Trump campaign

The political and emotional climax of US presidential elections comes when the losing candidate, accompanied by a teary spouse, tersely but gamely concedes defeat and wishes the victor well. With anxiety, I worry what might happen if this little-noted but critical ritual fails to take place in 2020. No law requires a concession speech, no agreement demands it; but this informal ceremony has an essential role in confirming the paramount rule of democracy, that the losing candidates has heard and accepted the voters’ verdict. After a hard-fought, even vicious, campaign, the vanquished assures the victor he accepts the results, permitting the country to move forward.

At its narrowest point, the Florida Straits is only 93 miles wide. You could swim it, if you were exceptionally motivated and athletic. I remember the first time I landed at Miami airport. I was struck by the amount of Spanish being spoken, and the signs advertising Cuban coffee. I immediately understood the dynamic that led to southern Florida jokingly being dubbed ‘Northern Cuba’.As one of the earliest states to announce its results, Florida crushed Biden supporters’ hopes for a landslide early in the night. Trump’s victory has been attributed to the Cuban vote. Comedian Jaboukie Young-White tweeted ‘the kkkubans came out in full force’ after Trump’s victory in Florida was announced.

What pleasure the networks must have taken when they cut off President Trump in mid-rant. For nearly five years, he has compelled them to broadcast his barrages of bluster. Now, as Biden staggers towards 270 — Electoral College votes, that is, not years of age ­— with the grace and speed of a laminated sloth, Trump’s enemies — and competitors, for that is what he reduced the media to — dare to approach the tottering colossus.Anderson Cooper spontaneously imagines Trump splayed on his back, legs in the air like an ‘obese turtle...flailing in the sun’. Somewhere above, an eagle prepares to dive down, pierce the soft flesh and draw out the orange innards.

As I write this, the outcome of the US presidential election remains undecided. To judge by media reports, it may take days to determine who the winner is. A few quick observations: The pollsters got it wrong again. Forty-eight hours ago, the chatter was all about a Democratic landslide. Observers were confidently speculating about who would land the top jobs in a Biden administration. I don’t pretend to understand the science of polling. But I know a bankrupt enterprise when I see one. Many observers worried about a close election with no clear outcome leading to a constitutional crisis of some sort. The wilder and more irresponsible speculation imagined US troops being summoned to intervene and sort matters out. It grieves me to say that such scenarios remain possible.

I don’t believe in astrology, but, if I did, I’d have to say the stars are aligning for Donald Trump in the last 10 days of this tumultuous election. Beginning with the second presidential debate where Trump finally displayed presidential behavior and Joe Biden expressly proclaimed his goal to transition away from oil (i.e., kill it), virtually every unfolding event has aided Trump’s cause for reelection. Though he still might not win, the momentum is clearly behind Trump as Election Day nears.First, Biden’s comment on energy at the last debate certainly hurt him with energy industry workers and their families in western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, Texas, New Mexico and Colorado.

Lititz, PennsylvaniaMy family considers it a bit unfair that I’m the one who got to go to the Trump rally in Lancaster, Pennsylvania on Monday, given that I like him least of all of us and I don’t usually write about politics. But I live nearby and am unscrupulous about knocking off my day job, so The Spectator got me a press pass. By noon on Monday I was safely installed in a socially-distanced airplane hangar, bopping along with Elton John, waiting with everyone else for the President to arrive and wondering what he might say to my deeply-divided homeland. Of course he opens with a shout-out to the Amish. Look, I understand that most people know exactly one thing about Lancaster County, but can’t we leave the Amish out of this one?

Freddy Gray is optimistic about President Trump’s political prospects. The polls showing that Trump is headed for the ropes are merely ‘clever mathematical models’. Trump, we are assured, is a protean figure, a ‘great finisher’ who can win a second term and show all those lily-livered pundits what kind of a man it really takes to win a second term in the White House.Don’t believe a word of it. Trump isn’t about to resurrect his campaign. Instead, it’s headed for calamity.One reason is the palpable incompetence of Trump and his Stosstruppen. When the campaign began, Trump and his advisers were bragging about Death Stars. Now their campaign has proven to be ill-starred.

It’s hard not to be impressed by Donald J. Trump’s sheer tenacity, especially when you consider he just had COVID. The President just gave a very long and energetic speech at a rally in New Hampshire, and now he’s off again on to another event in Maine. ‘I’m doing three or four of these suckers a day,’ he says. ‘That’s not bad.’ He’s drastically down in the polls. All those clever mathematical models suggest he has about a 10 percent chance of winning. Yet he’s a fanatically competitive man, an extraordinary campaigner, and a political force that nobody quite understands. He is also a great finisher.

Election polling has been largely consistent since the pandemic hit the US: Joe Biden is the heavy favorite. But one historically accurate pollster is sticking to his own data, which shows a closer race than expected.Raghavan Mayur is the president and founder of TechnoMetrica, which runs the IBD/TIPP poll. His polling predicted the winner of the past four presidential elections. IBD/TIPP was one of only two polls in 2016 that had Donald Trump beating Hillary Clinton. Mayur has received widespread praise for his accuracy, yet he still largely remains an outlier in 2020 polling.‘I’m a small business guy — I don’t have the time to go around looking at what other people do,’ he told The Spectator. ‘I do what we do. And it has turned out to be pretty good.

8:30 p.m. ET — Matt McDonald: Hello and welcome to The Spectator’s live blog for the second and final debate between President Donald Trump and former vice president Joe Biden. Tonight's proceedings kick off in 30 minutes at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. Hopefully we can offer a better quality of debate… 8:31 p.m. ET — Amber Athey: I just took an hour-long boomer nap to really simulate the experience of Biden and Trump preparing for the debate stage. Feeling very refreshed and ready to call anything I disagree with Russian disinformation. 8:32 p.m. ET — Chadwick Moore: I'm wondering if Trump goes in attack-dog style again it will be more effective this time, given the scandals.

White House coronavirus task force member Dr Scott Atlas said during a Tuesday interview with The Spectator there was 'no fair basis' for canceling this week's presidential debate between President Trump and Joe Biden following the President's coronavirus diagnosis. 'The debate absolutely should have been able to continue. Honestly, I think there is no fair basis for canceling that debate — none,' Atlas said. Trump and Biden were scheduled to meet for the second time on the debate stage on Thursday in a town-hall style event moderated by Steve Scully. The Commission on Presidential Debates announced last week, without agreement between the two campaigns, that the debate would be conducted virtually due to health concerns raised by the President contracting the virus.

The vice presidential debate was a predictable clash between two solid professionals, each with plenty of debate experience. Both said what they came to say, and not one jot more. Both evaded several hard questions, such as how they would handle changes in abortion laws, if the Supreme Court rules force some changes. 'I'm glad you asked about baseball, Susan, because the American people love sports. And the sport they really love is football. That's what's on their mind now.' That's how they answered questions. If they had a prepared answer about football, that's the answer they gave. That meant Pence never explained how a second Trump term would handle pre-existing medical conditions and Harris never renounced a court-packing scheme.

Too many pundits are ready to call the 2020 presidential race with a month to go. Four weeks is a lifetime in politics, especially in the age of technology where news travels faster than the facts. With both candidates in their seventies, health issues are always going to cause things to shift quickly. A couple of weeks ago, Joe Biden offered further evidence that all is not well upstairs when he claimed that ‘it’s estimated 200 million people have died of COVID’.Sure, the debate last week appeared to be a debacle for Donald Trump who then ended the week by coming down with COVID — though Hispanic Telemundo viewers thought Trump won the debate soundly.