Eye on Politics: The Alien Visitation

As a contrarian, I rarely look at the things other observers are obsessed with. (Oops, I left a dangling preposition, up with which I will not put!) For example, much of the conversation about politics—both on the Hoax News media, but even in some conservative circles—is polling. Yesterday, Rush Limbaugh, who is nearly impervious to the tendency to address polls—did so by saying that the China Virus and the lock-downs/stilted economy are issues President Trump is stuck with and will have to overcome.

Far be it from me to disagree with El Rushbo, but I think both these issues have already been “baked in” to the political landscape, and neither in particular hurts Trump. Voters who can stand to listen to just two minutes’ worth of Joe Biden’s demented rambling know that neither he nor his socialist allies could even make a profit with the only hot dog stand at a pre-BLM Dallas Cowboys football game. Voters also know that it is blue state goblin governors who not only perpetuate the lockdowns but revel in them. (Yes, there are a couple of Republican governors, like Mike DeWine in Ohio and Doug Ducey in Arizona who similarly think they can save every single life by idiotic measures). For the most part, though, this is definitely a blue-vs-red issue and Trump is on the right side of it, having handed power to the governors.

When it comes to the rioting, again President Trump took the federalist approach, which simultaneously allows him to decry the situation while being absolved of any responsibility to fix it. And don’t kid yourself: until or unless both blue state governors and mayors request help, sending in federal troops is like “Black Hawk Down” with lack of logistics, communication, and intelligence hamstringing the mission. Personally, I don’t trust these officials to do the right thing even if they “invite” federal help.

So where does that leave us, aside from polls?

If you were those evil space aliens from “Independence Day” and came here in a scout ship you would have two different reports based on what you focused your intelligence on. If all you looked at were polls, you would assume Trump will probably lose, and depending on the polls in some cases big. You would assume that key red states such as Arizona and Florida are in play; that the rust belt trio that Trump took in 2016 are out of reach (Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan), and that it will be close in states such as Ohio. Course, this is why the evil aliens were so hard to beat—they didn’t look at goofball “evidence” like polls.

Just as a refresher, a poll is generated to achieve an end, namely please the customer. Any media polls, including Fox, are intended to achieve the outcome of making it look like Trump is in trouble. Yes, there are exceptions, but they are almost buried under a sea of bad polling for Trump. That’s because that’s what the pollsters’ customers want to see. Hence, D+7 samples, polls that (yes, it happened) ask for the “youngest voter in the home”; and most of all the “shy Trump” voter that even favorable polls admit they are missing.

But if you were that same space alien and looked at everything else objectively, what would you see?

• An unprecedented (since 1936) ground-shifting movement of blacks away from the Democrats. All might not be in Trump’s column, but merely by leaving the Democrats they will almost single-handedly shift the election to Trump. Right now, the same polls that have him losing have him getting 15-31% black approval. At just half that 31%, Trump would win. It must be recalled that in 2016 an additional 3% fewer blacks turned out to vote for Hillary Clinton. My guess is that number will be closer to 5% to even 8% on top of whatever vote Trump gets and whatever number Kanye West siphons off! In other words, the net actual black vote for Trump/against Biden will be in the neighborhood of 20% to as high as 25%. It simply is not possible for any modern Democrat to win nationally with that number.
• Our alien would see that college campuses are closed and/or drastically cut back in terms of in-person attendance. The impact of this is that millions of college students will not be present for leftist mobilizers and agitators to organize them on election day. This group reached an all-time high of 40% turnout in 2018 when the campus left was able to herd them to the polls in person (and use peer pressure) and get them to vote. Without that campus presence, the impact on the Democrats alone will be massive. I estimate it will be in the neighborhood of a -30% nationally, or roughly 1 to 1.5 million fewer votes from the 18-24 year-olds. However, this could be much higher (or, for Democrats, lower): just today yet another campus stopped in-person attendance at least temporarily, one of the SUNY schools. Already Harvard, Princeton, USC, Michigan State, Pomona, the entire University of California system, and the Cal State system are entirely on-line. UNC is moving that direction. For schools like Arizona State, which have their campus open, it is only at a much-reduced capacity. If our alien knows math, he would add the 2-3 million missing black voters to the 1 to 1.5 million missing students and conclude that Joe Biden has already lost the popular vote. And this is without a single Democrat-to-Republican flip.

• Joe Biden campaigns from his basement

  The alien might notice the shocking disparity in live events between President Trump and Biden—in the former case, thousands if not tens of thousands come out to see him. In the latter case, Biden speaks to an “audience” of 8-10 inside a church with more reporters and Secret Service present than audience.

• An alien might also notice the sheer panic among Democrat talking heads to shut down coverage of riots, or to “get out the vote,” or to have vote by mail. These, our alien would conclude, were the actions of losers, not a campaign up 10 or 15 points.

In short, which story would the alien report back to Spoogan? We’ll see.

Larry Schweikart is the co-author with Michael Allen of the New York Times #1 bestseller, A Patriot’s History of the United States, author of Reagan: The American President, and founder of Wild World of History, a history curriculum website featuring full US and World History curricula for grades 9-12 including teacher guides, student workbooks, maps/graphs, tests and instructional videos.