It used to be in the early years of the blog, I was obsessed with the numbers. Yes, I was nominally Republican and all things being equal, generally preferred Republican general election candidates. But my own libertarian awakening seemed to rise with the Tea Party and as the GOP flipped the House, I had high expectations. The immigration restrictionists seemed to coopt the Tea Party, and the true believers seemed to dwindle to a handful or so. The House GOP wanted no part of politically painful budget cuts threatening their hold on power; the best which they could negotiate was modest sequesters back in 2013, which involved minor cuts in outlays roughly equal between DoD (a GOP priority) and social spending (a Dem priority), and Trump basically dealt those cards away to get more defense spending.
Politically, even in my salad days as a young social liberal, I've always been a fiscal conservative, a believer in free markets and trade, and an immigration advocate. I remember what drew me to support Carter was his advocacy of zero-based budgeting (the basic idea being you had to constantly justify spending from the ground up); I had no concept of the vested interests behind every federal spending dollar. Perhaps the blogger as a young man was less skeptical of high-sounding rhetoric and government competence and less philosophically consistent. By the 80's, I had developed a skepticism of government, but I wasn't a Reagan groupie; I distinctly remember being shocked by his then massive deficits. It coincided with my return to college to earn my MBA, although none of it was fueled by conservative professors. (The truth is, I don't have a clue about my professors' personal political views, even in business school. But I would say as a professor, it was clear most of my colleagues leaned progressive.)
I think I've posted this incident before. As a professor, you get evaluated on research, teaching and service. My feminist next-door neighbor UWM senior faculty member had passed on an MBA Admissions committee assignment as a service option, and I replaced her. UWM's business school automatically admitted those who achieved high enough undergrad GPA and GMAT scores. We decided the fates of applicants who fell short of one of those criteria. I'll give you a classic example of a case I vividly remember. This one dude, I think with a PhD from the University of British Columbia, had applied with the lowest GMAT score I've ever seen. It was clear that he was pissed off at the indignity of UWM forcing him to take the exam and he passive aggressively blew it off. We didn't think he helped himself with this nonsense and probably would have waived the requirement given his credentials, but we voted him through (unanimously as I recall).
Then we processed this lady applicant of color, who missed both cutoffs by a country mile. Now we had routinely rejected candidates with better credentials. But the male chair, the Dean's puppet, implored us to push her through, saying it would embarrass the Dean, who had already awarded her a scholarship, for us not to approve her. He and two hypocritical, quiet female junior professors were at a deadlock against the remaining 3 of us. Ethically I could not justify passing this candidate through on the grounds of consistency and fairness to the others. Finally, the exasperated chair said, not in these words but in intent, "Look, this is Ron's last meeting. The Dean will choose a puppet replacement who will pass her through next meeting; Resistance is futile." At that moment, I immediately recused myself, voting present. All 5 others knew exactly what I was doing and were pissed at me. I was signalling the process was corrupt and wanted to deprive the candidate the moral satisfaction of a majority vote approval. But what the Dean and the other 3 people did shows the pervasiveness of the progressive perspective in academia., even in business schools.)
For me, the end as a registered Democrat came with the sabotage of the Bork nomination to SCOTUS. This didn't mean I was a principled Republican; it was more of an alliance against Democratic progressivism. But there were many uncomfortable moments in that alliance. A classic moment was earmarks kerfuffle and the infamous Alaskan Bridge to Nowhere. An Alaskan senator vowed that he would resign his seat if Alaska didn't get its fair share of earmark funding. The party's hypocritical stand for fiscal conservatism was exposed, and it really didn't surprise me when the Dems recaptured the House for the first time in over a decade.
Libertarians often comment something to the effect that there's really only one party and the Dems and Republicans are simply different factions: they both love spending and international meddling. I had given Bush and others a lot of slack over Iraq, even though I thought Powell's presentations looked like something out of science fiction. I didn't like Bush's cowboy persona. So when the Democrats overplayed their hand after Obama's win, I saw the Tea Party movement as an overdue reform movement for the GOP. Only the response in 2012 was for the GOP to nominate the godfather of ObamaCare and four years later to elect a big spender nationalist with an anti-trade, anti-immigrant agenda.
Trump's hostile takeover of the GOP finally led to my break from the party. I won't rehash my Never Trump views here.
The real question is: does Trump have a chance of overtaking Biden in just under 2 months? Possibly but not likely. I've seen a few polls showing Trump leading in GA, NC, FL, even competitive in Minnesota. But these are less established polls. In RCP's no tossup poll, Biden leads by over 150 electoral votes with Biden not only winning back WI, PA, and MI, but taking FL, AZ, OH, NC from Trump.
A lot can happen over the next 2 months. Maybe Biden stumbles badly during the debates. Maybe ongoing civil unrest including rioting and looting plays to Trump's law and order perspective. Maybe we see some major news on the COVID-19 front, e.g., an approved vaccine, or more signs of economic recovery and employment pickup.
But Trumpkins are misguided when they think lightning will strike twice; in 2016 Trump was the beneficiary of a change year election plus he was up against one of the most unpopular politicians of all time. He was a political novice without a track record in public service.
Trump's job approval ratings have been consistently negative net. His handling of the COVID-19 crisis has been widely panned. (He continues to make irrational claims to the effect testing is making things worse, as if the virus cares whether it is detected.) I always thought that the Art of the Deal negotiator would move to broaden his appeal to independents and make deals with the Dems. Instead, he seemed to be obsessed with reassuring his base.
538 has an interesting post on how votes have shifted from the start of the general campaign; basically Biden had the biggest lead in decades, and for the most part that has remained steady, about 7 points. And Trump is starting to run out of time with some balloting starting as early as this month. One of the the things I look at are general polls where Biden tops the magical 50, and maybe a third or so show this. I really don't think Trump is going to get the benefit of a doubt at this point.
Will the race tighten? Probably. And make no mistake; I think a Biden victory would be disastrous. It would take something not on my radar to change the election.
