If Biden wins and Trump loses, do you think that COVID will be the main cause?

[Silent3]

Will it turn out that only something like the needless deaths of over 100,000 Americans will have had the power to break enough voters away from the sickness that is Trumpism?

While the tragic death of George Floyd, and the energizing of the BLM movement that followed, will also figure prominently in the factors effecting the elections, I think even that story gained power that it wouldn't have had in a non-COVID world.

Will it turn out that only stories as powerfully news-dominating as COVID and the BLM protests will have kept the so-called "liberal media" from fixating on some minor or ginned-up Biden "scandal", like Ukraine or Tara Reade or the like, which otherwise would have driven the race closer and closer as November approached?

I'm not counting Trump out yet, of course. I'm wondering that if we do win, however, if in someways it will have required a death toll similar to fighting a revolution to bring about change.

[dem4decades]

1. of course. he killed people and the economy.

[Silent3]

4. It's incredibly sad to think that "merely" Trump's corruption and incompetence and hatefulness...

...might not have been enough on their own.

[Siwsan]

2. We can't really move forward, on the planet, until Covid is under control

That doesn't diminish the vital importance of working towards resolving ALL SORTS of other issues, in this country, but if people are dying by the thousands, each and every day, it bodes poorly for turning around the economy and society, as a whole. IMHO, of course.

[wryter2000]

3. I think yes

I think he was probably going to loose, anyway, but the pandemic really exposed his incompetence and lack of concern for anyone but himself.

[qazplm135]

5. undoubtedly

COVID required a response.

His response was so woefully bad that we had to shut down the economy.

That led to the economic collapse.

His continuing response is basically on track to lead to a second, at least partial shutdown.

Which will further the collapse or certainly slow down the recovery.

Before COVID, it was the economy that probably made him still a slight favorite.

After COVID, his response plus the economy stuck a fork in that.

His response to the protests just put in the extra nails to keep the coffin shut for sure.

The reality is, if he'd just done nothing but sat back and listened to the CDC/experts, he'd probably be tied or leading in the polls in a lot of places and on track to eke out a victory. But he picked the wrong time to show his incompetence in every possible area in an extremely short period of time so close to the election.

Biden pretty much would have to shoot someone at the Lincoln Memorial, then take a dump on the monument, and then proclaim himself a member of ISIS to lose at this point.

[doc03]

6. It Should be. nt

[OnDoutside]

7. No.

However, Covid is going to determine the margin of the victory.

[displacedtexan]

8. I don't think COVID will be the reason Trump loses.

But I think it's the reason he won't be able to get away with cheating again.

[empedocles]

11. Incisive point dt

[frazzled]

9. COVID has merely pulled back the curtain on the wizard

to unmask all the bare-naked deficits of this president, which have been hiding in plain sight to most of us from the beginning: ignorance, incompetence, self-dealing, vulgarity, uncaring, meanness, etc. etc.

Just as George Floyd (and recent related killings) unmasked the obvious and urgent inequality of Black citizens to all Americans, COVID has been the incident that has opened the eyes of America to the disaster that is DJT.

COVID would have happened, and people would have died (though not nearly as many) under any president. And (like economic downturns), they would have suffered a bit politically, perhaps, just out of general anxiety. But none would have ignored the science, ignored the well-being of the country's people, ignored the economy, or tried to make political hay out of it. None would have appeared so utterly STOOPID. Most would have tried to pull the country together, providing both leadership and solace.

Now, the emperor has no clothes. (I'm mixing Grimm Fairy Tales with The Wizard of Oz here, but it's that fantastical.)

[Alacritous Crier]

10. Yes, without a doubt.

Although, if COVID had not happened, I'm sure there would have been some other fuck up that would have done it.



GOTV.

[Awsi Dooger]

13. Very possible

The one advantage we always had was that Trump would never realize all he had to do was shut up throughout 2020

[Awsi Dooger]

12. Coronavirus and George Floyd shifted a narrow Trump victory to a Biden win

I don't think it can be argued otherwise. Trump was enjoying the typical benefit of a doubt toward an incumbent whose party had been in power only one term. His approval had risen to 44% on 538 and his re-elect percentage was 62%. The economy was not going to collapse as many had predicted. All of the models that forecast based on situational and economic factors were going to point to the incumbent.

Trump could have cemented the win by taking coronavirus seriously. But that would have betrayed his ignorance and the breathtaking ignorance of right wing America in general.

[GulfCoast66]

14. With on small clarification...

It will not be Covid. It is his response to it.

Had he responded in a serious manner, touted the experts and explained that the economy can’t recover until the virus in under control. And that government will insure that Americans will be taken care of?

Had he done all that he would be up by 8-10 in the polls. But of course he is not capable of understanding complicated issues and to him every thing that happens in seen in its effect on him.

He missed the best opportunity he had. It’s too late now.

He made it through 3 and a half years with no major crisis. He failed when he faced his first one.

[DFW]

15. Tragically, I think it will be a MAJOR cause, which reflects very poorly on us as a nation

It should have been obvious about six days into the Trump administration what a disaster he would be. It is a heavy embarrassment to us that a virus NOT of Trump's making (but rather his incompetent response to it) should be the root of his downfall.

I'll take anything if it boots him and his gang of criminals out the door, of course, but it doesn't exactly constitute a feather in our national cap that it took something of this magnitude to make the country aware of how awful he is.

[Hoyt]

16. Exactly. Get him out for any reason, but the racist/bigot/buffoon never should have won.