As Goes Trump, So Goes the Nation
I recently found a website that objectively lists all published presidential polls done by day and graded in terms of the quality of the statistical analysis represented by the poll. The better the poll, the higher the grade, but most importantly, all the polls published are listed whether they are done by CNN, the Wall Street Journal or Quinnipiac University. I have several observations from reviewing the list. First of all, there are far more polls taken and published than we generally imagine. On the daily news reports we quite often see a news crawler that will say “Latest poll shows…..”, and it happens often enough that we assume there are a regular flow of polls (especially in an election year, and doubly so during such a controversial one at that). But the shear number of polls, arrayed line-by-line in smallish print is just amazing. I scrolled down as we are used to doing online and was impressed after a number of scrolls to only be back a day or two historically. There are national and state-by-state polls. There are approval polls and general election polls. There are presidential, senatorial and House polls, as well as generic electoral polls. And then, after a few pages of the latest polls, there is a summarization which asks a few key questions:
1. How popular is Donald Trump? – Answer: It varies, but his approval rating is trending below 40% and has been as low as 37%. He joins George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter and Harry Truman as the least popular since the beginning of modern polling.
2. Who is winning the race for Congress? – Answer: Overall, Democrats have an 8 point and consistently widening lead as we head into the election. The Monmouth University Poll (the A+ player) says it’s 8 points.
What all this implies is that Donald Trump’s prospects for reelection are dwindling as the clock runs out and the things that most affect the polls (the economy, the pandemic and racial tension) show signs of only getting worse in the waning three months of the cycle. I know that pro-Trumpers and scared anti-Trumpers like to say, “Not so fast, Abernathy!” In 2016, all the polls were wrong and everyone seemed to forget how to calculate the odds based on the quirks of the electoral college (rigged to favor conservatives for over a hundred forty years now). I, for one, have faith in the statisticians and their polling sophistication. Even in 2018, with only two years to course-correct from their 2016 debacle, they nailed the Blue Wave and understated the ultimate impact it would have on the House shift to the left. Since then, they have had all the experience and chastisement imaginable and needed to sharpen their pencils and get their polling techniques better than ever. This is a data-driven business in a Big Data era and while no statistics are better than heuristic guesses, the mistakes made in 2016 are unlikely to plague the polls again in the same way. As for the electoral college, the light has shone on that sham of a democratic process now sufficiently that change is more likely during a Democratic era than ever before.
I don’t want to put the cart before the horse, but I believe that it is important to consider what Americans should expect once this election is over and assuming Trump has been displaced. I do not want to contemplate the alternative here, not because it is impossible (we all know better than that), but because that is so very unpredictable because Trump is focused on winning at all costs and policy and platform are tertiary issues at best. What will happen if Trump wins is simply too hard to contemplate (not to mention too unthinkable). But asking ourselves how we as a country will deal with the aftermath of this grave and traumatic battle in which we are collectively engaged, is important. It would be important in normal times, but in the times of a pandemic and a spiraling economic meltdown as well as with the backdrop of heightened racial tensions, we have a moment of great import on the horizon and need to lend it the benefit of some forethought.
This morning I read an editorial in the Financial Times about how it is time that the United States learns how democracy works. What is really meant by that statement is that the United States needs to be reminded of how it taught the world about democracy and how it works. Sixty percent of the country has a fair idea of how democracy works, but unfortunately, a small and shrinking minority has taken advantage of a bad moment in American history a few years ago and exploited it for their own purposes (or what they think is their own purposes). I imagine that if you subjected that minority person-by-person to intensive questioning that started with a simple what do you want from your government, and then examined the Trump presidency and objectively showed them what of that they have gotten or perhaps have even lost under Trump, we would find that the minority would shrink dramatically. I am not saying that if you showed these people the truth they would either accept it or change their view of Trump, but we could objectively say that a much smaller percentage of the Trump base are truly exploiting the moment for their own purposes.
The point of the editorial was to cite the way the United States that was the standard-bearer for democracy for so long, took the bull by the horns at the end of periods of global disruption and rather than take advantage of their dominant position, instead used it as a teachable moment for the world to advance the cause of democracy. The example used is when after WWII an American team was sent to Tokyo to help the Japanese rewrite their constitution. Some would say that was an ethnocentric initiative that was designed to make the conquered act and operate like the conqueror, but that is apparently not what happened. There certainly was some stripping away of the omnipotence and God-like aspects of the Emperor (something that was foisted on the people by years of imperial dominance), but mostly it was less about Westernizing the Japanese and more about humanizing and democratizing a country in severe disrepair. The evidence of the righteousness of the initiative is not only that Japan has successfully rebuilt itself into the third-biggest economy in the world (actually giving the U.S. a run for its money in several tech and automotive areas in the 1980’s), but that its constitution is now considered a model for democracy for the rest of the world.
Some will say that the outcome is not right and that vanquished should never be put in a position to be victorious. Some believe that losers should never be given another chance and that winners should press their dominance to insure perpetuation of their kind in superior circumstances. But that is the way of nature, not the way of grace and humanity. Are we not supposed to evolve to a better form as humans? Has anyone ever found a more egalitarian form of governance than true democracy?
When Trump goes away in January, 2021 (and he will go away, fears to the contrary notwithstanding), we have an obligation to our nation and to the world to reclaim our leadership. I am not talking about leadership as Trump thinks of it. It is less about dominance and more about moral leadership. As the Coke ad once said, “We need to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.” We need to once again redefine democracy.