To Win Elections, You Have To Be Positive

The interaction between a voter and a candidate, such as Trump, is described by a Guardian journalist as a bond. One such voter had a bond with Obama as well, but to her mind, he did not deliver the change for blacks that he promised.

 I won't post pictures of cheering Trump voters, you know what they look like. They all have that bond, and they bond to each other as well. But they would not be there at those airports cheering if there was not hope. They have a chance, now still quite real. I won't get into the technicalities of vote counting and the legal angles. 

You have to keep an overall positive attitude, even as you say rude things and even lies about your opponent. You are going to give them jobs, whereas your opponent is merely going to raise minimum wage and maybe give the people some handouts.

Trump has been making all kinds of threats about disappearing suburbs, crumbling Democrat cities and so on. It goes on forever. He'll also give you shower heads with plenty of water and toilets that flush your poop in one flush.

The attack ads against Trump, cleverly, come from Republicans, the Lincoln project. Attack ads spoken by the actual opponent generally do not work.

Trump has a problem. We have a Pandemic, and he did nothing much in the first months, when federal rules could have accomplished a lot. We never had proper quarantine for air travel arrivals from China and Europe. All American citizens were brought home and "quarantine if you can."

But here we are in October and Trump is packing rallies with mostly unmasked fans. Is it dangerous? Ask Herman Cain. He died after attending a rally in spring. But those times are forgotten. And we have no contact tracing. The pandemic is still going to be with us for a year or so. Trump has tried to downplay it. He can only ignore it. The only positive we remember now is that Trump was positive for the virus. Biden was "hiding in his basement," as they say. Or at least wearing a mask.

The Trump voter is likely to survive, and not be aware of anyone getting sick at the rally. Voters vote by gut feel. There is no logic applied to any of this by the Trump 40% base. They do not feel Biden could ever represent them, so the fans will stay with Trump till election at least, or till they die of COVID. But they will feel positive about Trump to the end.

The Democrat voter may be quite similar in ignoring Trump, but more aware of COVID risks. There is a lot of appeal to basic values. Trump is dividing the country by various means, but mainly by gathering all the white voters he can. The remainder, whites, liberals, foreigners, minorities are going to vote Biden. There is no new issue that could change the election at this point.

Biden can give us some feel good about even the Pandemic. He is going to fix healthcare. Having had COVID, you already have a pre-existing condition. No Trump plan is going to cover you. Even  a possible vaccine will cost something. More likely Biden will give it to you free or at low cost. Other issues that Biden talks about are equality and democracy. We are inclusive. It's a positive feel for most of us. If Biden wins, we were proven correct in our inclusiveness.

Jobs are a little trickier, and it will take a decade to convince more people to take jobs that appear form green power initiatives and even services related to that. When your Tesla dies on the road, you will need different road service. Putting up wind turbines actually is not that different from laying oil pipe line, or worse yet, tar sands pipeline. Those pipelines bring no jobs to your state, other than the occasional clean up when the pipe bursts. Wind power gives some jobs right in the area for maintenance. 

On the whole, the jobs that will recover fastest are the service jobs as we get over the pandemic.

One last thing about these voters that "bond" to candidates and vote on gut feel mostly. Their world view, whether Democrat or Republican or other, seems to consist of being optimistic about pretty much everything. They cannot have anything negative in their life. Thus there is a tendency to deny things that are obviously going the wrong way. Like climate change. They do not need to worry about these things because God will take care of it.

The simple folk gathering at the last week of campaigning are really caught up on this feeling that Trump will make things better for them, that the pandemic is over and that we don't need to do anything, in fact we should not do anything about the pandemic. The economy has to recover for them to feel better. And the only way it can recover is basically to ignore all problems (or label them long term) and recover quickly. 

I don't think we will be going to football games, concerts and all the rest anytime soon. It is quite amazing that we let these rallies go on, as they can only spread the virus. But the rallies will be over soon.

Trump will want to do rallies after he loses as well, all the way to January. He will start campaigning for the 2024 election. But he will have lost the momentum. People will realize very soon that we have to go with whatever leader we have.