Post
Topic
Board Politics & Society
Merits 1 from 1 user
Re: US Elections 2020 - very self such moderated
by
theymos
on 25/10/2020, 22:12:38 UTC
⭐ Merited by KonstantinosM (1)
The whole Republican strategy seems broken to me. They're talking about all the wrong things. At this point, I'm thinking that Biden is going to win by a landslide. He's currently ahead in Florida and Arizona, which Trump needs to win. The polls may still tighten, but I suspect that pollsters are more likely to have overcorrected than undercorrected after 2016; in other words, I expect polling error to go in the opposite direction to 2016.

On election night, we should watch Florida and Arizona, since they're apparently going to have some solid results early. If Biden wins either, then it's over. If Trump wins both, then it'll go into a big mess of delays and litigation in the other swing states. If Trump wins FL&AZ, then it also implies a fairly tight election, which gives Trump the opportunity to try for various tricks such as trying to have mail-in ballots thrown out in the remaining states. But I think Biden wins Florida and Arizona, which will be a bit of an anticlimactic end to the whole thing.

Ticket-splitting has become rare, so Trump's disaster of a campaign is likely to lead to the Democrats taking the Senate as well. It's always bad when either party has full control, since then the government can actually do stuff, and everything the government does is harmful. Disappointing.

Biden represents a return to the neoliberal status quo, which I would not have expected. The neoliberal ideology and post-WWII world order has been falling apart worldwide, and we seemed (still seem?) headed inexorably toward something else. The protracted and disastrous wars in the middle east were major blows to the political strength of the US and neoliberalism's strength in domestic politics, as was the 2008 financial crisis. Trump's open and loud rejection of neoliberalism seemed like the final nail in the coffin. But now Biden will attempt to "go backward". People voting for Biden want and expect a return to something "ordinary", but I think it'll be moreso Biden fighting to recreate something that can no longer exist in this world.