It's worth keeping issue salience in mind as we mull the deterioration in the president's standing, as well as his prospects for a comeback— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) June 11, 2020
It's a long thread with a breakdown of all the ways to "read" this race right now, which I think misses the tidal wave which has already washed across America.
Not really surprising; we usually miss the tidal changes in history/politics until long after the fact. FDR didn't really change America with his first election, or even by beating back the Supreme Court and getting his New Deal legislation implemented. The change was there, but who knew? Social Security was a sea change in America, but only after it became a fact of American life, and that was long after FDR was gone. Likewise LBJ instituted massive change in civil rights (though the Roberts court gutted the most important part of it, legislation implementing the language of the 15th Amendment), education, health insurance (does anybody still realize he passed Medicare into law?), etc. Medicare was the second sea change in America, but how long did it take until we were telling government to "keep your hands off my Medicare!"? We are still reckoning with what LBJ wrought, and we still tend to see it in terms of the "backlash" election of Nixon, rather than in what it meant for the country 60 years on.
Besides, the status quo is safe, and who is to say what "revolution" will bring? Dr. King changed a lot of things, but not everything, and we still debate whether he was a revolutionary, or a plaster saint. The death of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and so many others, won't change everything Dr. King didn't change. But a massive shift has still happened, and the analysis of Nate Cohn is still the "safe" option, because it assumes all the old rules still apply.
Worse, it assumes Trump won in 2016 because of his campaign and his promises. Trump won because Hillary lost. She was never a good politician, and Barack Obama was, which is why he defeated her the first time, coming from being an unknown black man with only a short part of a first Senate term under his belt, to be the first black President to serve, and then serve two terms. Trump defeated Hillary, he didn't win on his own merits. Under ordinary circumstances I wouldn't give Trump any chance of beating a seasoned politician like Biden. Under these circumstances?
Trump is toast. Already. Take him off the fire, he's done.
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