The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Good News: Democrats Are Worried

Posted on | October 30, 2020 | 2 Comments

People keep telling me their predictions about the election, and I don’t want to hear them. I have done the Electoral College arithmetic and know that it is easily possible for President Trump to win, even if it’s going to be close and we might have to wait for late returns.

More than that, however, I’ve reached my Zen of pessimistic calm, as I said Wednesday: “Bleak hopelessness is true objectivity.” Being convinced we are utterly doomed is a source of tranquility.

Democrats are now suffering an agony of fear. Four more years of Trump? No, they can’t handle that. It’s driving them to sheer panic:

Democrats are sounding the alarm about weak voter turnout rates in Florida’s biggest county, Miami-Dade, where a strong Republican showing is endangering Joe Biden’s chances in the nation’s biggest swing state.
No Democrat can win Florida without a huge turnout and big winning margins [in Miami] to offset losses elsewhere in the state. But Democrats are turning out at lower rates than Republicans and at lower rates than at this point in 2016, when Hillary Clinton won by 29 percentage points here and still lost the state to Donald Trump.

You can read the whole thing. There are other omens of a possible miracle victory for Trump, including a Rasmussen poll that indicates Trump may get 31% — THIRTY-ONE PERCENT! — of the black vote.

But don’t give me hope. I’m more comfortable with despair, especially as I watch Democrats writhe in agony during these final days before the election. Besides, how bad could it possibly be?

Twelve years ago, when the Republican Party nominated John McCain as its presidential candidate, he got less than 46 percent of the popular vote and only 173 Electoral College votes. Whatever happens on Election Day this year, almost no one expects President Trump to do worse than that.
According to Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight poll-based prediction, we enter the final weekend before Election Day with an 89 percent likelihood that Joe Biden will win. Basically, the odds are 8-to-1 against Trump’s reelection. Yet the president’s supporters are undaunted, recalling that Silver’s final 2016 forecast gave Hillary Clinton a 71 percent chance of being elected and yet Trump beat her in a result that broke the Democrats’ so-called “blue wall” in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Miracles can happen in politics, and Republican voters are praying for another divine intervention next week. Bombarded by a barrage of discouraging news coverage — even Fox News seems to be part of the “Landslide Joe” propaganda team now — the conservative faithful quite desperately seek omens that may portend more hopeful tidings.
Well, there’s this: Four days before the election, Joe Biden today is making a campaign trip to Minnesota, which, as Trump campaign communications chief Tim Murtaugh points out, is “a state that hasn’t gone to a Republican candidate for president since 1972.” . . .

Read the rest of my latest column at The American Spectator.




 

Category: American Spectator, Democrats, Donald Trump, Election, Florida

Comments

2 Responses to “Good News: Democrats Are Worried”

  1. 31 October 2020 – Dark Brightness
    October 30th, 2020 @ 2:38 pm

    […] People keep telling me their predictions about the election, and I don’t want to hear them. I have done the Electoral College arithmetic and know that it is easily possible for President Trump to win, even if it’s going to be close and we might have to wait for late returns. […]

  2. Sunday Linkage « Bacon Time !!!!!!
    November 1st, 2020 @ 8:39 am

    […] Good News: Democrats Are Worried […]