Making the case for both Biden and Trump

Today, I want to make the case that depending on your view, you can make a strong argument that this presidential election will obviously we won’t be won by Donald Trump. And you can make just as strong of a case that this upcoming presidential election will obviously be won by Joe Biden. And the point of this is not to give you my opinion, I think it really could go either way. And it’s going to depend on just a few states. But the point here is to show you that everybody who seems convinced that the outcome in November is so obvious, probably isn’t really considering the full story. So let me first make the case for why Trump is really well positioned to win, although presidents usually do get reelected, and even more so when the economy is good. Right now, half the country believes we’re in a recession. That is terrible for Joe Biden, even if it isn’t true, I think the economy is doing fine, according to every single metric. But if half the country thinks the economy is in a recession, which they do a new poll just out, that is very good for Donald Trump. I don’t know how Biden could win if half the country thinks the country is in a recession. Secondly, nobody loves the Biden ticket. There are many people who say, the Biden ticket is way better than the alternative. I’m going to vote for Biden. There are many people who say, well, Biden, I like I’m not big on Kamala Harris. There are people who say the problem with Biden his age, I want someone younger. Even if you recognize the accomplishments of Biden as I do. It is not an exciting ticket in the way many people want it to be. The people on the Trump side, love Trump love Trump to a fault. They are essentially in a cult, but it doesn’t matter. That still is good for Donald Trump. Thirdly, polling shows Trump is leading in critical states that Biden needs. So if you ask the question, well, what is Trump’s path? Trump’s path is that he’s winning in the polling in so many of these swing states, a handful of swing states that Joe Biden won and depended on in 2020. That’s terrible for Joe Biden, fourth, Biden barely won the Electoral College in 2020. He won the popular vote by millions, sure. But his electoral margin came down to about 120,000 votes in three states. That’s nothing considering the number of third party candidates that are running and how slim this is going to be. Fifth, in general, voting against is more vote motivating than voting for in 2020 Biden voters were voting against Trump to get him out of office. Biden doesn’t have that advantage right now. Now, the counterpoint would be a lot of people still see this as voting against Trump, but it probably reduces the antipathy towards Trump that he’s not currently in office. In 2020, Biden had the benefit, that voting for him was a protest against Trump’s mishandling of COVID or whatever else, that’s no longer a factor. And in this particular case, Kamala Harris is doing nothing for Biden electorally. Whereas if Trump picks the right person to be VP, it could be a really great thing for him. So there is a case to be made here that Biden is in real trouble. Now, let me give you the other side, which is, Biden’s got this thing, there’s no way Trump wins. Point number one is, presidents tend to get reelected. And regardless of what people believe about the economy historically, when the economy is good, low unemployment, high stock growth, GDP growth, wages, growth, wage growth, exceeding inflation, presidents get reelected. That’s the situation right now. That’s really good for Joe Biden. Secondly, Biden won in 2020. And if you start with the 2020 map, there’s no qualitative explanation for why Trump can take anything from Biden Sure, some of the polls in swing states don’t look good for Biden right now. But we have months ago, and the polls often are within a margin of error. And it was not that much different when you looked at the numbers on election day in 2020. With what ultimately was the outcome, but with just a couple points swing one way or the other, either candidate can actually win. So the polling you actually don’t really need to worry about that much. Third, even though Kamala Harris isn’t super popular or activating anybody, she’s not getting in Joe Biden’s way, there’s a risk to Trump that he picked some kind of attention starved lunatic, and it actually hurts Donald Trump. Whereas if nothing else, Kamala Harris is staying out of Joe Biden’s way. And to the extent that he can make the case that he’s done a good job, it is useful for him. And then lastly, even though Biden is struggling in some of the polls with young people over Gaza, the reality is that the youngest group of voters votes at a way smaller, has a much lower propensity to vote than older voters, and even the young voters say and the Israel Gaza thing is like the 10th most important issue to me, or the 15th most important issue to me. And when you put all of that you have a situation where Biden one, there’s no real clear way for Biden to do worse than in 2020. And he has the benefit of a good economy for three and a half years. So it’s Biden, who is the shoo in? Both of these are solid empirically backed cases. My takeaway is it’s going to be really, really close. Let me know what you think.