Joe Hildebrand: Why Donald Trump Could Still Win the US Presidential Election

COMMENTARY:

In politics there is a big difference between what you want to happen and what will happen. This is obvious to anyone with half a brain, but in the world of political discourse that requirement is not a threshold of entry.

So there is a remarkable amount of comment from both experts and gamblers that Trump cannot win the US election, when in reality what they mean is that they really do not want him to.

Given that it is precisely this kind of complacency that led him to victory last time, it is hard to see what precisely these commentators hope to achieve, but of course this is precisely the point. The commentary, like the activism surrounding it, does not contemplate what is effective, it simply seeks to communicate more and more stridently what activists and commentators want.

And, as usual, it cuts both ways.

I wrote last week that Joe Biden’s path to victory would not come from the endorsement of previous presidents, nor from the star power that sparked the fire of Kamala Harris, but from the traditional voters of the working class in Central America who changed. dramatically from Obama to Trump in 2016. and who, despite their historic role in the election of America’s first black president, were ridiculed as ignorant racists as a result.

I expected a backlash from mainstream identity ideologues, but it was hardly a ripple. Instead, the tsunami of objections came from pro-Trumpers who, overwhelmingly politely, assured me that Donald would win in a landslide that would put 2016 in the dust.

Illusive thoughts? Absolutely. You are wrong? Not necessarily.

I made another prediction last week on the US election podcast Called, perhaps appropriately, I’m usually more professional.

This time I declared that Trump’s path to the White House would be based on progressive middle-class women. I imitated a dramatic advertisement in which a woman sits alone in her home when a shadow intruder assaults her. Terrified, she calls 911, but no one answers: Democrats have taken funding from the police!

It turned out that this prediction quickly embarrassed me, not because it was ridiculously exaggerated, but because the Trump campaign was already running the exact same ad.

This brings us to another golden rule of politics: There is a difference between what people say and what they do.

Again, this should be self-evident, but is constantly being forgotten. This is the massive disconnect between the poll results on everything from Trump to Brexit and the 2019 Australian elections and the real-world results that actually followed. Voters will tell people, even strangers on the other end of the phone line, that they support good ideas like Black Lives Matter or European integration or fairer taxes. But in the privacy of the polling place, alone with their fears, they tell a very different story.

An old friend who works for one of the best private survey companies in the world was shaking his head at this over steak and chips in the pub last week.

“Every time there is a shock result,” he sighed. “And every time people are still surprised.”

And so the vast majority of Americans, of course, will say that they support the Black Lives Matter movement, who could be against it? – while silently storing up your anxieties about the chaos and violence perpetuated in your name. No one knows how that anxiety is broken on Election Day, but only a fool would bet against the guy who promises to end it all.

A similar phenomenon may also be occurring in the crisis-ridden state of Victoria, where a recent poll found overwhelming support for the unprecedented shutdown measures required after the hotel quarantine outbreak.

Perhaps, given the absence of effective contact tracing capability, Victorians really accept the inevitability of their fate. Perhaps many still have faith in the judgment of their leader. Or maybe they just know that voicing any opposition to any supposedly life-saving measure, no matter how draconian, is inviting condemnation.

“Yes, of course,” they will stoically tell anyone who asks, “We all have to do whatever it takes!” Only with a silent pencil will they decide if what has been asked is too much.

Once again, extreme public pressure is applied to political debate and nervous or cautiously insecure dissidents keep quiet and retreat into the shadows.

I suspect that the turning point of these elections in the United States was when enraged protesters surrounded a woman sitting outside a restaurant in Washington DC and demanded that she raise her arm to show that she was with them. She rejected it.

We do not know the politics of that woman, we only know that she was sitting in one of the most diverse and gentrified neighborhoods of the capital, being criticized for being racist. He would fire up a thousand national polls to find out how he plans to vote on November 3.

And so we have a political culture full of foam and bubbles on the surface and a deep subterranean well that swells below which few political elites seem to be able to guess. The left is obsessed with scolding the masses for not thinking like they are supposed to, while the right is content to fan their fears.

If either party genuinely listened to ordinary people instead of dictating to them, it would rule for a thousand years. But the major parties in both the United States and Australia are still tethered to vocal activists on their margins and their talking points are shots fired at activists on the other side.

Meanwhile, the great sea in the middle rages. And rest assured that she is a cruel mistress.