By Kent R. Kroeger (NuQum.com, January 29, 2020)

Last Sunday night, CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta comforted his audience by noting that this season’s common flu is a far deadlier to Americans than the Wuhan coronavirus — known as 2019-nCov — which is still concentrated mostly in China.

Similarly, on NPR’s Morning Edition on Monday, a Chinese epidemiologist comforted listeners by noting that 2019-nCov was not as lethal as 2003’s severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronavirus which killed 774 people worldwide and infected 8,098 people.

When asked yesterday on the The Hill’s Rising podcast, hosted by Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, about whether Americans should be worried about 2019-nCov, former CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden was slightly more alarmist:

“This is a very serious outbreak. It is spreading widely. It appears to be more infectious than the SARS virus was in 2003 and, though it is somewhat less deadly so far than SARS, it is still far more deadly than a mild virus.”

Somewhat less deadly than SARS? Far more deadly than a mild virus? You can be forgiven if you are not sure how concerned you need to be about 2019-nCov. With only 5 known cases in the U.S. — and no deaths, so far — I would not blame any American for ignoring this newest pandemic scare.

But that might be a mistake in this case. The data on 2019-nCov being released daily by the World Health Organization (WHO) is forming a picture of the virus that is trending in a direction significantly more serious than SARS. Figures 1 and 2 (below) show the current trajectory of 2019-nCov relative to SARS in terms of reported cases and fatalities. Each data series plotted below start from the date WHO started tracking these viruses on their public website.

As you can see, from Day 1 both viruses start from a similar position, but over the course of 2019-nCov’s first week it is already significantly higher than SARS in reported cases (2,798 versus 421) and fatalities (80 versus 14).

Figure 1: Comparing SARS and 2019-nCov (Reported Cases)

Figure 2: Comparing SARS and 2019-nCov (Fatalities)

Admittedly, we only have one week of data for 2019-nCov and many factors that will determine its final outcome are yet to be determined (e.g., vaccine, effectiveness of gov’t intervention programs, etc.). Moreover, the WHO could be getting these higher numbers for 2019-nCov because of China’s experience with SARS which may have led to improved, faster diagnostic methods and a higher propensity among individuals with symptoms to receive immediate medical care.

That would be the good news story. The bad news story would be that the steeper trajectory for 2019-nCov — even at this early stage — is indicative of a much more infectious virus than SARS that will, despite having a lower mortality rate, potentially kill far more people.

Already, as of 29 January 2020, Johns Hopkins researchers are reporting 6,057 confirmed cases of 2019-nCov and 132 confirmed deaths on their daily tracking website — which tends to be more up-to-date than the WHO daily situation report. If the Johns Hopkins numbers are accurate, 2019-nCov has already infected 75 percent of the final infection number for SARS, and while 2019-nCov has a long way to go to reach SARS’ fatality numbers, at the current pace 2019-nCov will reach it in 6 to 7 weeks.

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My intent is not to trigger excessive alarm over 2019-nCov. At this early juncture, it does not look like a major pandemic on the scale of the Spanish Flu of 1918–1919 — which killed 50 million people worldwide — or even the Hong Kong Flu of 1968–1969 that killed 1 million people worldwide, including 34, 000 in the U.S.

In fact, the national and international news media should be commended for their restraint in covering 2019-nCov — at least for now. That most of the news stories so far acknowledge the early nature of this current outbreak and make a strong effort to put it into historical context is a positive reflection on the journalists covering the story.

For example, CNN’s Dr. Gupta saying the current common flu season is a bigger threat to American lives than 2019-nCov is an important comparison. This U.S. flu season alone (2019–2020), the low estimate is that over 8,200 people have already died and 140,000 have been hospitalized, according the Center for Disease Control. Furthermore, at least 15,000,000 million people have contracted the flu and between 7 and 10 million have visited a doctor for the flu. These numbers still dwarf anything related to 2019-nCov. [Quick math: The U.S. mortality rate so far for this flu season is 8,200 divided by 15,000,000…or around 55 deaths for every 100,000 flu cases.]

But Dr. Gupta’s calming assurance that 2019-nCov isn’t an immediate, dire threat also runs the risk of making the general public too complacent at the exact time they should be taking precautions (e.g., cancel travel plans to highly-infected areas, limit interactions with people recently traveling in those areas, etc.).

Of course, it may already be too late to change the trajectory of 2019-nCov as its die may have been cast.

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How bad could 2019-nCov get?

