Don’t Bet the Ranch
According to Forbes Magazine, Sports bookies think Donald Trump is a shoe-in to win. In a listing of the “odds” on the website Sports Betting, betting a $1 on Trump would earn you back only $1.11. The next best bet is on Harris, with $1 returning $2.75.
It’s not so hard to imagine that sports betters are willing to get into this “horse race.” These days with legal online betting, you can put a wager down on almost anything. Even such a “blue-blood” sport as women’s tennis has a betting line, and the recent upsets by a teenager at Wimbleton have “shaken the betting world.”
I’m not a gambler, but I do know that successful gamblers use past performance to predict future outcomes. It makes sense that an incumbent President, with good economic numbers, and a clearly dedicated core of support, would be the “odds-on” favorite to win the White House.
History Doesn’t Lie
History seems to make Trump that good bet.
Bill Clinton won re-election in what seems like similar circumstances. He won his first Presidential election with less than a majority, only gaining 43% of the popular vote in 1992 (Note: this was a three-way election, Bush had 38%, and Ross Perot 19%.) He lost control of the House of Representatives in 1994, and was investigated by Independent Counsel Ken Starr during the 1996 election.
But the economy improved in his first term, and the 1996 Republican nominee Bob Dole came from the conservative side of the Republican Party. In the primaries, he went even farther to the right to offset his strongest opponent, Pat Buchanan. Clinton himself was from the middle of the political spectrum. More liberal Democrats (like me) saw him as “Republican-Lite.” Clinton won in 1996 with 49% to Dole’s 41%.
George W Bush also won under similar circumstances. He defeated Al Gore, literally by “a hanging chad” in the election of 2000, losing the popular vote but eking out an Electoral College victory. And while the Democratic candidate in 2004, John Kerry, seemed to have a solid chance, Bush was able to ride his strong performance during 9-11 to a second term.
He Fits the Bill
So what’s different with the Trump 2020 candidacy? He too had a minority of the popular vote in 2016. He also has improving economic numbers, with the job market growing and the stock market setting record after record. And the loyalty of his base is undeniable. Even a President who talks about the Continental Army capturing airports during the Revolutionary War doesn’t seem to shake their confidence in him.
Trump lost the House of Representatives in 2018 to the Democrats, and is under something like twenty different investigations, from his personal finances to cooperating with the Russians to win in 2016. And the Democrats are likely to nominate a “liberal” opponent. Even if a more moderate candidate like Joe Biden wins, he will be forced to move to the Left in the primaries.
The Gambler’s Choice
If you are a cold, dispassionate gambler, you probably don’t put money on the 2020 general election at all. There’s no profit to be made on betting on Trump, and the odds, and history, are against anyone else.
But, my non-Trumpian friends, don’t tear up your tickets yet.
Like Trump or not, we know one thing more than anything: he has upended political tradition, changed the way politics works, and has made “unconventional” and “unprecedented” the norm. That’s one of the things that makes “the Resistance” crazy; Trump does things that would have destroyed the Presidency of anyone else, from Obama to Reagan. It doesn’t seem to matter, he blindly plows on ahead with his 40% cheering him on.
The saysing goes, “there’s is no such thing as a little bit pregnant.” If you are “unprecedented” then the precedents of the past shouldn’t apply. If you break the “norms” then you can’t expect the norms of the past to count. The inertia of past performance, of history, won’t apply as strongly to a President who is rejecting history left and right.
Look inside the numbers: the employment numbers are good, but wage growth is stagnant. That means people are finding work, but the work doesn’t pay the bills. No wonder employment is up, people need to hold down two jobs to make it.
The stock market is booming, in large part because of the Trump Tax Cut. It gave billions of dollars (actually over a trillion) mostly to business. And the businesses did what you’d expect: they turned a bigger profit thus pushing the Market even higher. Those cuts don’t seem to have translated into stronger American industry, and the average voter isn’t feeling “good” about their personal finances.
How Do They Feel
Trump won the Electoral College through a very slim margin in three states, 77744 votes out of 120 million plus to be exact (here’s the Trump World essay on that.) The best analysis is that those voters got exactly what they wanted, an “unprecedented” President who didn’t believe in “norms.”
The question anyone betting now has to ask, is this: now that those voters got what they wanted, are they happier for it? If the answer is yes, then Trump really might be the safe bet. But, if the answer is determined by the unimproved economic quality of their lives, then it’s likely they will act in an unprecedented manner, and do what angry voters often do: throw the bum out.
