Weekend Update: The Coming Autumn of Chaos

With a methodically unhinged and entirely unscrupulous incumbent candidate, the opportunities for chaos in the next two plus months are almost infinite.  With the end of covid crisis support, millions of unemployed face financial chaos.  Covid continues to spread and kill.  And Trump continues to foment violence in response to racial conflict.  And that's without factoring in the rest of the world, and the continuing fire season in the West, and hurricane season and heat waves as well, as the Climate Crisis deepens.

 But there are at least three nodes of chaos that are at least predictable. By predictable I mean they could happen.  Personally I believe the chances right now are under 50% for any of them.  But with a coin flip probability, it may pay to be prepared for them.

1. On September 30, the federal government's authority to meet its debts runs out.  If Congress does not act by then, the federal government will shortly afterwards shut down.  For weeks it seemed as if the White House would couple the continuing resolution to fund the government with the stalled covid crisis relief package, in order to force the Democrats to drop most of their provisions, including help for the states, for testing and for the Post Office.

A shutdown would sow all kinds of chaos in the middle of a campaign.  Perhaps recognizing that Republicans are at least as vulnerable, it was announced Thursday that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin informally agreed with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to decouple these issues and to pass a straight continuing resolution (Democrats have always advocated this, despite the leverage it might have given them.)  But Trump has blown up agreements like this before, and he has plenty of time to do it again.

2. The October Surprise. On Wednesday it was reported that the CDC is advising states to be ready for a covid vaccine as early as late October.  This is far earlier than medical authorities have predicted a vaccine would be ready.  But Trump has been deep-sixing actual experts and lining up sycophants running federal policy, so he may well be desperate enough as a candidate to force a vaccine forward, whether it is safe or works, or not.  Doctors have pushed back on this but...if he does, what will be the response?  Who will trust it?  What effect will it have on the election days later?

3. Election Day. Trump and his Sycophant-General continue to vilify voting by mail, to the point that on Wednesday Trump urged his voters to vote twice--once in person, once by mail--and see if they get caught.  If they do, they could go to jail, which doesn't bother him because in a real country he would go to jail for advocating this.

But what concerns some who study voting stats is the emerging stark divide in how people expect to vote: Almost 90% of R voters say they will vote in person on election day, and some 31% of Democratic voters say they intend to vote by mail. In many states, including some key ones, those mail-in votes won't be counted by election night.  So some raise the spectre of an apparent Trump landslide on election night, and a Democratic landslide when all the votes are counted, perhaps weeks later. In a real country this would just thrill the media and test everyone else's nerves, but Trump seems clearly to be setting up the likelihood that he will not accept the final outcome if this is how it plays out.

In the end, when all the votes are counted, the winner is the winner.  But some fear the unstable period between election night and the resolution, filled as it may be with law suits and court decisions.  Chaos could erupt in serious violence.

This could happen.  I'd guess that it probably won't, at least not in full.  Some 70% of Democrats plan to vote in person by election day, and that number is likely to go up as these fears become known.  Some states with majority mail-in ballots like CA and northwestern states won't be close --their outcome for Biden will end up being the same as on election day. A Biden landslide could even be apparent on election night.

Even if Trump is apparently ahead on election night and tries to claim victory, the forewarned media is unlikely to cooperate. Still, the AlwaysTrumpers could cause trouble, and Trump and his minions are likely to foment violence if they can.  So in this scenario the autumn of chaos could be followed by the winter of even more chaos, lasting into next year.

All this is outside the unpredictable causes of chaos in the campaign period, particularly around the debates.  It was revealed that Homeland Security suppressed a July intelligence bulletin warning of Russian interference in the election by a campaign calling into question Joe Biden's mental health.  At the same time, Republicans were calling into question Joe Biden's mental health.  This is another case of unprecedented outrages and profound illegalities becoming crystal clear, with no consequences.  Yet.

Will any of this make any difference?  Voters seem to have largely made up their minds, and vast majorities say nothing new will sway them.  (As for voter enthusiasm, at least one poll shows Biden voters more intent on voting than Trump's.)   Experts are straining to find ways in which the outcome could be altered by shifts of a few votes in key places, which of course is what happened last time.  But most analysts have concluded that after the conventions, Biden remains ahead by essentially the same margins.  Eric Levitz of New York Magazine writes he's in an even stronger position.

His article contains two observations I found to be of particular interest.  He quotes a tweet from Sahil Kapir comparing CNN polls in early September 2016 and 2020.  In 2016, CNN had Trump leading Clinton by 2 points, and Trump leading Clinton on the issue of who is more honest and trustworthy by 15 points.  In 2020, Biden leads Trump by 8 points, and Biden leads Trump on who is more honest and trustworthy by 17 points.

Autumn chaos, if it occurs, may be dangerous and will be at least uncomfortable and anxiety-producing.  But the underlying levels of support for the candidates haven't changed (despite some differences and discrepancies in state polls.)  And then there's an even more interesting statistic in the Levitz piece, which led me to Nate Silver: if Biden wins the popular vote by 3.5%, Trump has no more than a 50% chance of victory in the electoral votes.  If Biden wins by his current average in likely voter models (above 7 points), he has a 99% chance of being elected President.  Even at 4.5%, the statistical chance is almost 90%.  We're still looking at a landslide.