Epidemiologists rightfully exercise caution when citing any single number regarding the lethality of 2019-nCov. Viruses can evolve during a single outbreak and later mortality rates can differ significantly from earlier rates.

But we do have early mortality estimates for 2019-nCov. As of 27 January 2020, the WHO reported 2,798 confirmed cases of 2019-nCov and 80 deaths, which is a 3 percent mortality rate. However, according to Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, M.D., this is likely an over-estimate as it is hard to know how many people currently have the virus but are not showing symptoms or have not received medical attention.

In comparison, SARS had a mortality rate of 10 percent (8,098 confirmed cases with 774 people dying) and the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), since 2012, has 2,494 confirmed cases and has killed 858 people (a 34 percent mortality rate!). Interestingly, MERS is still active with 12 new cases diagnosed in November 2019.

The deadliest flu virus of the past two centuries was the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918–1919 that killed 50 million people worldwide with an estimated mortality rate of between 10 and 20 percent. What made the Spanish Flu so deadly was its infection rate of around 50 percent (# of those infected / Population Size).

In contrast, per Johns Hopkins infection numbers, the current 2019-nCov infection rate in China’s Hubei province is about 10 infections for every 100,000 people. Of course, this cumulative number is going to move up (probably dramatically) in the next few months. The point is simply that 2019-nCov is not even near the magnitude of the Spanish Flu. In fact, it is substantially less infectious than the common flu viruses now spreading across the U.S., which have a current combined infection rate of 4 percent That number will also rise over time as we are only half way through this year’s flu season.

Outside of the coronaviruses, the average Ebola virus outbreak has a mortality rate of around 50 percent, according to the WHO. Most recently, the 2014–2016 Ebola outbreak that hit primarily West Africa generated 28,652 confirmed cases and caused 11,325 fatalities (a 40 percent mortality rate).

So there you go — 2019-nCov isn’t Ebola or the Spanish Flu, so rest easy.

Well, not so fast. Given that the China’s National Health Commission Minister, Ma Xiaowei, said on Sunday that the incubation period for 2019-nCoV could range from one to 14 days, it is obvious the situation remains too fluid for making strong forecasts about this virus.

The reality is, the range of possibilities for 2019-nCov’s final outcome is still broad. If the current numbers are a significant under-count of the true infectiousness of 2019-nCov, or if the virus evolves into something even more infectious, worst-case scenarios start looking more plausible and we’ll see a final death count closer to 10,000 than the 774 deaths during the SARS outbreak.

On the other hand, scientists are moving on a 2019-nCov vaccine at a record pace, thereby raising the possibility of a vaccine being deployed early in 2019-nCov’s evolution, thereby stunting its impact. Other factors as well, including the effectiveness of Chinese government’s mitigation efforts which will most certainly play a large role in determining final outcomes.

The bottom line is, outside of China and its neighbors, there is no reason to be too anxious about 2019-nCov. It is much too early for exhibiting excessive caution. That said, I wouldn’t travel to China’s Hubei province in the near future and I might even consider wearing a face mask if I was doing any international airline travel. But, beyond that, a far more important action you can take is to protect against the common flu already in this country. It is far, far more likely you will contract and die from that than contracting and dying from 2019-nCov.

• K.R.K.

Send comments to: kroeger98@yahoo.com

By Kent R. Kroeger (NuQum.com, January 24, 2020)

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This is not a movie or TV series review. However, I will be revealing key plot twists from the latest Disney Star Wars installment — The Rise of Skywalker. If you have not seen this movie, but intend to, consider yourself warned.

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“When it comes to fans, it is a fan’s right to have whatever opinion they want to have, and people are going to be upset, especially when you’re talking about books or games, because you’re never going to be the exact person who they had in their head, or who they played on The Witcher 3, for example. I don’t necessarily consider that toxic, I just consider that passionate.” — Actor Henry Cavill (‘Geralt’ in Netflix’s Witcher series) interviewed on YouTube’s Jake’s Takes.

Actor Henry Cavill, best known for his portrayal of ‘Superman,’ has taken his share of criticism from fans and critics.

Having depicted the comic book realm’s most iconic superhero, Cavill understands the importance of fan expectations when these characters are rendered on the big screen. The source material for Superman alone consists of over 1,000 separate comic book issues since DC Comics’ Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster debuted Krypton’s most famous refugee in 1939 — not to mention the late-Christopher Reeves much loved movie versions of the Man of Steel in the 1970s and 80s.

