{"id":96573,"date":"2020-10-24T02:51:35","date_gmt":"2020-10-23T23:51:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/sometimes-it-looks-like-neither-biden-nor-trump-is-trying-to-win\/"},"modified":"2020-10-24T02:51:35","modified_gmt":"2020-10-23T23:51:35","slug":"sometimes-it-looks-like-neither-biden-nor-trump-is-trying-to-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/sometimes-it-looks-like-neither-biden-nor-trump-is-trying-to-win\/","title":{"rendered":"#Sometimes it looks like neither Biden nor Trump is trying to win"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Sometimes it looks like neither Biden nor Trump is trying to win<\/strong>”
\n<\/p>\n

\n Are both presidential candidates trying to lose? Or at least pursuing campaign strategies that put them at grave risk of defeat?<\/p>\n

In nearly four years, Donald Trump has made little effort to win over the 50 percent-plus of voters who didn\u2019t support him in 2016. Having proved that he could win the presidency without a plurality of the popular vote, he has ignored the possibility that he could govern more effectively if he were reelected with an absolute majority.<\/p>\n

You can see the results as Trump supporters scan the polling data for encouraging information. They quickly pass over the national polls showing him trailing by 7.7 percent, according to a RealClearPolitics<\/a> average of recent polls. They focus instead on the chart showing him running slightly better against Joe Biden in the battleground states than he was against Hillary Clinton two to three weeks out in 2016.<\/p>\n

If these numbers prove as much off the mark as in 2016, Trump could win a second term with 270-plus electoral votes. But that conclusion requires a lot of assumptions.<\/p>\n

Past polling hasn\u2019t leaned consistently toward one party, and pollsters tend to compensate \u2014 often overcompensate \u2014 for app<\/a>arent past mistakes.<\/p>\n

Astonishingly, Trump has failed to emphasize his two signature 2016 issues: immigration and trade. He can claim that his new trade agreements and economic policies have produced income and wealth gains disproportionately favoring low-wage workers \u2014 something administrations of both parties have failed to achieve for a generation.<\/p>\n

And he can argue that his immigration policies \u2014 and the cooperation he has successfully wrested from Mexico \u2014 have prevented the surge of unskilled illegal immigrants that could easily resume the minute the networks call the election for Joe Biden.<\/p>\n

Biden has a different strategy, with risks of its own. With a solid lead in the polls, and with COVID-19 providing a rationale for laying low, he\u2019s running out the clock. On nearly half the days in September, his staffers announced an early lid. Sometimes, he\u2019d generate no news<\/a> after 9 a.m. He took three days off this week for debate preparation.<\/p>\n

He and vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris have taken almost no questions from reporters, almost all of whom seem determined not to ask anything that might hurt his chances.<\/p>\n

Biden has answered which flavor milkshake he ordered but has refused to say whether he, like many other Democrats, would support packing the Supreme Court. He chewed out the one reporter who asked him about his son Hunter\u2019s business deals. Harris, similarly, keeps out of question range. ABC\u2019s Jonathan Karl notes<\/a> that she\u2019s taken more questions from the cast of \u201cThe Avengers\u201d than from the travel<\/a>ing press.<\/p>\n

Obviously, the Biden-Harris ticket is deflecting attention from the radical policies that Biden has endorsed \u2014 and that almost everyone in the press corps favors. After 40 years of opposing government-paid abortions, he now backs them. He\u2019s likely to use regulations to reduce fracking, which has reduced gas prices and carbon emissions. His tax increases threaten to stymie economic recovery.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s one problem with this strategy: If something does rock the boat, it could tip it over. A sudden brain freeze or an unanticipated negative story could capsize the campaign. Efforts to help the Biden campaign, such as Twitter\u2019s and Facebook<\/a>\u2019s attempts to conceal the New York Post\u2019s Hunter Biden story, could boomerang and catch voters\u2019 attention.<\/p>\n

The Biden campaign is aware of the risks. It quickly rejected the Trump campaign\u2019s proposal to reschedule the canceled Oct. 15 debate to Oct. 29.<\/p>\n

The fact is that both these septuagenarian candidates are capable of political self-harm.<\/p>\n

They have been willing to share their vagrant and passing thoughts on matters momentous and trivial at great, and sometimes embarrassing, length. The question now is whether Trump can repress that impulse or provoke Biden to indulge it.\n <\/p><\/div>\n