According to conservative columnist Matt Lewis, Donald Trump will likely be ousted in November due to devastating unemployment numbers that will still not have rebounded due to the coronavirus pandemic that was botched by his administration.
In his column for the Daily Beast, Lewis -- who abandoned the Republican Party due to its embrace of Trump -- pointed to the historical record of what has befallen the previous presidents in times of high unemployment.
"Donald Trump’s latest campaign ad is about the 'Great American Comeback.' That aspirational slogan tells you all you need to know about how desperate he is to move past these last few months. A low unemployment rate was the best thing Trump had going for him, heading into his 2020 re-election campaign," he wrote. "And then, he watched it vanish. To paraphrase Bruce Springsteen, these jobs are going, boys, and they ain’t comin’ back—at least not in time to help his re-election chances."
Pointing out that the president tried to put on a happy face that unemployment had dropped according to the latest job numbers, Lewis also noted that there was a "miscalculation" before the numbers were released and unemployment is still at 16.3 percent—"which is horrible, but better than predicted."
"This is political death," he wrote. " Incumbent presidents like Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H. W. Bush all lost re-election while presiding over high levels of unemployment over 7 percent. The exceptions were Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan, both of whom ran for re-election as the rate was declining from previously higher numbers. Obama presided over the highest unemployment rates in decades during his first term and won re-election with the rate at 7.7 percent; Reagan won a landslide in 1984 with a 7.4 percent."
As Lewis notes, time -- with an election looming in November -- is not on Trump's side for one big reason.
"It gets worse for Trump," he suggested. "He doesn’t really have four-and-a-half months to turn things around. Around half of the U.S. will be able to vote as early as September. Even before COVID-19, around 40 percent of votes cast were done so before election day. And even if you assume most of the people who vote early or absentee will wait until October, that means he’s running out of precious time."
"In the meantime, Trump’s best move is to brag about the stock market and suggest that he personally “built the greatest economy in the world” and that he can do so again. Like the girl who got away, he is going to use every tool at his disposal to win her back in time for the prom," he wrote. " And if that doesn’t work, he’ll still tell all his friends he’s “killing it” on the economy."
"In a sense, this is already working. Although he’s being trounced by 14 points (!) in one recent poll, Trump retains a 5-point advantage over Joe Biden when it comes to his handling of the economy," Lewis continued. "That’s an amazing statistic considering our economic state, but it also raises what might be the scariest conclusion for Trump: He may be in such bad trouble that a miraculous economic recovery won’t even save him. This could be the first time in Trump’s life where he can’t buy or spend his way out of trouble."
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