Given the close result, was the 2020 environment really that bad?

[Tekken_Guy]

A common line you hear regarding the 2020 election is that it was the worst political environment in decades for an incumbent political party. Yet as we all know, Trump and the GOP only narrowly lost and actually.

So was the environment really as bad as it appeared at the time, given the result? What did the Democrats do to nearly blow the 2020 in this supposedly horrible political environment? And let's not resort to anything about polarization.

It was, but Biden failed to actually campaign too seriously.

Trump largely ended up in the same place Hillary did, and Biden pretty much ended up being able to win by doing nothing...just like Trump in 2016. We really can't be sure what difference moving election day forward or back one week would've done.


A serious campaign with an actual direction would've easily flipped NC and Florida and moved the complete Midwest by as much as MN moved.

On the flip side Trump ran a pretty atrocious campaign. Had his campaign been half as good as his 2016 one he likely would have gotten a second term. If he was able to remain disciplined he could have won the house back for the GOP.

[Tekken_Guy]

It was, but it didn't become bad until June or July of 2020. For 6-8 months prior to that point, I honestly thought Trump was gonna win.

Why do you think it was June or July as opposed to April or may?

If you'll remember the country initially started to rally behind Trump in the early days of the pandemic, and it was around June/July that it became clear that he screwed the pooch in dealing with the pandemic (and that he was warned about it as early as January), and it was also at that time that he dumped a can a gas on the fire that was race relations in the US in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd.

In short, Trump could've won, but he shot himself (and in turn the country) in the foot one too many times and lost it in the end.

And then lockdowns and riots/Defund the Police happened and that shifted a lot of voters back towards the GOP.