Leading Indicators Four Years In The Making.

I tried to find me an executive position, but no matter how smooth I talked, they wouldn’t listen to the fact that I was genius, the man said we got all that we can use   Jim Croce   Working at the car wash blues

I know I riled some of you a while ago, when I told you to stop pouting and just accept the fact that barring a Russian invasion, Joe Biden is going to be the next President of the United States. Maybe if I give you a quick peek at my mentality, you’ll understand.

Just shy of 60 years ago, when I strapped on my first pair of skates, and picked up my first stick, I began my hockey career as a goaltender. And even back then there was one inviolable rule. Your memory is only one shot long! Make a great save? Pump your fist in the air, take your teammates accolades, and get your head back in the game, another one is coming. Give up a cheap goal? Slam your stick on the crossbar, get a glug of water, and get your head back into the game before you give up another one.

With that mentality, it was easier for me to see 2016 what it really was. A terrible, soft, cheap goal against. The day after the election I wrote a scathingly bitter sour grapes article for Daily Kos, splashed water on my face, pulled my mask back down, and started working on 2018. For me, 2016 was never anything more than a cheap, lazy goal.

As I was looking through today’s new poll results, and some cross tabs, something snagged in my mind. So I looked further back at some other things I had written and read in polling, and the pattern was still there. Yeah, I know, don’t jump my shit. National polling is not conclusive, since we have an electoral college. But looking back historically, this is not some seismic event, it is actually the continuation of a trend 4 years in the making.

Donald Trump was inaugurated on January 20th, 2017, and the next day, the bottom fell out. The massive Women’s March on Washington protests provided a global rebuke on Trump and all that he stood for. But being president, Trump went ahead and started filling his cabinet and department sops so he could at least give the appearance about giving a shit about running the country.

Trump may be a political buffoon, but at least he listened to somebody with political skills for once. When choosing loyal GOP House members for administration positions, he chose carefully from only what were considered safe GOP districts, to ensure maintaining his house majority after the special elections. And the wheels still flew off of the Klown Kar.

Surprisingly the Democrats managed to steal a couple of seats. But more importantly, in state after state, and district after district, the Democrats out performed the shit out of the GOP. When all was said and done, the Democrats out performed the GOP by an average of 16 points per race. Races that incumbents won by 20 the year before were reduced to a 4 point margin of victory. Worse yet, in the off year state elections of Virginia in 2017, the Democrats came within a coin flip of tying the House. There was definitely frigging in the rigging going on.

2018 brought us the daily double. And it wasn’t like the GOP didn’t see it coming or anything. In preparation for the debacle, a near record number of GOP House incumbents chose to either retire their seats, or run for a statewide office instead, rather than face the humiliation of electoral defeat instead. And the Democrats proved them sage prognosticators, flipping 40 seats in the House, and giving Nancy Pelosi the gavel back. Even blood red Kansas elected a Democratic Governor, as well as a Native American lesbian, MMA boxer lawyer to congress.  Even the Senate was a moral victory, considering that on Inauguration day of 2017, Senate Majority Leader Moscow Mitch McConnell rubbed his hands gleefully, boldly predicting a filibuster proof majority when the Senate returned in 2019.

And speaking of 2019, that year brought us the trifecta, to keep the horse racing shtick going. In the spring of 2019, the Democrats in Illinois rolled, flipping seats in the state legislator that had never had a blue clad ass sit in them since the day they were created. And in November, the Democrats in Virginia finished the job, flipping the House and turning the state blue. And the hits just keep on coming.

Now we’re in 2020, the moment of reckoning for Donald Trump and his third rate crime family. And Joe Biden is mopping the floor with Donald Trump. Why is this amazing anybody? If you just look at the electoral history of the last 4 years, this has been brewing, and worsening for the GOP every single year! The polling that we are looking at right now is not some kind of weird one off, this is the result of four years of steady, progressive trending in one direction.

And now, just a couple of things about the polling. Don’t just look at the polling, look at the fucking polling! In 2016, Donald Trump won the state of Texas by 9 points over Hillary Clinton. At the moment, Joe Biden is leading the composite average of national polls by 9 points, and guess what? As we speak, Joe Biden is in a dead heat with Trump in the state of Texas. That isn’t an anomaly, that’s perfect statistical symmetry. And it’s why Trump is now trailing Biden in battleground states that Trump won by less than 9 points. Take the national polls with a grain of salt, but when the state polls start to mirror the national polls, at least accept the symmetry.

And now for the battleground state polls. In 2016, Trump got about about 46.2 of the popular vote, and he needed every one of the extra 77,000 votes that he scraped off in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania in order to win the electoral college. Go ahead, pick a state, any battleground state. Now, look as far back as you like. You’ll have trouble finding any reputable poll in which Trump clears 42%. And that’s why Biden is now ahead by 13 points in Pennsylvania, leading outside of the margin of error in Wisconsin, and Michigan is so bad that Trump’s campaign is seriously considering throwing in the towel. Which is exactly why state polls like Texas mirroring the national polls are so important. Because it means that Trump is going to have to spend large coin in states like Florida and Ohio to compete, and Biden is out raising him in funding.

Look, I’m not trying to sell you guys anything. If you look solely at 2020 in a self contained bubble, it’s easy to get paranoid, and try to deny what’s before your eyes. But if you look at recent history, you can see that 2020 is shaping up to be the culmination of four years of growing resistance to Trump. Don’t get cocky and complacent, but at the same time, acknowledge the numbers for what they are and be confident. Nothing kills Trump more than a confident opponent, Mary Trump confirms that. 2016 was a terrible, cheap goal, but we’re still the better team. Forget about it,and go get it back.

To know the future, look to the past.before the insanity of the 2020 election, relive the insanity of the 2016 GOP primary campaign, and the general election, to see how we got to where we are. Copies of President Evil, and the sequel, President Evil II, A Clodwork Orange are available as e-books on Amazon, at the links above. Catch up before the upcoming release of the third book in the trilogy, President Evil III: All The Presidents Fen

Follow me on Twitter at @RealMurfster35