Vote by mail or lose. How Biden and Trump are preparing for the final battle

Alexandra Filippenko

August 28, 2020

The National Congress of the Republican Party today officially nominates Donald Trump for a new presidential term. Joe Biden became a presidential candidate from the Democrats, Kamal Harris is running for the post of vice president with him. Now, one of the main issues of the campaign is the form of voting: in the pandemic, many will want to vote by mail, which has recently unable to cope with loads. Trump is in the hands: by mail, according to polls, Biden supporters mainly use. But for the allocation of the mail, both democrats and the Republicans advocate.

Traditionally, the Republican Party Congress automatically supports the head of state who wants not to leave the White House (the first and only time when the party did not support the current president was before the civil war). Meanwhile, Donald Trump is in an unusual position for the current president: according to surveys, it is more than 7%, for the United States - this is very, very much.

Only three presidential candidates accepted the party with such a low rating-Harry Truman in 1948, Gerald Ford in 1976 and Jimmy Carter in 1980. And only one of them (Harry Truman) won. At the same time, the opponent of Truman was far from as popular as Biden. So if Trump wins the election on November 3, from the point of view of sociology, this will be a unique victory.

When the views of the Democrats and Republicans are such a strongly party-ideological demarcation and so polar, not only the nuclear electorate of parties, but also the hesitation of voters, as well as those who do not like any of the candidates, are required to win. In these conditions, in comparison with 2016, it is more difficult for Trump to conduct a campaign: Biden is simply more popular than Hillary Clinton and much more acceptable as the president for “protest voting” (in the last survey among voters who do not like any of their candidates, but who still decided to vote, Biden cost Trump by 20%), so that the president cannot, like in the past, as in the past Once, count on an opponent anti -rating. In 2016, I recall, Trump received almost 17% more votes of those who did not like either him or Clinton.

Biden is more popular than Hillary Clinton, and is much more suitable for "protest voting"

With the advent of Kamaly Harris in the pre -election race, the situation for the president became more complicated. Polls showed that the choice of Harris as a candidate for vice presidents approves the majority of voters, including key groups that can bring Biden victory (according to the Politico survey , this is 79% of black voters and 56% of voters under 35 years old). Harris’s choice was hardly a surprise, but the Republican Party responded ambiguously: the White House called Harris the “left -wing radical”, and the National Committee of the Republican Party, on the contrary, noted that it was not progressive enough. During the primaries, Harris really hesitated between the left (promising to introduce universal medical insurance) and centrists (she called her main priority tax reduction for the middle class). In preliminary elections, this played against her, preventing him from gathering an extensive base of supporters. And in general elections, the absence of a strictly defined nuclear electorate becomes an important advantage. Thanks to the breadth of views, the senator can enlist the support of different representatives of the democratic coalition. This is confirmed not only by polls, but also by very specific figures: at the first hour after the announcement of the Harris candidate on the donation collection website in favor of Biden ( Actblue ), a record was broken for the number of donations in one hour and on the same evening - a record for collecting funds for political campaigns on the Internet. On the first day, the campaign received $ 26 million. ONLY BRANCH TOMENTS with the names of candidates from the Democratic Party, which people put in their yard, were sold in the amount of $ 1.2 million.

The re -election of the current president is largely a referendum at which his work is evaluated in the first four years. The National Congress of the Party, which puts forward the president for a second term, is no longer a marathon of promises, as is the case for the first time, but praising achievements and receiving the votes of oscillating Americans. This time, the Republicans did not present a new platform, saying that they would completely rely on the theses of 2016. With such a low rating, Trump is unlikely to be able to attract more votes outside the republican party to his side, but he can convince those who do not like both candidates to give him a second chance. Trump can play that such voters are usually not interested in politics and receive information episodically and inconsistently, which means to convince them is much easier than others. Vioalous voters postpone their choice until the last weeks or even days before the elections, and unexpected events - positive or negative - can have a greater impact on whom they will ultimately vote for (in 2016, everyone decided 77 thousand votes in three oscillating states, despite the fact that, according to the total number of votes, Trump gained almost 3 million less). More importantly, according to research, this group of voters makes a decision, based on emotions. By the way, negative agitation has the most powerful effect on them, in which Trump is very strong. He knows how to brightly and expressively offend opponents, move on personalities and bring down the focus of attention from facts to feelings. Trump hopes that if you attack Biden and Harris more actively, he has a chance to persuade the doubters to his side. He adhered to such a strategy last time, but there is a problem: in 2016, “out of two evils”, many undemanded voters chose the one who violently criticized all Washington politicians, positioning himself as a candidate against the establishment - but now, already in the status of a resident Trump, this will be difficult to do.

Trump’s strategy will again be a transition to personality and appeal to negative emotions in order to influence the "induced"

The president has an important drawback that bothers doubting voters: the Munchausen scale of exaggeration in his statements. In the first months of Trump’s presidency, news feeds were full of articles with facts, and by 2020, political scientists, journalists and US citizens, it seems, are already accustomed to the fact that speech and especially the twections of the head of state should be checked. The newspaper Washington Post continues to count false and misleading statements (according to July, there were more than 20,000, on average 12 per day). Therefore, when on August 22, Trump accused the sanitary supervision of the quality of food and medication (Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the intentionally delay in testing the coronavirus vaccine at the insistence of personal opponents of the president, this did not cause surprise. Trump repeatedly repeated the theses of the popular conspiracy theory that the "deep state" (Deep state "(Deep state) is built into the government system, insisting that these secret omnipotent bureaucrats do not want its re -election. Previously, these words had some kind of effect, but there were so many similar statements that they simply stopped paying attention to them. Trump is increasingly difficult and difficult to shock the public, he is constantly repeated, and those who used to support him for “originality” and “brightness” (turning a blind eye to the reliability of his judgments), it is already difficult for him to offer something unexpected.