So when asked about what some entertainment journalists call ‘toxic fans,’ Cavill surprised many of us when he calmly dismissed the derogatory term as mostly a media creation meant to marginalize ‘passionate’ fans by linking them to a small, unrepresentative group of pernicious outliers who are motivated, to varying degrees, by racism, misogyny and whatever else that comes with white male privilege.

[Spoiler alert: Cavill nails it when he says passionate fans should not be smeared this way.]

If the reactions within the Twitter and Podcast community are indicative, Cavill’s stock will stay on a fast rise among sci-fan/fantasy fans — which may explain why the ratings for his newest fantasy-genre project — The Witcher (airing now on Netflix) — have been so strong, despite mixed reviews from critics. Further evidence that mainstream media critics often can’t be trusted, especially when they don’t bother to watch all available episodes for a new series before they review it — as was the case with Entertainment Weekly’s Kristen Baldwin and Darren Franich in their review of The Witcher.

My own review of The Witcher, produced by Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, is based on all eight episodes:

The Witcher requires significant cognitive effort when first following its complex narrative structure; but, by the fourth episode, the investment is well worth it. It is a brilliantly crafted TV series. Moreover, Henry Cavill overcomes the ‘Excessive Attractiveness Bias’ (EAB), which assumes good-looking actors can’t really act, and energizes one of the most multi-faceted, substantive characters found on TV today.

End of my TV review.

Fans of the The Witcher book series had expectations for the Netflix version; and, based on the early audience returns, the show as met or exceeded those expectations.

The success of Netflix’s The Witcher is a happy story for its devoted fans, as well as for those who are new to the series.

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A not-so-happy story has been fan reaction to the Disney Stars Wars trilogy, recently capped by its third installment — The Rise of Skywalker (TROS)— a bad movie by any objective measure of competent film making, but still relatively enjoyable to long time Star Wars fans like myself.

Unfortunately, the J. J. Abrams-directed TROS has brought the ‘toxic fan’ label back to the fore as thousands of passionate Star Wars fans — loosely organized as the Fandom Menace, first emerging with the release of Disney’s The Last Jedi (TLJ) after it unleashed an onslaught of fan criticism — inundated social media with rumors and sharp criticisms of TROS before its December 20th release date (including an August 2019 Reddit post revealing its entire plot!).

Perhaps to stunt the potential negative influence of the nebulous Fandom Menace on TROS’ box office receipts, various corporate media outlets proffered stories charging that the Fandom Menace was, in fact, a thinly-organized, disparate cartel of “unhinged” Star Wars fans motivated by a noxious cocktail of social media-fed paranoia, bigotry and general ill intent. Otherwise known today as ‘trolls.’

From BuzzFeed’s Ryan Broderick:

“The Star Wars fandom is now a nesting doll of speculation, paranoia, and anxiety about corporate overreach — growing more insular and reactionary in the eight years since Disney took over Star Wars.

The misinformation and anger inside the Star Wars fandom is what happens after decades of corporatization and anonymous decentralized networking. It is a glimpse of a future in which anxieties over the motives of the megacorporations that drive our culture — down to our very mythologies — set off conflicts between warring information tribes who inhabit their own artificial narratives. What began with small but vocal insurgent online communities like 4chan or the alt-right has now come for the mainstream.”

Esquire’s Matt Miller dog walked his readers into believing the swelling rise of diversity in Hollywood films is powering most of the Fandom Menace’s rage against TROS:

“A lot has changed since audiences first saw Luke Skywalker gaze off into that binary sunset. Hollywood is slowly, too slowly, becoming a place that embraces performers and stories of all genders, sexual orientations, and races. There’s still a lot of work to do, but progress will not be halted no matter how passionately, how loudly trolls cry online. Abrams’s The Rise of Skywalker will not reverse the progress Disney made when it put a lightsaber in Daisy Ridley’s hands. And for that, fans will still be mad online. They’re not angry with Star Wars in particular, they’re angry at a changing world — one in which their perspective isn’t the only one that matters. I say let them yell, let them whine. Abrams is pissing off the right people.”

The problem with Miller’s beautiful admonition of the Fandom Menace — as with other screeds against passionate Star Wars fans on social media — is that it is unfettered to actual facts.

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In one attempt to bring data to the problem, Washington Post guest columnist and University of Rochester political science professor, Bethany Lacina, systematically investigated online Star Wars-related posts in order to describe the characteristics and motivations of vocal Star Wars fans.:

America’s most iconic movie franchise, Star Wars, has been denounced by the alt-right for unflattering representation of men, casting to pander to diversity and leftist moralizing. That discussion of gender and race in Star Wars went mainstream after the December 2017 release of “The Last Jedi.” The movie has the franchise’s first nonwhite female lead, portrays an elderly Luke Skywalker confronting his failures and leaves the Jedi order in the hands of a young woman.

