...do you have to lose? is a question candidate Trump asked black voters during the 2016 election campaign. As the 2020 election nears it behooves us all to ponder this question. The obvious answer for many people is a president who lies so much that we have learnt to expect the truth to be anything else, usually the opposite of what he says. Unfortunately the more serious consequence of his lying is the loss of credibility of agencies under his purview. How many people will hesitate to take the COVID vaccine if it becomes available before the election knowing he is capable of coercing the FDA into approving it before it has been properly tested? His propensity for lying and acting in his own personal and political interest is now so well-known that even his supporters have stopped trying to explain or defend it.
How about losing a president who has (mis)handled the pandemic like this one has. Maybe 200,000 thousand of us would not have died if not for his ignorance, arrogance, mistrust of science and dismantling of measures aimed at just this kind of disaster put in place before he arrived on the scene. After all, many countries have had much better morbidity/mortality numbers than the US. Even "s**t-hole countries" have fared better. Meanwhile our president tells the world he has handled it better than anyone else. Talk about alternate facts!
What about the economy? The president's claim that it is the best it has ever been rings hollow when you consider the unemployment rate and the fact that, for the first time ever, the national debt exceeds the annual GDP. As usual, Republicans, ever reluctant to take responsibility for their policies, are quick blame the pandemic. Talk about the party of personal responsibility and fiscal conservatism. Where are their deficit hawks who are ever ready to screech during a Democratic administration? Not to mix my metaphors, but I'm sure they will come out of hibernation if Biden wins the election - even before he is inaugurated.
Maybe we could lose a president who does everything he can to undermine confidence in the election process just before the election while, at the same time, doing everything in his power to ensure chaos. Worse, he and his enablers in the Senate are rushing to fill the vacancy at the Supreme Court, just in case the election ends up in the Court as it did in 2000.
If a Democratic president had done any (never mind all) of the above, you can be sure Republicans would be screaming murder and calling the wrath of God down on her/him. If middle-of-the-roaders vote as they should this year, they could deliver Divine justice.