On his Facebook page, liberal filmmaker Michael Moore told his 2.3 million followers over the weekend that unless something drastic happens between now and November 3, a Trump victory is certain: “Are you ready for a Trump victory? Are you mentally prepared to be outsmarted by Trump again? Do you find comfort in your certainty that there is no way Trump can win? Are you content with the trust you’ve placed in the DNC to pull this off?”
Each of these questions was rhetorical. Moore expanded: “Someone needs to pull the political fire alarm NOW. Where are the stories about Trump gaining on Biden?…. We are risking a tragedy of major proportions.… Trump’s base is hateful, excited and they can’t wait to vote. Where’s the excitement for Biden?”
The betting odds have closed dramatically. On July 31, Las Vegas was giving Biden a 24-point margin over Trump. On August 30, the gap had closed to just 1.5 points favoring Biden.
In battleground states Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida, and Arizona, RealClearPolitics showed Biden ahead of Trump by an average of 6.3 points. On August 30, Biden’s advantage had shrunk to 2.7 points.
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The same showed up in a Democracy Institute (DI) poll published on Sunday by the British newspaper Sunday Express. According to its latest poll, President Trump “has 48 percent of the popular vote over former Vice President Biden’s 45 percent.” And in key swing states, “the gap is even bigger, with 49 percent for Trump to 41 percent for Biden, giving the incumbent U.S. President an almost unassailable seven point lead.”
In the Electoral College, the DI poll gives Trump 319 votes to Biden’s 219. And in its “enthusiasm gap,” DI reported that 82 percent of Trump voters “are strongly or very enthusiastic” about their candidate, compared to just 40 percent of Biden’s supporters.
And in the general election, 57 percent of those polled think Trump will be reelected, compared to just 43 percent who don’t think so.
Concerning the just-ended conventions, the DI poll “shows that 21 percent were positively influenced to vote Trump after the Republican convention but a negligible eight percent were inspired to vote Biden after the Democratic convention.”
Patrick Masham, DI’s director, thinks he knows exactly when the momentum shifted from Biden to Trump:
In any political campaign, there’s a moment that tells you which way the electoral wind is blowing. In this year’s American presidential campaign, that moment arrived on Wednesday [August 26].
Joe Biden restated his support for peaceful protests but, crucially, condemned the violence that has come to dominate the months-long nationwide protest movement.
When a candidate changes his tune three quarters of the way through a race, it is not because he knows he holds a winning hand. He does so because the electoral ground is shifting beneath his feet.
The Biden campaign made this move for one simple reason. Its own internal polling numbers revealed what Democracy Institute/Sunday Express polls have shown for the past three months: the overwhelming majority of Americans, including Black voters, are opposed to the organized anarchy — looting, vandalism, mayhem, and murdering of innocent people — explicitly and implicitly cheered on by a considerable cabal of Democratic politicians, while an even large number simply turned a blind eye.
Conrad Black, the Canadian-born former newspaper publisher (The Daily Telegraph, the Chicago Sun-Times, The Jerusalem Post, the Canadian National Post, among others), said the same thing as Moore did, but without the verbal histrionics and obscenities:
The Republicans have now forced the Democrats to change course and tactics, shed their narcissistic complacency, and recognize that they are in the fight of their lives….
This will be exposed as the most mistakenly overconfident launch of a major party campaign for the White House since the renomination of Governor Thomas Dewey of New York against President Harry Truman in 1948….
This is a choice between a quavering geriatric mediocrity riding a mad tiger and an unabashed impresario who, like him or not, is a great star….
Trump has had the fourth most successful first term in history, after Lincoln, FDR, and Richard Nixon. And barring another providential catastrophe to favor the Democrats on the scale of the coronavirus, this president will be reelected, and he will finally enjoy a honeymoon and be the only chief executive in U.S. history whose second term [will be] more successful than his first.
Photo: AP Images
An Ivy League graduate and former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American, writing primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at [email protected].
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