Democrats Should Just Say It: Biden Is Probably About to Trounce Trump

This is from the New York Times today:

Whispering? Democrats ought to be yelling it from the rooftops.

There is a strange belief among political consultants that if you express optimism you are likely to make people complacent. Hey, my guy is going to win, so I guess there’s no point in doing any more phone banking. But this is ridiculous. It’s a fundamental of human nature that people like to back winners. If you promise them that they’re part of a history-making landslide that will rid the country of its worst president ever, the result will be more energy, not less. What’s more, it’s actually true that Biden is expanding his lead:

I don’t have a crystal ball, but it’s a mistake to let the trauma of 2016 color everything. Right now, nothing is going Trump’s way. His attempted smear of Hunter Biden has mostly just aroused disgust. His rallies are feeble replays of 2016. He personally hosted an infamous superspreader event at the White House and still refuses to take COVID-19 seriously. He’s losing the support of women in droves. His attack on Biden as a pawn of AOC and the extremist wing of the Democratic Party is so absurd that people just laugh at it. Senate Republicans have all but abandoned him as a sure loser. He’s behind in national polling by an astonishing ten percentage points.

So could Biden win in a landslide? Sure he could. In fact, I’d guess that with a big last-minute push it’s close to a certainty.

POSTSCRIPT: Just remember: 2016 was a fluke, not a harbinger of the future. Trump is a buffoon and after four years in office most of the country knows it.

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We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

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