Another key moment in the election race is voting by mail. Legislators talk about the fate of the postal service and the convenience of voting from the house for several months - after all, during the pandemic period, they will thus vote much more Americans than usual. Trump repeatedly said that voting by mail could undermine confidence in the elections and urged everyone to vote personally. The President pointed out the financial losses of the US Post and its inappropriate to cope with the flow of ballots for voting.

There is no way (zero!) That Mail-in Ballots Will Be Anything Less than Substantially Fraudulent. Mail Boxes Will BE Robbed, Ballots Will Be Forged & Even Illegly Printed Out & Fraudulently Signed. The Governor of California Is Sending Ballots to Millions of Pekle, Anyone .....

- Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump) May 26, 2020

The other day, an important vote took place in the House of Representatives - at a specially convened session, 26 republican congressmen joined the democrats in order to vote $ 25 billion for providing postal service in the Senate’s control of the Republicans, most likely to fail. However, the past vote should be paid attention to three reasons. Firstly, in recent years, all voting on controversial and fundamental issues passed strictly along the party line (the exception is Obamacare, when Senator John McCain specially came to Washington after surgery to vote with the Democrats). The recent vote was of inter -party nature, and this is a clear sign that some Republicans are tired of the president’s uncompromising style. Secondly, Trump for a long time sought to reduce the possibility of voting by mail (which he directly stated ), which, judging by the polls , are going to use Biden's supporters to a greater extent. Thirdly, the emergency session of the Congress is prescribed in exceptional situations. The decision to convene legislators in the Capitol emphasizes how high the political and electoral rates are in matters of the traditional and not different scandalousness of the federal service. Even if the bill does not become a law, voting will help attract interest in the issue of voting by mail among ordinary Americans.

The US Post really can hardly cope with the flow of departures, but this is primarily due not to the pandemia, but with the new leadership. The head of the postal service, Luis Deda, had never worked in state structures before. He was appointed to the post after the multimillion-dollar infusion of Trump and other Republicans in May 2020 and immediately stated that at his post the organization of an obsolete business model of the organization, which was faced with billionth losses and a decrease in the volume of postal items. One of the first solutions was the disconnection of part of the equipment for sorting mail, dismantling part of the mailboxes and the introduction of new overtime rules. The last paragraph led to this US Post crisis. Postal workers were previously guided by the rule : “Any departure on the same day” (EVERY PIECE - EVERY DAY). This means that they did not leave until the whole mail was sent per day and, accordingly, received overtime payments. According to the new rules, drivers are sent in accordance with a hard schedule, regardless of whether all shipments are ready or not, and overtime payments are not only not relying, but also prohibited. Due to quarantine and outbreaks of coronavirus, workers were not enough and so, and the restrictions were even more slowed by mail.

After the pressure from the Americans who called their congressmen, and most importantly, they raised a hype in the press, Luis Dajoy assured that overtime payments would be restored, and changes in the work of the US Post will occur only after the election on November 3. Speaking on Friday before the senators and on Monday in the House of Representatives, the Santa confirmed that ensuring the successful vote by mail would become the main priority of the service and called the “outrageous” statement of the democrats that he wants to help Trump.

Long before the newcomer -out political battle, conservative lawmakers spoke about the need to commercialize all postal items and increase the rates for private operators (such as Amazon), which use the services of the US Post, whose income consists of all newsletters, sales of brands and related goods. However, now not all Republicans support Trump in his struggle, because the delay in postal items applies primarily to agricultural states and rural areas, where the Americans mostly vote for the Republican Party. In Ohio, where the number of voting by mail is most likely to double, packs of insured mail can be seen in the Cleveland Distribution Center. In rural areas of Michigan, delays in the delivery of drugs (which came before three days) reach two weeks. In the area of ​​Miluoi, dozens of trailers filled with premises accumulated.

But still, before the pandemic, the question would hardly arise about the complete inappropriateness of the postal service to send the correspondence. For example, last year - in the period between the day of thanksgiving (November 28, 2019) and the New Year - the postal service delivered about 800 million parcels and 13 billion postal shipments. Even if each of the approximately 140 million voters sent his ballots, the postal service would be able to cope with this. Speaking about the financial side of the issue: mail is not a business. This is the State Institute, indicated by such in the Constitution. Article 1, section 8, states that the Congress is responsible for the creation of post offices and postal tracts. As an army, state educational institutions, police, firefighters, national intelligence and diplomatic corps, this is part of the public sector.

But despite the assurances of the head of the postal service, taking into account the existing delays, voters will have to rely on themselves. Those who are important to vote from the house will have to request the ballots as soon as possible and send them ahead of schedule - in rural areas a month before the vote. Thus, neither snow, nor rain, nor hurricanes, nor even Trump will be able to prevent the votes directed by mail.