Stanning Mitt Romney is like being in an abusive relationship. The Republican senator from Utah is not a big fan of Donald Trump and has become an outspoken dissident in what is now Donald Trump’s Republican party. He voted to convict the president from his own party during the impeachment trial in the Senate and last month, he was the lone Republican senator to march alongside supporters of the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement in Washington following the death of George Floyd.
On the other hand, he voted with his fellow Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to launch a deeply partisan investigation into Hunter Biden, which Democrats fear has become a vehicle for laundering Russia’s campaign to weaken Joe Biden. Even though Romney has no plans to vote for Donald Trump this fall, he’s not voting for Biden either, choosing instead to write in the name of his wife who I’m sure has a smaller chance of winning the presidency than Kanye West. So, it’s really a vote for Trump. The latest from Romney, Trump will likely win re-election this November.
Romney told HuffPost three reasons why he thinks Trump will win re-election:
“There are enormous advantages to being the incumbent, number one. Number two, I think [Trump] will tack more towards the middle in his communication than he has so far. And number three, I think the voters that are most animated in opposition to the president tend not to come out to vote ― and that’s young people and the minorities. They’re active in polls, but not necessarily active at actually getting out to the polls.”
Incumbent advantages
Let’s put aside the futility of Trump moderating his tone and focus on the two other reasons the Utah senator gave for Trump’s possible re-election victory. They suggest that the senator may have accepted some lessons from his defeat to President Obama in 2012 and conveniently forget others.
Romney is right, there are advantages to being the incumbent in a general election. They include higher name recognition, national attention greater access to fundraising, access to government resources, and voter inertia, to name a few. With the exception of voter inertia, Trump pretty much has all the others lockdown, one might argue even more so than any other incumbent president in modern American history, and therein lies the problem. What has he done with the increased name recognition and national attention? He told Americans to ingest disinfectant to cure coronavirus, threatened school districts to send children back to school in the middle of a pandemic, defend the confederate flag and monuments, and makes it his daily mission to find new ways to further divide the American people.
His fundraising has slowed down in recent months while Biden’s has picked up. It is very unlikely that Biden will close the gap since Trump started his campaign for re-election on January 21, 2017, but the former VP is making up ground.
What did Trump do with unfettered access to government resources? He tear-gassed peaceful protesters so he could walk to a church for a photo-op with a bible and, deploy secret Gestapo police to attack moms and veterans in Democratic-controlled cities.
Trump’s abuse of the office of the presidency has placed him squarely on the path of becoming an incumbent loser like Ford in ’76, Carter in ’80 and H.W. Bush in ’92. And, with a little over 100 days to go before the general elections in November, the window is closing for Donald Trump to turn things around.
Young people and minorites don’t vote
To Romney’s third point, voters like young people and minorities tend not to vote but are active in the polls. If there is any politician in America who should never say this, like ever, It is Mitt Romney, considering the fact that he lost the 2012 election because minority groups and young people came out to vote for President Obama.
Romney’s 2012 campaign pollster Neil Newhouse, suggested that the voters who turned out in 2012 were overall much younger and less white than the campaign anticipated, especially across the Sun Belt states.
“The Colorado Latino vote was extraordinarily challenging,” Newhouse said in 2012. according to HuffPost “As it was in Florida.”
For his sake, Romney should avoid saying minorities, and young people don’t vote because it was that belief that led to his humiliation in 2012. The campaign was sure they’d win the election that Romney did not even write a concession speech. It would serve him well to never forget the 2012 lesson when he inevitably seeks the Republican party nomination for president in 2024.
As for minority and young people being active in the polls, that’s not true. Modern polling methods do not accurately sample those key voting blocs. For minority voters their underrepresentation may be due to a language barrier and younger voters are usually underrepresented in phone surveys.
Voter Inertia
I know at this point some of you are saying that Biden does not excite young voters like Obama did in 2012. That’s true and brings me to my next point, voter inertia. This is usually advantageous to incumbents who allow you to actually sleep peacefully at night instead of worrying if Gestapo police will be in your city in the morning, or the possibility of war with another country because the president was baited in a tweet the night before. Young voters, some minorities, and even some older voters may not be over the moon about voting for Biden but, they are excited about seeing change. Change in police behavior, in foreign policy, in American’s standing on the world’s stage, the way we treat each other or simply a reset of our sleep cycle to pre-2016. The bottom line is, Americans want change and most of us believe that change can only come about by removing Donald Trump from office. And Biden is the only chance we have left to do that.
Also, let’s not underestimate Biden’s strength with older voters. He may very well win the election by winning the vote of seniors who usually vote Republican.
While Mitt Romney is right on some things, he appears to have forgotten the lessons 2012 taught him. There are advantages to being an incumbent but, there are limits. Trump’s public appearances should be considered in-kind donations to the Biden campaign. Young and minority voters do turn out to vote if we see something worth voting for. And in this election, that is getting rid of Donald Trump.
