This is my Facebook post which I'm recording here instead, as it was apparently blocked by the new political censors and filters:
Just 10 days out, my 2020 electoral prediction: a resounding Biden victory, but no landslide in the electoral college; Democrats take a narrow (51-53 seat) Senate majority and further cushion their advantage (~240 seats) in the House.
However, a huge caveat: a less than 3 percent margin of victory in critical swing states that Biden might carry - i.e. Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina, Arizona, Minnesota, Georgia - means that recounts will be necessary and no winner will be declared on Election Night.
Polls showing persistent low double-digit leads for Biden significantly understate Trump's support: the former VP is likely to take the national popular vote by no more than 6 to 7 points - which would still be an unequivocal repudiation of Trumpism.
The ultimate very high voter turnout - possibly exceeding 65 or even 70 percent - will itself be a powerful reaffirmation of the integrity of American democracy: if nothing else, at least tens of millions more American citizens than in living memory seem to be voting as though their lives depend on it.
Unfortunately for Republicans, such high turnout is to be feared: while they can be sure that enthusiasm for Trump and Trumpism is even greater than it was among their base in either '16 or the '18 midterm, the much higher overall numbers of voters - including first-time voters who were only recently registered - can only signify that Democrats have made even more headway convincing lukewarm and cynical younger and minority voters that casting their ballot isn't a matter of preference or convenience, but of life and death.
So if Biden wins nationally by over 5 percentage points (which could still turn out to be a conservative forecast), Trump's chances in the electoral college already look quite grim: the three swing states - Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania - that he won by a combined fewer than 80,000 popular votes in '16, but whose total 78 electoral votes handed him the White House, are now leaning blue. Losing even one of them - not to mention potentially Iowa, Ohio, and Arizona - would be a major blow, even if not many electoral votes were at stake (i.e. Iowa just 6, Arizona 11 and Wisconsin 10).
Biden's therefore already looking at a huge success on Election Night: he won't be able to declare victory, but will have 310 to 320 electoral votes nearly certainly in the bag (pending recounts). This will be a remarkable achievement for a guy turning 78 years old a mere 17 days later - older than Ronald Reagan was when he left the Oval Office in 1989.
Trump's still counting on what carried him four years ago: his insurgent anti-establishment credentials, his fighting spirit and killer instincts and energy. What's different now is that, while his base appreciates these qualities more than ever, the vast majority of moderates and independents probably find these to be liabilities and not assets as the Covid pandemic continues to rage. To put it bluntly: his zeal and toughness are practically worthless against an invisible microbe - except to invite getting infected with it over and over until immunity (both individual and herd) are achieved, possibly years down the line.
Of course, there's going to be plenty of drama if Biden's margin of victory is less than 2-3 points in swing states, especially in the contested Midwest: Trump will leverage all his residual powers of the executive branch - even as a lame duck in all but official acknowledgement - to contest the results within those states. The problem is, to the vast majority of Americans the vote will have been perceived as fair and square - and he will find himself clinging to power by hyping up, even more vehemently, his already stale narrative of "deep state" "witch hunts."
That, in turn, will seal his doom: instead of continuing to be president as the Coronavirus (almost definitely) worsens in both spread and lethality as the weather gets considerably colder after November 3, he'll find himself chomping at the bit to avoid leaving the White House on January 20. That's a good two and a half months of horrible melodrama just when the country needs genuine national leadership to navigate what will probably be the grimmest chapter to date of the Covid plague and its socioeconomic ill effects.
Will Trump mellow under such circumstances? Not a chance in Hell: quite the contrary, emboldened by an increasingly rabid white nationalist base, he'll double down and dig deeper into conspiracy-mongering resistance to the "deep state" and its accessories - even if it costs more lives and livelihoods - because by that point it'll be nothing less than an existential Apocalyptic "End of America" prospect staring him and his most devoted followers in the face. Their very defiance, however, will finally isolate them from sensible conservative Americans who've given them so much cover for so long: when the chips are finally down, the GOP itself will turn them in to the lions of historical judgment.
To conclude: Of course, a finally defeated Trump can only be assured to pardon himself before he leaves office - but even here, look out for some drama after the electoral college results of a Biden victory are certified in December, clearing the way for a Democratic 46th presidency a month later.
Because whether it's Biden pardoning him or Trump pardoning himself, that mere offer - not even the act itself - will be a vindication of the Left's charge that the president is a crook or even criminal.
Even Trump will have to realize by then that he's simply outgunned and outfunded - that the combined cartel of Silicon Valley and Wall Street will absolutely crush whatever lawsuits he can muster against the Clinton-Obama-Biden Swamp (including of course Jeffrey Epstein's associates) with countersuits against his own shell companies and illicit offshore bank accounts. He'll raise a huge fuss about all of it and publicly blackmail the "deep state" one last time (at least), but it'll peter out so quickly and so completely that, when all is said and done, his whole phony war with the Deep State (i.e. his desperate ploy to cover his own derriere) will be reduced to a minor memory in most Americans' cubbyholes of long-term brain storage.
For most sincere Republicans and conservatives, in just three months' time they should be counting their lucky stars that the Trump era didn't last any longer than it did - and that they got the only thing they could've ever expected from it, namely a retrenched judiciary system with a secure conservative Supreme Court majority for the coming generation. For me personally (as a lifelong Republican), I'm already very much at peace with this.
