You people are insane. This pandemic has put the entire country on its knees and Republicans are going to get wiped out left and right. The entire party has covered for and enabled Trump since day 1 and they're dug-in with him now, especially Mitch.
Keep in mind the virus hasn't even peaked yet in places like KY, AL, and MS. Everyone thinks this is the second wave that has hit Alabama & other rural places this past week, but it isn't. This is still the first wave. NYC is not the entire country. The rural South is about to get completely wrecked by this thing, and everyone is opening up their states like a bunch of morons. McConnell and all of them will be held to account in November. This will be a toss-up plain and simple.
What evidence do you have for this? Trump's approval ratings have receded somewhat since the pandemic began, but they are still hovering in the lower to mid 40s, where they have been throughout most of his presidency. The Republican base is blaming Democrats and the mainstream media for what they perceive as an "overblown" crisis, and their staunch support for Trump has only been reinforced in the meantime. Moreover, current polls suggest that while Trump is trailing Biden, he is nowhere close to getting "blown out". Like I've said before, this country is too polarized for Trump to lose by a landslide margin.
I've also explained before that Beshear's victory last year in Kentucky doesn't tell us anything about this race, and McGrath is not the strongest candidate Democrats could have put up against McConnell. She'll be lucky to come within single digits, much less win. And if even "Generic Democrat" cannot beat McConnell, then nobody can. As of right now, this race is still Safe Republican.
Except actual data tells us that it's toss-up or lean-Republican at most.
As for the rest of your post, which is an opinion -- all I can do is remind you that unemployment is at Great Depression levels already, and the vast majority of the country hasn't been scratched by the coronavirus. It's only just now starting to ramp up in rural areas. In two weeks the numbers are going to explode and bring every state to its knees because of idiotic decision-making by leadership to open things back up.
As for what the Republican base believes? It's irrelevant. The base has shrunk so much it's not representative of anything beyond former tea party fanatics and neonazis. Elections are almost always decided by the middle and that's still going to be the case in November when the country resembles West Africa circa late 2014.
The Republican base is a minority, but to say that they will have no influence on the election, is in my view a mistake. Trump's supporters are energized to vote for him, and they will turnout no matter what. I would also say that it is erroneous to describe them as all being "tea party fanatics" and "neonazis"; you can count among them many of the Obama-Trump voters, a good number of whom voted Democratic in downballot races, both in 2016 and 2018, and are yet returning to Trump. I think such blanket appellations being applied to people serves only to intensify political polarization, regardless of which side they come from.
I do not deny the economic impacts which the coronavirus pandemic and the associated lockdowns will have upon the election. Nor will I deny that we may be faced with a potential second wave. But if you believe that these conditions will cause Trump to lose by double digits and result in Biden flipping hundreds of counties across the country, then you are sorely mistaken. The Great Recession back in 2008 gave Obama a decisive victory, but McCain still garnered 45% of the popular vote and won over twenty states. And Trump's controversies from last time did not prevent him from getting into the White House.
And as we also know, the urban-rural divide has only intensified in recent years, with the 2018 midterms and the subsequent special elections being proof of that. Trump's long-ago remark that he could "shoot someone on 6th Avenue and not lose any voters" remains relevant now. Finally, if you look at the RCP poll average (
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_biden-6247.html), you'll notice that Biden is leading right now, as I stated before. However, in most of the polls his lead is within single digits, and in most of them he is not garnering any higher of a percentage than what Hillary Clinton received last time. The polls indicate that if the election were held right now, Biden would win, but it would still be a relatively close race. Much can change over the next several months, but I doubt that any changes we see will produce a major political realignment. The country isn't there, and Biden is not the candidate who would be able to deliver such a change.
