Trump's Reelection

I'll respond now to Pro's case.I. Umm...it's the Economy, Stupid...I guess?A. Overshadowing the Economy (or, Gaffes Galore)Pro hangs much of his argumentative hat on the notion that Trump's achievements in office (foremost among these being economic growth) are somehow going to get him reelected. Notwithstanding his other so-called accomplishments, it's interesting to note that his approval ratings have been low despite improving consumer confidence in the economy. This is likely attributable to Trump's own inability to distract from good news stories for his administration with a bumbling cacophony of gaffes and what often amounts to governmental hooliganism. A few days ago, I remember watching CNN coverage where Trump's economic numbers got a 2 minute long highlight. Pretty good, right? Except, it doesn't seem so good when I mention that this 2 minute segment was a brief reprieve amidst hours of wall-to-wall coverage of his "sh*thole countries" remarks. The reality is that the news is regularly blanketed in stories which undermine public confidence in Trump's temperament, aptitude, and fitness for office. These stories obscure, through the sheer disparity in coverage time, any stories which might restore the public's faith in Trump's ability to lead.It is indeed fascinating, as I said, that Trump's approval numbers remain low even as the economy is doing well. Pro seems to assume that this pattern is bound to change, but is it really? If it was going to change, why hasn't it already? Unless Pro can prove that Trump's behavior is going to radically shift in such a way that he is no longer engaging in political self-harm, then why should we believe that the status quo is not going to continue?B. Other "Accomplishments" As for Trump's other accomplishments, few outside his base will care about his court appointees, and his base will make up only about a quarter of the electorate in 2020. Getting conservative or liberal judges is something that partisans primarily care about, because it impacts their ability to produce outcomes within the judicial system that reflect their ideological biases. Moderates probably only care about whether these nominees are qualified, because they are less invested in ideological partisanship. That, however, matters, because it's not altogether clear if Trump's nominees are qualified. More of Trump's nominees for judicial postings have been rated not qualified by the American Bar Association than those of any prior administration. [1] You only need to watch the highly embarrassing testimony (please do, so much schadenfreude going on) given by one of Trump's nominees to get a feel for why the ABA reached the conclusions I did. [See Video]ISIS was going to be defeated no matter who the President was, and it's not clear how much of that is attributable to Trump himself. A democratic nominee will likely make that argument to the public in 2020. And, for every accomplishment Trump can tout, the Democrats can comeback with 2 gaffes and a failure. If Trump says, "Defeated ISIS," Dems respond, "'sh*thold countries and the FISA tweet and botching the Puerto Rico recovery." Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!II. Polling ReliabilityWoohoo! Let's get wonkish, shall we?!A. Aggregates are AggreGreat!Any individual poll is not likely to be particularly accurate unto itself--they tend to ballpark--which is why it is better to look at polling aggregates (i.e. averages of numerous polls) for more precise information One reason for this is that it reduces the potential for sampling error by including more individuals within the sample. [2] My data is all based on polling aggregates, not individual polls. Moreover, my source, 538, goes the extra step of adjusting for individual pollsters' house effects. A house effect reflects a regular lean in favor of one party by a particular pollster. Pollster A might, on average, overestimate a Democratic candidate's standing by 3 points; 538 adjusts for this bias to make for a more precise reading. [2] 538's predictions for the 2016 election were also more accurate than it's main rivals at the HuffPoll, RCP, and the Upshot...just sayin'. [3]B. Reality CheckFurthermore, no one can reasonably expect polls to be precisely accurate. If a poll said Jim will win the election with 51% of the vote to Ursula's 49%, we could hardly lambaste the poll if the result of the election were Ursula winning with 50.2% of the vote to Jim's 49.8%. Polls are there to give us an idea of where the race is act, not a prognostication of where the race will fall exactly. The poll in the Jim-Ursula example did a good job by getting within a point of the actual result. Therefore, when we retroactively asses the accuracy of the polls in 2016, we should not grade pollster through a pass-fail prism where they only pass if they were perfect. That would be literally absurd.In reality, the polls were not far off the result, and the Jim-Ursula occurrence closely resembles what happened with Clinton-Trump. According to 538, "The cacophony of headlines about how 'CLINTON LEADS IN POLL' neglected the fact that these leads were often quite small...