bad news libs! Biden is another Dukakis. He had a commanding lead in the polls and lost to Bush41.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/n...based-on-polls
Blown Democratic lead in 1988 shows Biden shouldn’t get overconfident based on polls
by Naomi Lim, Political Reporter
July 28, 2020 02:03 PM
Virtually every poll showing presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden up over President Trump in a swing state brings a version of a familiar retort: "Remember Michael Dukakis."
Biden, the two-term vice president and 36-year Delaware senator, is comfortably ahead of Trump in a slew of national and state-based polls less than 100 days before Election Day. Yet as Dukakis, the 1988 Democratic nominee and then-Massachusetts governor found out, such leads hardly guarantee a White House win.
Dukakis is a natural comparison point with Biden, having held a double-digit advantage in national polling on the GOP nominee in waiting, Vice President George H.W. Bush, during the summer of the 1988 election. Democrats are pushing the anecdote as a warning that their party shouldn't be complacent. Republicans are clutching onto it as a reminder that there are still months left in the race.
"32 years ago today: Dukakis 55 Bush 38," American Commitment president and free market advocate Phil Kerpen tweeted on Sunday.
Kerpen told the Washington Examiner that the thrust of his missive was that there's "still an eternity before the election in political terms."
Critics argue the referenced Gallup survey was a single poll conducted after the 1988 Democratic convention, where Dukakis had the crowd in raptures over his acceptance address. But Biden's in front by an average of 8.2 points, according to FiveThirtyEight. Dukakis was ahead by an average of 15.3 points around the same time.
For Claremont McKenna College politics professor John Pitney, author of After Reagan: Bush, Dukakis, and the 1988 Election, Biden could glean a lot from the tumble in polls that soon befell that year's Democratic nominee.
"Early public polls are subject to change, and that should be a cup of black coffee for the Biden campaign," Pitney said. "I can't think of any smart political ally telling a candidate, 'Hey, get cocky.' It's very prudent for a candidate to act as if the race is going the other way."
The overarching difference between the 1988 and 2020 bids, though, is that three decades ago, "the fundamentals favored the Republicans," Pitney delineated.
"You basically had peace and prosperity. In 2020, the fundamentals are very strongly working against [the] president. You have the coronavirus. You have the recession. The United States's standing across the globe isn't that great," he said. "It's hard to see how changes in the stock market will help Trump if the broader economy is still doing poorly."
Simultaneously, "there could be a miraculous cure for COVID," or "something could happen to drastically reduce unemployment," Pitney qualified.
"Biden could make a catastrophic mistake. He had to withdraw from the 1988 campaign, after all, after the plagiarism issue, which in turn triggered other revelations about his record," he said. "Even his friends would acknowledge he is prone to making mistakes."
Emerson College Polling director Spencer Kimball also defended the 1988-2020 comparison since summer margins "can swing widely" in the fall.
Kimball's 1988 take is that Bush's clandestine Iran-Contra affair involvement muddied initial polls. That scandal entailed senior Ronald Reagan administration officials selling weapons to Iran's Khomeini government despite an arms embargo.
Bush's team then started undermining Dukakis for being soft on crime around Labor Day, and that message helped propel Bush to an electoral landslide that November, Kimball explained. He pointed to the Willie Horton ad, which focused on the convicted murder felon who committed assault, armed robbery, and rape while on Massachusetts's weekend furlough program. Dukakis also faltered during the debates when pressed on whether he'd endorse the death penalty if his own wife had been raped and murdered. There was that unfortunate M1 Abrams tank photo opportunity as well.
"The tank for me is like the Howard Dean scream. It was already over — but a symbol of what went wrong," Kimball said.
Kimball advised against calling 2020 now, especially because Trump's empowered by incumbency, and it's hard being the front-runner.
Yet outlets such as the Economist have begun predicting the outcome anyway.
In its first presidential election model, the Economist calculated that Biden has a 90% chance of winning the Electoral College and a 98% shot at the popular vote. That prognosticating ignores RealClearPolitics betting averages that give Biden 60.8% odds against Trump's 36.5%.
While Dukakis isn't the only precedent, presidential historian David Pietrusza noted the same factors that hurt Dukakis could wound Biden.
"Rumors of mental health issues dogged Dukakis. Rumors of impending dementia swirl about Biden. Dukakis's gubernatorial pardon of Willie Horton raised the 'law and order' issue. With riots andcivil disorder escalating, 'law and order' may very likely become a major issue in 2020," Pietrusza wrote in an email.
He continued: "Dukakis fared poorly debating Bush. If Biden stumbles on stage (or wherever he may debate from), the fallout could prove much worse, given the rumblings of his cognitive decline."
