Everybody deals with stress in different ways.
Being a compulsive writer, now mostly in the form of my three blogs, I feel better when I get things off my mind and onto a computer screen, then into cyberspace.
So that's what I'm going to continue to do with my #1 stressor, President Biden's all-important campaign against Donald Trump for the presidency.
I can't do what I heard Michael Steele and Joy Reid pontificating about on MSNBC as I drove around this afternoon.
Steele was super annoying, and dead wrong, as he loudly proclaimed that the only people who want Biden to withdraw from the race in favor of Kamala Harris or some other Democrat are the "elites" -- elected officials, wealthy donors, and Hollywood types -- while ordinary Democrats are backing Biden.
Well, I beg to differ. I'm no elite. Neither is my wife. Nor are the 56% of Democrats nationally who want Biden to withdraw according to a Politico story about a new poll released yesterday.
Fifty-six percent of Democrats and 67 percent of all Americans believe Biden should withdraw “given his performance in the debate,” The Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll found, while new highs of 85 percent of Americans say Biden is too old for a second term and 60 percent say the same of Trump. Both men receive 46 percent support among all registered voters, nearly unchanged from the last edition of the poll in April.
I've been following the ups and (mostly) downs of Biden following his disastrous debate performance on June 27, just two weeks and a day ago, though it seems like a political eternity. I obsessively pour over the latest poll numbers and how analysts such as Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight, and the Economist are predicting the outcome of the presidential contest.
So here's another in my attempts to lower stress by writing about my anxieties, this time in the form of predictions about what will transpire with Biden between now and election day, November 5.
I'll be pleased if what I predict doesn't happen, because I want Trump to lose. Which is why I'm so stressed, because I don't see that happening.
(1) There will be more calls from elected officials and other "elites" for Biden to withdraw. He'll ignore them. Biden is stubborn. He seems to truly believe that he's the only Democrat who can beat Trump. Campaign rallies with adoring supporters will strengthen Biden's determination to stay in the race.
(2) Biden will continue to have senior moments, a charitable way of describing the evident decline in his mental capacity. But not so many of them, at least for a while, to make Biden decide that he's unelectable. So Biden will hang on through July, past the point of no return to choose a different candidate.
(3) The Republican Convention next week will cause Trump to gain a few more points in the polls, both nationally and in the battleground states, notably the Democratic must-win states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
(4) It's a distinct possibility that Trump will spring a surprise by choosing a vice-president candidate who isn't on the usual short list: Marco Rubio, J.D. Vance, Doug Burgum. He might pick a woman like Elise Stefanik to shore up his support among women. This would be bad for Biden, as Harris would be against a fellow female in a likely vice-presidential debate rather than a man.
(5) By all accounts Trump's campaign staff are experienced and competent. They've already taken steps to moderate his positions on controversial issues like abortion. Trump will act and speak even more like a Republican moderate as November approaches in a successful attempt to further peel away Biden's base of support.
(6) National polls will continue to show a fairly close race, albeit with Trump leading once the polls are aggregated. However, this will mask a large difference in enthusiasm between those backing Biden and Trump. Biden voters won't be nearly as inclined to donate to his campaign and volunteer for it as Trump voters will. After all, 56% of Democrats don't even want him in the race.
(7) If Trump has a comfortable lead in September, there's a good chance he will duck out of the second debate. This would deprive Biden of his best chance to reach a very large audience, 50 million or more, and show them that his first debate meltdown was an aberration.
(8) As much as the Biden campaign will try to make the race about Trump (danger to democracy! unhinged! trampler of reproductive freedom! etc.), the media will continue to largely focus over the next four months on Biden's mental status. Every misstatement, every inability to finish a sentence, will be discussed in depth as another indication that the first debate was a window into Biden's fragile state of mind.
(9) The Trump campaign will feature clips of Biden looking senile over and over and over. The campaign ads will almost write themselves. Biden saying "Vice-president Trump" yesterday when he meant to say "Vice-president Harris" will be what people remember of his NATO press conference, not his strong command of foreign policy.
(10) Those who continue to express doubts about Biden's ability to beat Trump will be attacked by the party faithful as traitors who are undermining Biden's ability to win. Eventually they, which includes me, will largely stay silent, choosing to let events do the talking, while hoping they are wrong.
(11) Up until the end, the Biden campaign will argue that the polls showing Trump comfortably ahead are wrong, just as they showed Clinton beating Trump in 2016.
(12) But on election night, November 5, the race will be called for Trump before midnight West Coast time. Depression will set in for Democrats. However, Biden will give a fairly upbeat concession speech, saying that because he did his best in an attempt to defeat Trump, he doesn't have any regrets about staying in the race.
(13) I'll do my best to avoid throwing up in disgust upon hearing those words. Then I'll go to bed and hope that either I never wake up, or find that all of this was just a bad dream and that I'm living in the Matrix, not really real reality.
Again, I'll be beyond joyful to refer to this post on election night as a massively inaccurate prediction, given that Biden pulled out a victory over Trump. I'd be ever so happy to be proven wrong.
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