I. The Horse Race.
I write one day early tonight, because tomorrow is the first debate between President Trump and I will of course be watching that tomorrow night.
Stop me if you've heard this before, but we have just had another week of stable polling. Joe Biden leads the RCP average by 6.8 points, up slightly from last week and back to the exact mark he had two weeks ago. Biden leads the 538.com average by 6.9 points, the same margin as last week.
State level polling has mostly been stable too, although Biden got a great Pennsylvania poll tonight that showed him up nine. He's also had some good Ohio numbers, which make that state a true toss up with five weeks to go.
II. Debate Prep.
The first general election debate usually goes poorly for the incumbent. After four years of being the most important man in the world, it can be a bit unnerving to have to treat someone like an equal for 90 minutes. Even Ronald Reagan lost his first debate with Mondale, not that it mattered in the end.
The importance of debates tend to be over-stated. Nearly everyone has an opinion of Donald Trump and it is unlikely to change tomorrow night. But I think Joe Biden has at least some hope of picking up some voters who may have yet to commit to voting for him. The incumbent and no small portion of the media have fed the idea that he is too old and more than a little soft in the head. He also had some bad performances in the early debates with a crowded state taking aim at him as the front-runner. Biden can dispel a lot of those thoughts with a strong performance.
The most encouraging sign for Biden is how well he did in the only one on one debate with Bernie Sanders back in March. He was sharp and focused, and a little bit ebullient because he knew he was likely to be the nominee. I hope he projects a similar confidence tomorrow in Cleveland.
The first debate is going to be moderated by Chris Wallace. He is an interesting choice. The Trump people obviously assume he spends his days working in the Fox News Bubble and he has to placate that audience. I'm a little surprised that Biden didn't fight for a non Fox host but he obviously felt okay about it. (Wallace has given Trump some difficult questions when interviewing him.)
Wallace announced the six debate topics early this week. Some of them are obvious but see if you can spot the Fox influence on a couple of these:
1. The Trump and Biden Records. This is very vague. I guess Wallace is going to let the candidates attack each other right off the bat. That is understandable and will make for compelling television.
2. The Supreme Court. Here is where Trump is going to set the chutzpah record when he tried to paint Joe Biden as anti-Catholic zealot. The thing to watch for is Biden's line of attack. He should focus on the fact that Trump is trying to overturn the Affordable Care Act and he intends to use Coney-Barrett to do just that.
3. COVID-19. Trump will lie to you during this segment. Joe Biden will not.
4. The Economy. Trump will lie about how great the economy was before COVID. Biden will argue that he inherited a strong economy from his predecessors. I doubt many minds will be changed here, but I do hope Biden pins the recession on Trump.
5. Race And Violence in Our Cities. Okay-there's the Fox whistle. Trump will blame Biden for the riots, Biden will blame Trump for his lawlessness. If the candidates feel listless at the start of this segment, they will get over that quick.
6. The Integrity of the Election. One guy will scare you, the other guy will tell you to vote. Vote for that one.
But there's more....................
Yesterday the New York Times published in excruciating detail the fact that Donald Trump is a dead beat citizen. This news came out after the debate subjects had been set, but I'm sure Biden will hammer on them in every segment if he can. Trump will mumble something about fake news every time it gets mentioned.
If you're reading this blog, and God love you for doing so, you already know the details, so I won't bore you. But one fact is really hanging with me. Donald Trump chose to pay $750 in 2016 and 2017. He could have paid zero dollars, but he was obviously told that it would look bad. So they talked him into making a nominal payment. How they arrived at $750 is between him and his accountant. But it's kind of amazing to think that he could have saved himself a LOT of trouble by stroking a check for something like $26,000 or any amount that is substantially more than what the average tax payer pays in federal income taxes. A penny saved is a penny earned, I guess.
I also think this a lot more will come from this reporting. The first report was thorough and detailed but there are a lot of layers to the tax code and there will be a lot of eyes following the information as it comes out over the next week or two.
The most damning parts are that he apparently paid obscene amounts of his money to Ivanka and characterized them as "consulting fees" to save a few bucks on payroll taxes. The other is that he apparently took a $79 million tax credit under the 2009 economic recovery act. (Thanks Obama!)
But for now-the most memorable fact is this: the President of the United States paid $750 a year for his two tax returns that he filed from the White House. Fuck that guy.
III. The Forecasts.
Time is on Joe Biden's side. Every week that he maintains his lead, his chances of winning go up. There is still time for things to change, but it may take something dramatic for Trump to catch up and make this race competitive down the stretch. (I will not point out that by this time tomorrow we will know for sure whether Wiki Leaks has any dirt on Joe Biden. So far, so good on that front.)
That said, there wasn't a lot of movement this week. The Economist remains most bullish on Biden's chance of winning, but 538 is closing that gap. In fact, 538 now projects Biden to win Ohio 51% of the time, so they technically forecast him to win by a bigger margin than the Economist. But Nate Silver and the Economist's nerd continue to snip at each other on Twitter, which is kind of sad.
As for me, I'm moving Biden up from 84% to 86%. I think the Trump tax story will sting. No one likes to be a sucker and now the world knows, definitively, that that is how Trump feels about the average American tax payer. At the risk of repeating myself, fuck that guy.
IV. Taxonomy, Again.
For the past week I have been focusing on Ohio. My theory is that as long as Ohio is close, than Biden probably wins. Trump needs Ohio, Biden does not. In 2016, Trump swung that state eleven points to the right, from a three point Obama win to an eight point Hillary Clinton loss.
Ohio has a lot of the voters that swung from Obama to Trump and a lot of Obama voters who stayed home last time. All week I kept an eye on Nate's projected finish for Ohio and watched Biden's numbers climb from down to two to up by a fraction of a point. (Currently just 0.2%, so I'll be watching it for another week, at least.)
A reminder of my taxonomy of states. Nothing here has changed from last week:
A. It will seem close if he doesn't win Florida. He probably only gets to 290 maximum without Florida.
B. It will seem comfortable if he wins NC and FL That probably gets him to 334 electoral votes. Getting over 350 will look like a nice win, especially if he can win a state like Georgia, which Obama never carried and which ought to be trending blue over time.
C. It will seem like a blowout if he adds Iowa and Ohio. This means he recreated the 2008 coalition, with GA subbing in for Indiana.
D. The cherry on top would be Texas. This probably only happens if Trump craters in some way, but the psychological value of flipping Texas will be enormous.
No comments:
Post a Comment