US Election Notebook: Blue Tsunami or Red Wave?

If energy alone determined whether a politician wins or loses, then Donald Trump would win this election hands down. While Joe Biden stayed at home this week, Trump held rallies in Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, California, Pennsylvania and North Carolina and he is (somehow) tweeting 114 per cent more than he was at this time in 2016. Not bad for someone who was recently struggling for breath.

But if this is a land of rugged self-sufficiency, it is also a God-fearing nation. And so it was that America’s presidential candidates sought the endorsement of the Almighty this week. While Trump was busy securing a prophecy of victory in Las Vegas — Sin City —  where he was photographed dropping a wad of twenties onto the church collection plate, faith leaders prayed for Biden so that he could find “the capacity to step up and do this job”. Both men will need all the divine help they can get.

Still, failing lords spiritual there are always lords temporal. The New York Post continued publishing new reports about the Hunter Biden story this week (despite having its reach suppressed by Facebook) while the New York Times uncovered news of Trump’s dodgy business dealings in China. Perhaps Thomas Jefferson was right: “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle”.

Of course, this week Biden also had the help of his former boss, Barack Obama, that “articulate and bright and clean and nice-looking guy,” (as he once called him). In Pennsylvania, Obama gave a fiery denunciation of the Trump presidency. That state has twenty electoral college votes and is rated as FiveThirtyEight’s most-likely tipping-point state. Just how much this makes up for Biden’s muddled position on fracking in the state which sits on all that Utica Shale remains to be seen. As goes Pennsylvania, so goes the nation.

On to Tennessee where Biden finally surfaced for the final presidential debate. As you’ve heard, it was a far more orderly affair than the previous clash, something that can be attributed to an effective moderator, muted mics and Trump himself, who was quite visibly biting his tongue. To paraphrase Tennessean Elvis Presley, there was “a little more conversation and a little less action”. Still, it’s quite something when a significant chunk of a presidential debate is spent on both candidates’ allegations of foreign collusion.

Just how much these debates have altered the course of this election is another matter — fifty million Americans (more than the entire UK electorate) have already voted and there is little evidence so far to suggest that voters’ attitudes have changed much after these debates. The first post-debate polls are varied and both sides have claimed victory. Nonetheless, it is revealing that an important focus group of undecided voters described Trump as “poised” and “surprisingly presidential” and Biden as “vague” and “grandfatherly”.

So are we looking at a “Blue Tsunami” or a “Red Wave”? The polls have certainly narrowed and Biden is actually underperforming Hillary Clinton, which is probably why his own campaign manager warned Democrats that “Trump can still win”. Perhaps even more importantly, Trump cookies are outselling Biden cookies in Ohio, an amateur poll by a bakery which has successfully predicted the last nine presidential elections. Oh, and according to Betfair, Trump’s chances of winning are double what they were in 2016.

But with just over a week to go until election day, the outcome of this contest is far from predictable. Perhaps we are still awaiting the real October Surprise. Only this week, the FBI revealed that Russia and Iran are interfering in this election. Trump said that he would leave the country if he loses and over two hundred protests have already been planned in the event that he contests the result.

It’s just another week in American politics, and if that sounds like a Hollywood movie it’s because it is. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, which features Trump’s personal lawyer in a compromising position with a young female, is out today. And there’s not long to wait until the next blockbuster moment comes along.