[I]f Clinton had done only 2 percentage points better across the board, she would have received 307 electoral votes and the polls would have 'called' 49 of 50 states correctly...[T]he error in national polls wasn't any worse than usual." [3] To say the polls were only off by 2 points seems to say that the polls did a reasonably good job at giving us a sense of the race. 538, I think quite aptly, describes the post-election polling furor as a failure of conventional wisdom, rather than a failure in polling. Clinton only lost by a normal polling error; we just convinced ourselves that the race was a lot less close than it was, because who could honestly vote for Trump, right?So, I think we can dismiss the idea that "the polls" were wrong, even if individual polls might have been problematic. And, all Pro talks about are individual polls, and not all of them look far off. Clinton captured 48.2% of the popular vote to Trump's 46.1% [4]. All of the polls he cites seem to ballpark the actual results reasonably well. Intriguingly, his own source says: "Real Clear Politics shows Clinton to be two points ahead of Trump overall." [5] RCP is a polling aggregator, and it shows a far smaller lead than the individual polls themselves, and accurately predicted the eventual spread a day before the election. C. Future Match-UpsWhat is truly baffling, however, is that, after Pro's repeated insistence that polling is unreliable, Pro cites a poll (just one, not an aggregate) as evidence that Trump is likely to get reelected. Okay then, I have my own poll saying just the opposite: "In a hypothetical general election matchup, Winfrey leads Trump by a 7 points; Biden and Sanders lead Trump by 11 and 13 points, respectively." [6] Also, Pro's reason to believe his poll literally makes no sense; Pro is basically saying: "I believe Trump's base will help him win reelection, therefore, polls which confirm this belief must be good polls." Not only is that confirmation bias, it is the same kind of logic that lead us to incorrectly believe that Clinton was certain to win in 2016. If Pro actually intends to convince us to believe his poll, he should make methodological or empirical arguments.III. I Challenge Thee to a Duel (and Random Stuff)A. The Duel, Good SirPro says that the Democrats have no challenger. Okay, so what? Clinton had no clear challenger when the race was just gearing up. Remember when the pundits all thought Jeb Bush was going to be the nominee? Lol. But, seriously, just take a look at the poll I quoted. It names at least 2 very serious potential challengers to Trump, and there are others, namely, Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Corey Booker, Terry McCaullife, Caroline Kennedy, Adam Schiff, Jerry Brown, and Amy Klobuchar. I think I named 5...? Yup, I did. To say that the Democrats lack qualified, compelling candidates is false; we simply don't have a definitive frontrunner, just as the Republicans did last cycle. I think Sanders, Biden, Warren, or Brown could offer a particularly strong challenge to Trump going forward (they could appeal to the working class whites we lost last go-round), but any of the people I identified stand a good shot, given the other factors in play. Certainly, not one of them are as improbable a victor as Trump was last time.B. Odds and EndsPro also makes some odd, unclear, and unsupported assertion about a lack of strategy (which he then undermines by saying that the GOP is a mess too). It's not clear that the candidate needs one until he or she becomes a candidate...Right now, the Democratic party is focusing on rebuilding its grassroots efforts and retaking seats everywhere it can, which is exactly what it ought to be doing.And, on the last final, also random, note, Trump's North Korea policy is clearly not working. Moon is obviously going to pander to his biggest ally (and its narcissist of a leader). What's really telling is that Moon undercut Trump's policy of isolating North Korea by opening negotiations with Pyongyang over the Winter Olympics. Doesn't seem all that kumbaya to me. That and the fact that Russia is stepping in to replenish the North with what it's losing from cooling relations with Beijing. IV. Sources1 - https://tinyurl.com...2 - https://tinyurl.com...3 - https://tinyurl.com...4 - https://tinyurl.com...5 - https://tinyurl.com...6 - https://tinyurl.com...Thanks for reading. Please, Vote Con!http://www.youtube.com...