brush with COVID-19. On Friday he held rallies in Florida and Georgia, while also fitting in a round of golf in Miami.
His hope is for a 2016 redux, another “October surprise”. Just like last time, Trump’s subject is emails, laptops and the alleged corruption of his opponent.
In 2016 the focus was on Hillary Clinton’s deleted State Department email cache and the laptop of hapless sexter Anthony Weiner, which was seized as part of an FBI investigation. This time it is Biden’s son Hunter’s laptop and a cache of his emails that allegedly reveal corruption and his family’s “self-dealing” — taking advantage of their position.
The emails’ origin is somewhat dubious, emanating from a laptop that Hunter Biden apparently left at a Delaware repair shop last year. The shop’s owner, John Paul MacIsaac, appears to have passed a copy of the hard drive to Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani, who then passed it to the New York Post. According to the Associated Press, the FBI is investigating whether the leak is related to a Russian disinformation campaign.
However, the emails’ content is fairly damning, suggesting Hunter Biden used his position as son of the then vice-president to gain favours for Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company on whose board he served. The cache includes pictures of him in bed with what appears to be a glass crack pipe and anguished texts between father and son.
The leak has set the conservative media on fire but is being treated gingerly by more liberal outlets. Twitter and Facebook took the unusual step of limiting the spread of the New York Post’s stories last week, with Twitter preventing users posting a link to the original article.
For all the mainstream scepticism, the Hunter Biden scandal has at least given Trump something to talk about that is not the coronavirus pandemic, which in America is now entering a “third wave”, with cases spiking across the Midwest and the death toll approaching 220,000.
“The Biden family is a criminal enterprise,” Trump told the crowd in Macon. “It makes crooked Hillary Clinton look like an amateur. He goes to China and the kid follows him there like a vacuum cleaner. He (Hunter) is taking in millions. And plenty of it goes to Joe Biden. Yet this massive scandal is being covered up by the media and big tech.”
Trump’s supporters were in firm agreement. “It’s just unbelievable,” says Alice Edwards, a housewife from nearby Atlanta. She shows me a picture of Hunter Biden in bed with a crack pipe in his mouth. “And they’re saying nothing about it, they’re not covering it,” she says, pointing to the media pen.
“Lock him up, lock him up,” the crowd chanted, encouraged by the President to reprise another old favourite from 2016. Yet they did not quite have the same fervour or conviction. They simply do not hate Biden the way they hated Hillary Clinton. And in a country suffering from pandemic and economic pain, a convoluted story about alleged favour-peddling in Ukraine may not be enough for Trump to turn this around.
“I suspect this won’t necessarily have electoral consequences,” says Luke Thompson, a Republican consultant.
“I’m sceptical that it will swing votes. But if Biden wins, he enters office with this as a major story. Hunter Biden is what everybody says the Trump family are but can’t prove.”
One thing Trump undoubtedly has in his favour is the unshakeable enthusiasm of his base. I joined Lonny and Bonnie Weitzel, poker players and property developers who had flown in from Texarkana in eastern Texas with their family to see Trump and wanted to beat the traffic by walking several kilometres to the rally.
“I wanted to feel the enthusiasm, the way it’s all coming together,” says Lonny, who describes his view on the election as “anxious but optimistic”. He adds: “My hope is that the numbers we’re seeing right now are skewed. I don’t trust the polling for one minute. I fly from coast to coast in this country, I barely meet anyone who is voting for Biden.”
Could this be their first and last Trump rally? “No,” says Bonnie. “We have to be optimistic. He can still win.”
For Lee Balliew, 50, from Atlanta, a repeat of 2016 is on the cards. “The polling wasn’t accurate then and it won’t be accurate now,” she says. “The silent majority will win again.”
Trump has won her vote with his pro-life commitment and appointment of conservative judges, not least Amy Coney Barrett, whose nomination hearings in the Senate concluded last week. She is expected to be confirmed by a vote on Thursday. “He’s done a fantastic job with the Supreme Court,” says Belliew.
And if Trump loses? “The foundation of our country is at stake,” she says.
“Our forefathers founded this as a Christian nation and I think we will never see that again if Biden gets in.”
There will be dozens more Trump airport rallies in the closing stretch, as he pumps up adoring crowds with attacks on the Biden family and promises of a return to pre-pandemic bliss.
Perhaps it will get him over the line, but for the country at large it appears that the shtick is growing a little thin, the repetitious playlist of grievances less convincing in a time of crisis.
Billy Joel’s Piano Man played three times at Friday’s rally, followed by the usual belting rendition of Nessun Dorma.
“All’alba vincero! Vincero, vincero! / At dawn, I will win, I will win, I will win,” roared the voice of the late Luciano Pavarotti.
It is a mantra that Trump will keep on repeating until election day. And if he loses, he will probably keep on repeating it afterwards.
The Sunday Times
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