What or Who Decides This Election?
By Victor Davis Hanson
August 4, 2020 6:30 AM
COVID progress, riot fatigue, Durham indictments, Biden’s brain . . . By November, several factors may be trending in Trump’s favor — if he lets them.
NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE W e know where to watch in the next few weeks but have no real idea what we will be watching. Yet pundits, the media, and the Left seem giddy that their polls show a Trump slump, as if they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing from 2016. But in truth, the news cycle over the next three months may well favor Trump — a scenario his opponents no doubt deem preposterous in these dog days of August.
1. The virus. The coronavirus is like an out-of-control grass fire. It dies down only to flare up without much predictability — making fools of yesterday’s experts, proving them yet again today’s geniuses, only to render them idiots tomorrow.
Trump’s polls climbed in May when it looked as if the vicious virus was waning. But after the public relaxed its guard, or protesters gathered for much of June in massive demonstrations that were politically correct mockeries of social distancing, masks, and disinfects, or the virus got its natural second wind, it caught fire again — and abroad as well.
If by October remedies have improved, vaccinations are in final trials, care has been honed to reduce the death rate, then the president will be rewarded for getting the nation through the disaster. If it spikes yet again or mutates into a more lethal strain, or if the lethality rate soars in October, then he will be blamed at the polls. In some sense, the virus’s course is beyond human control; the key, however, is how the president reacts to its metamorphoses. If well, Biden’s ankle-biting will seem shrill; if not so well, Biden’s generalities and his reverse copycatting the president’s directives and coronavirus policies will seem sober and judicious.
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/2020-election-what-or-who-decides-outcome/
