If I feel a total contempt for anyone active in the political arena these days, it’s not the politicians themselves, not even Donald Trump. The ones I believe are the worst of all the worst are political commentators, op-ed writers and consultants who started out as liberals and then went the other way.

People like Geraldo and Juan Williams really make my skin crawl because if you decide that liberalism isn’t your bag, that’s fine. So go do something else. Make a pizza, drive a cab, lay brick, but don’t turn around and help out the other side. Particularly when the other side is led by someone named – ucchh – I can’t even say his friggin’ name.

              Another member of the turncoat group is Doug Schoen. He flitted in and out of the Clinton orbit and has also done consulting work for Bloomberg’s brief Presidential campaign. But the bottom line is that he’s a Republican, and his true colors are on display in a piece in The Hill which basically says that you-know-who still has a good chance of winning the Presidential race.

              Here’s the basic argument that Schoen makes about the polls: “While Biden leads nationally and in several battleground states, many of his leads in swing states are even tighter than they were for Hillary Clinton in 2016, notably in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Florida, all states that she lost.” He then notes that Arizona has become a clear battleground state, ditto Florida where the Cook Report now rates as a ‘toss-up’ rather than a Biden ‘lean.’

              What Schoen forgets to mention is that Biden doesn’t need Florida or Arizona. He doesn’t even need Nevada where Trump appeared today before his usual Nuremburg-type crowd. Unless something really crazy happens in the Commie/Socialist/Sanctuary/BLM states, Joe needs 50% plus 1 in Michigan, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, and PA. That’s it. Fartig – finished. Done.

              As for Schoen’s missive, either he doesn’t know how to read polls, or he’s lying, or both. When he says that Joe’s lead in states like Michigan and PA is smaller than what Hillary enjoyed at the same time in 2016, he’s only referring to the gap in the percentage of poll respondents who indicated for whom they were going to vote.

              Right now, Joe has a 6.5-point lead in Michigan and a 5.0 lead in PA. At this date in 2016, Clinton had bigger leads in both states but, and this is a very important but, the dog-shit responses in both states (i.e., other named candidates or not yet sure) was twice as high for Hillary as it now is for Joe. If Trump were to grab every voter who says he or she is voting Libertarian plus half the voters who still can’t figure anything out, he would still lose both states.

              Most of Schoen’s column is spent talking about the growth of Hispanic support for Trump in Florida, particularly in Miami Dade County. The same day that Schoen’s column appeared, the Florida Lt. Governor announced that Trump has really ‘delivered’ to the Latino community, and that his popularity is based on the fact that “Latinos care about faith, they care about family and they care about freedom, and Joe Biden doesn’t stand for any of those things.”

              Know what else Trump has delivered to Miami Dade County? A death-rate from Covid-19 which is twice as high as the death rate in Florida as a whole. Miami Dade County represents 10% of the state’s total population and the virus mortality number is at 2,900 out of 12,800 statewide virus deaths.

              But let’s say that even with the pandemic in Florida not being under control, that Biden is simply too much of a Socialist for the Latino population this year. So what? He doesn’t need Florida and by the way, the statewide polls for Arizona, which also has a large Latino population, happen to be running stronger for Joe.

              Here’s how the battleground looks today:

              Joe is at or almost at the magic 50-mark in 5 states. Both guys have dropped a tiny bit in several states and pushed up a bit in several other states. Bottom line: nothing has changed. But the most important news is that together, the dog-shit number in all 12 states is under 7. Which means that in order for you-know-who to get re-elected, he has to convince a bunch of Biden supporters to switch to him. 

              That’s what makes the 2020 campaign so different from 2016.