Impact turns + answers – bfhmrs russia War Good
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Harbor Teacher Prep-subingsubing-Ho-Neg-Lamdl T1-Round3, Impact Turns Aff Neg - Michigan7 2019 BFHMRS
2NC---AT: Win ImpossibleThat conventional wisdom is wrongByler 19 – Data analyst and political columnist @ Washington Post (David, “Everyone is underestimating Trump. It could hurt Democrats and Republicans alike.,” Washington Post, Proquest) We live in an era of horribly misinformed political decision-making. In 2015, the Trump-skeptical Republican elite believed that Trump would naturally fade over the course of the primary, so they remained split between mostly implausible presidential candidates (looking at you, Jeb), and Trump won. That same year, major Democrats cleared the field for Hillary Clinton, who turned out to be the second most disliked presidential candidate ever and one of the few Democrats capable of losing an open race to Donald Trump. In Alabama’s special Senate election in 2017, Trump helped scandal-ridden Republican Sen. Luther Strange make it to a primary runoff with Republican Roy Moore, not realizing that Moore would win that runoff, subject America to a long race where the Republican was an (alleged) pedophile and ultimately lose the general. Most of these mistakes were based on bad political calculations. People overestimated Clinton’s strength, the demographic resiliency of the Democratic coalition or Moore’s weakness, and their plans fell apart. And both Republicans and Democrats are in danger of making new mistakes by underestimating Trump’s strength in 2020. The conventional wisdom on Trump’s reelection odds are much too bearish. Trump has a better chance of winning again than many pundits seem to think. And both Democrats and Republicans need to take Trump seriously and recalibrate their decision process or risk facing serious consequences. Getting the odds right I think Trump has roughly 50-50 odds of winning reelection at this point. The other wonks who are more bearish on Trump aren’t crazy — over half of the country disapproves of his job performance — but I think my view is reasonable. The economy is the most promising indicator for Trump. Emory University professor Alan Abramowitz put together a simple statistical model that uses economic growth, the president’s approval rating and whether the president’s party has held the White House for one term or more to predict the results of presidential elections. The basic logic of the model is simple. A solid economy (which Trump has) and high approval ratings (which he doesn’t) are good signs for a president’s reelection chances. If you feed the model current economic and poll numbers (which obviously can change by the time we get to Election Day) the results suggest that Trump would get about 51.4 percent of the two-party presidential vote. Models like this don’t have pinpoint accuracy and they don’t take the electoral college into account. But they’re useful for ballparking the results. And the data suggests that a good economy, a not-amazing Democratic opponent (models such as this often implicitly assume that the parties nominate candidates who have roughly even political skills) and the advantages of incumbency might be enough to get Trump close or carry him over the finish line. Trump has some big, obvious weaknesses, too. His approval rating has been low for almost his entire first term, and a Democrat could easily win by snagging people who disapprove of the president. Moreover, Trump’s approval rating has been unusually stable — he’s been bumping around somewhere between the high 30s to low-to-mid 40s for much of the last two years. Trump’s approval rating could remain steady until the election — which could (especially if economic numbers dip) lead to a Carter-esque defeat against the Democratic Ronald Reagan. (Kamala D. Harris? Bernie Sanders?) But I think the conventional wisdom is discounting the possibility that Trump’s approval improves enough for him to win and overestimating the (still very real) likelihood of total collapse. Download 0.83 Mb. Share with your friends:
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