In a dialogue between liberal New York Times columnist Gail Collins and Bret Stephens, who is a conservative, the two agreed that Donald Trump's re-election prospects seem to be slipping away as the coronavirus wracks the country and the economy continues a downward spiral.
Noting recent developments within the Trump administration, Stephens said that his belief that the president might pull off hanging onto the Oval Office is dissipating the longer the president bungles the pandemic which could cause an already bad economy to contract even more.
Noting he is not a Trump fan, he wrote, "The only spot of brightness here is that I’m becoming somewhat less confident about my prediction that Donald Trump is going to win re-election."
Egged on by Collins who wrote, "Well, that’s certainly a nice thought for us to begin with. But any new particular reason?" Stephens continued, "He’s going into the race with some enormous advantages: money, social media and the usual perquisites of incumbency. The betting odds are still in his favor. And Rasmussen has Trump’s favorable/unfavorable ratings evenly matched, at 49 percent."
However...
"But things are very different now than they were even a month ago," he cautioned. "Trump managed to screw up this crisis in at least six catastrophic ways. He failed to take the Covid threat seriously. He presided over a fumbling bureaucratic response. He embarrassed himself in his press conferences. He tried to throw money at the problem without effectively administering the funds. He demonstrated near-zero empathy with the victims of the disease or their families. And he never really articulated a sensible alternative to the lockdown strategy."
According to the columnist, the president is trailing presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in the key battleground states of Pennsylvania and North Carolina, and that Trump may be in trouble in normally reliable Texas. Of note, he added, was Trump's loss of support among the elderly.
"That’s not a demographic he can afford to lose, given that I don’t exactly predict a tidal wave of support among younger voters entering the worst job market in recorded history," Stephens wrote before adding, "For a long time, I thought all a Democratic nominee needed to beat Trump was run on the slogan, 'Make America Sane Again.' Maybe the new slogan needs to be 'Make America Make Again,' or 'MAMA.' The economic collapse we are witnessing now is absolutely terrifying. It’s going to hit nearly every family in the country, hard. And it’s a natural for a blue-collar candidate like Biden to make his own."
With Collins contributing, "I guess anything could happen, but I’m betting that we join hands, build a better future and quickly confine a Certain Person to the ash heap of history. Then you and I will have the leisure to really argue again," Stephens agreed, writing, "From your masked mouth to God’s ear."
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