The ‘October surprise’ could turn the tide of the US elections

James Carafano, vice president of the Heritage Foundation’s Kathryn and Shelby Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, commented that the “October surprise” has the potential to make a major difference in the battlefield states where he won the results of the US presidential elections.

“Historical reality shows that voters are more often affected by things that happen just before elections than by events that happened a long time ago,” he said.

Timing decides everything, Carafano said, taking the example of the defeat of George HW Bush (Bush) in 1992. Bush’s election continues to lose in the election, despite his excellent performance in successfully combining a military alliance to avoid Iraq invaded Kuwait.

“At the time of the elections, the voters do not care who won the war in the Gulf, they just focus on what is happening right now,” Carafano said.

Former Trump administration officials say the US president is looking for his own “October surprise” for his re-election.

Former US national security adviser John Bolton, in a memoir published in late June, revealed that a nuclear deal with North Korea could be the “October surprise” to which President Trump aspires.

With Covid-19 sweeping the world, shaking the United States, the prospect of the Trump administration making a major vaccine announcement could be another “October surprise.”

There are also “surprises” that give Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s campaign an edge. One of them is the possibility that Trump lost in a legal battle with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which forced him to file tax returns for eight years before November.

Trump was also hit by a number of controversial issues in September, including an Atlantic magazine article citing anonymous sources accusing him of disparaging American soldiers who died by calling them “losers.” The “The White House tried to protect Trump, claiming that the above information was completely” false “and that the President always gave the highest respect to American soldiers and veterans.

On September 15, journalist Bob Woodward published a book based on interviews with Trump, which contained shocking information that showed Trump deliberately minimizing the severity of the outbreak. Covid-19 in February.

The two previous revelations could be counted as “early October surprises,” said John Hudak, an expert in management research at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

“If these allegations are released in late October as what Clinton found in 2016, they will make President Trump very difficult to beat,” he said, adding the danger of “October surprise.” “It is that it damages the presidential candidate too late and does not have enough time to fix it before the voters go to vote.

Another “early October surprise” adding to the chaos in American politics is the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on September 18.

The empty seat he leaves on the Supreme Court gives Trump the opportunity to nominate a conservative and Republican-oriented judge to the most powerful body in the US judicial system.

Democrats, including former President Barack Obama, have asked to postpone the nomination for Judge Ginsburg’s nomination until after the election, while Trump and the Republican-controlled Senate insist they have the right to nominate. appoint and appoint new judges.

“I think the future has yet to be decided and anyone who tells you they know what will happen is a lie,” said Chris Hayes, host of MSNBC. “We are in a completely unknown field.”

Marco Carnelos, a former Italian ambassador to Iraq, now a political consultant in Rome, said the importance of the “October surprise” should not be underestimated, as President Trump is closing the gap with his party rival. Democracy in many opinion polls.

The United States is the country that reports the most infections and deaths from Covid-19 in the world. The election campaign of both Democrats and Republicans said that the opponent would take advantage of the pandemic to “play dirty.”

Republicans outraged Democrats by trying to block the budget of the United States Postal Service to reduce the number of people who voted by mail. History shows that voters who vote by mail tend to favor Democrats.

Trump has raised suspicions of cheating in the vote-by-mail, but did not provide any proof. In August, he announced that “voting by mail will ruin the elections.”

That same August, Hillary Clinton told MSNBC that Joe Biden “should not budge under any circumstances” because he thought Trump’s election campaign was more likely to disrupt the vote.

Another candidate that could become an “October surprise” is the China issue.

Carnelos says creating a “military incident” with China where the United States wins will be “a good card” for Republicans. “A little confrontation at sea, an incident between a two-way fighter or anything that might affect the sentiment of American voters makes them think that America’s problem is China,” he said. to know.

But according to Gary Sick, a member of the White House National Security Council under three former US presidents, President Trump risks a “bad counterattack” if he deliberately creates a military conflict with China. for the sake of winning votes.

“There is no guarantee that the American public, who are really war-weary, will react positively to the threat of a military confrontation originated by Trump,” he said.

Sick argues that US campaign managers have become “too obsessed” with the possibility that the opponent will launch an “October surprise” designed to change the election results.

“An October surprise is often more important for the election campaign than it is for the election,” he said, adding that such events often make more sense in close contests with voters. Great decision yet.

According to Sick, if the Trump campaign is to surprise October, then this “surprise” is more likely to involve internal problems than on the foreign policy front, in the context of the US economy it was in decline due to Covid- 19 and the country was in crisis due to protests against racism.

“These are the issues that are occupying the minds of all American voters,” he said.