Five Reasons why I think Donald Trump will win

f the US elections were held today, Joe Biden would win. Most polling statistics indicate a Biden lead of five to eight points average, well over the 2- or 3-point margin of error. But that lead has dropped from two digits in early to mid-summer before both political parties held their national conventions.  Neither candidate got the so-called post convention bump, a sudden surge in approval buoyed by the excitement of the convention. 

That "bump" is nothing to celebrate. As a metric what it measures is public opinion that was stampeded into the statistics scales, not the intelligent or calculating voter sentiment that has a longer shelf life than the wispy emotions of the day's politics. 

The notable absence of that "bump" for Biden after the Democratic national convention  means his support base is stable, not given to the volatility stirred by mere pep talk. He should be glad. But the absence of that same bump after the GOP convention should be worrisome for Biden, too. It indicates that Donald Trump's supporters may not just be the same provocable mobs seen in 2016 either. Or it could be that those same mobs have grown  in political maturity, something that Democratic conventional wisdom often denies. The premise, by and large, is that voters with college education--the intelligentsia--are Democratic-leaning while the country yokels of rural America  are the blind lemmings willing to jump off the cliff after Donald Trump. No bump means no more distinction between those demographics. And that's good for Donald Trump.

So as the fall comes around, with both parties hitting post-convention full strides in their campaign, the popularity gap between Biden and Trump will significantly narrow down some more. And if the race tightens up to neck-and-neck, I'll stick my own neck on a daring prediction that Donald Trump will win--for FIVE REASONS.

1. Donald Trump is very successful in defining himself and in defying others' definition of him. The Biden campaign wants the elections to be about character, the subtext being that Biden has a noble character while Trump has none. That is a huge mistake in strategy. Trump voters support him not because of his character but inspite of it. On the other hand, Biden's spit-polish image as "Mr. Clean"--a campaign strategy as old as the ballot--sells extremely well to people who already support him. Biden trying to convince America about who Donald Trump is and what he is all about will fail because that is a task  that Trump does best: defining himself.  Trump would simply say "If you wanna  know what's on my mind, let me tell you. Don't have to listen to somebody else trying to read my mind." And when Biden turns around to extol his own virtue in comparison, he will find himself preaching to the choir.

2. Donald Trump doesn't use the political paradigm. What applies to him doesn't apply to others. In a perverted way, Donald  Trump is like modern art. The only way to appreciate Picasso--the  man--is to  appreciate Picasso, the paintings. Those who like modern art are rabidly obsessed with it. Those who dislike it or are indifferent towards it don't get "it." They never will, too. That's Donald Trump. If you don't like him, it's because you don't get it and that gives you no chance to win over those who do. 

3.  The Democrats seem to have forgotten that politics is addition. If they can't heed that within the party, they can't heed it across the divide. Although Bernie Sanders has endorsed Joe Biden, the practical truth is that he has not demonstrated any more support for Biden that he did for Hillary Clinton whom he also endorsed in 2016. The involvement of the DNC's rising mavericks like Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren in the Biden campaign is cameo at best. And the total absence of the democratic old guard--its big guns like Al Gore, John Kerry, Madeilene Albright--is too conspicuous to hedge the impression that the party is not united. They're all just quiet together. 

4. They dropped the big bombshells on Donald Trump too early giving him plenty of time to do damage control. The utterly irrelevent email "scandal" that torpedoed Hillary Clinton's campaign in 2016 was totally survivable. In fact, when the FBI declined to indict her for lack of probable cause, it should have been the end of the discussion for that distractive issue. But with just days  before the election FBI Director James Comey peeled off a scab that hasn't healed right, there was no more time to do last-minute damage control. In contrast, all the bombshells against Donald Trump were dropped and detonated with more than 60 days to go. The burden becomes not how Trump will diffuse the crisis but rather how the Democrats can sustain its impact and stretch the public's interest in it until election day. They simply jumped the gun too soon, and shot long range instead of point-blank on the eve of balloting when late damage would have been irreparable for Trump. As it is, by the time the November election comes, all that negative press would already be history

5. I just know Donald Trump will rack Hillary Clinton over the coals one more time, and the democrats are unprepared to deal with that.  The strength of Joe Biden is that he is likeable at best, and harmless at worst. Donald Trump doesn't have enough time to erode Joe Biden's character and credibility--and he doesn't have to. He is not looking for a new hate object in Biden to offer to his supporters, he just needs to offer somebody to hate, and who better than somebody Trump has already spent the last four years destroying--Hillary Clinton. Of course, she is not on the ballot but Trump couldn't care less. The election in November is not about Hillary Clinton, but Trump can make it about her. "Puppet of the radical left" or "Trojan horse of the socialists" is not catching on as Trump's nicknames for Biden. But I think it's only a matter of time before his think tank will come up with "Backdoor to the White House for Hillary Clinton."  Trump would say, if you vote for Joe Biden he will appoint Hillary Clinton Secretary of State again. Or they will make Kamala Harris resign the vice-presidency and put Clinton in her place. At age 74, Joe Biden might not make full term. He would already be a senile 78 by the end of only his first term. To put Hillary Clinton just one hiccup away from the presidency via the easy route is a dire scenario enough to rouse even the most moribund Never Trumper. It's the wildest conspiracy theory--and it's too complicated to sort out, fact-check, analyze for feasibility or test for credulity if dropped as a late bombshell, just like the James Comey bummer.  So look to Donald Trump exploding this mother-of-all-scare-tactics in the critical homestretch when all the Democrats can do is make Hillary speak in  her own defense. And then she would be the one making the election about herself, falling right into Donald Trump's provocation trap.  Unlikely you might say but remember you read it here first.

NOTE FROM JOEL: Hi, folks! Recently, I started a YouTube channel which is called "Parables and Reason" It  is kind of similar to this blog content-wise. You can check out my channel by clicking the link below:

 Joel R. Dizon - PARABLES AND REASON