How did Professor Lacina determine that the alt-right was behind the most toxic components of a tsunami of fan criticism that met the release of The Last Jedi? By looking at Twitter traffic, of course (sigh):

I compared general Star Wars-related tweets to tweets about Kelly Marie Tran, the actress harassed on Instagram, or about Rose Tico, her “Last Jedi” character. The proportion of tweets with offensive language doubled from 6 to 12 percent — and hate speech jumped 60 percent, rising from 1.1 percent to 1.8 percent of all tweets.

Fans complain about Star Wars’ first nonwhite female lead in more degrading language than they complain about other parts of the franchise.

It is not inherently racist or sexist to dislike Star Wars or “The Last Jedi.” The point of the comparison is that tweeting about these movies turns belligerent when it comes to race and gender.

The online-based harassment experienced by Kelly Marie Tran (‘Rose Tico’) after the release of TLJ is despicable. Anybody involved in such a deed has a rusty iron maiden reserved for them in hell.

But how does the fact that a few racists and misogynists exploited Twitter’s broad social media platform to spread hate (collectively summarized by Prof. Lacina as the ‘alt-right’) relate to the far greater number of passionate Star Wars fans — the Fandom Menace — who simply hated the movie because it tossed George Lucas’ Skywalker-centered Star Wars narrative into the fire?

Alt-right is not a well-defined political label and Professor Lacina’s operationalization of the concept certainly doesn’t pass empirical muster. Without knowing everyone’s political orientation in her Twitter-based study, how could Professor Lacina possibly such an inferential leap of faith? By her own admission, it isn’t possible, and when she could measure political orientations, she found significant negativity expressed on Twitter also comes from the ‘cultural left’:

Offensive tweets and hate speech did not come only from those identified as politically right wing. Most posts are too generic to infer political views. But I did find that such belligerence also comes from the cultural left. Female podcasters, in particular, are attacked for not supporting diversity and gender equality strongly enough.

Most people who tweet about Star Wars are congenial and skeptical about “trolls.” But as with other cultural icons — whether it’s an all-female “Ghostbusters” or NFL players kneeling during the national anthem — a significant few respond with anger and hate when gender and race expectations change. We know that from the numbers.

While Professor Lacina does not explicitly lump all passionate Star Wars fans into the “significant few” who account for the offensive or hateful online speech, she did not go out of her way to disentangle them either.

To the contrary, how could anyone be blamed after reading the many anti-Fandom Menace stories over the past few years if they concluded this loose confederation Star Wars fans are just a bunch of white, male crybabies?

Never mind that Lacina’s own numbers, unwittingly, confirm the opposite conclusion: the overwhelming majority of passionate online Star Wars fans are ‘congenial’ and do not infect their critiques with offensive or hate-filled rhetoric. And, even in the low number of cases when a Disney Star Wars critic’s political orientation can be discerned through their Twitter profile or tweets, it turns out extreme lefties are as noxious as extreme righties in the Twitterverse.

Anyone that’s spent 30 minutes on Twitter knows that.

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Regrettably, in the Age of Fake News, such dereliction of journalistic duty by the likes of Broderick, Miller, and Lacina goes largely unnoticed as long as it reinforces prejudices pre-approved by one of the two political tribes and their allies.

If you dare articulate — publicly — the opinion that the Disney Star Wars movie scripts were molded out of the intellectual equivalent of poop, you must be a misogynist, racist or both, according to the basic argument Broderick, Miller and others offer their readers.

Rarely do these anti-Fandom Menace jeremiads mention that the Disney Star Wars movies, while visually breathtaking (the Rian Johnson-directed TLJ is jaw-dropping in its beauty), are storytelling monstrosities that do far more to turn off longtime fans of George Lucas’s groundbreaking trilogy than they do to create a new generation of Star Wars devotees. [My teenage son and his friends are more invested in Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi from Lucas’ last two prequel movies than they are in the original trilogy — which my son thinks has ‘bad special effects’.]

From the collective minds at Disney-owned LucasFilm, Han Solo turned out to be a feckless, deadbeat dad who gets killed by his son, Ben Solo (aka. Kylo Ren), for reasons the filmmakers never bothered to show us (it was explained in a throwaway line in one of three movies, I am told). That is shitty storytelling.

J. J. Abrams (affectionately called Jar Jar Abrams within the Fandom Menace) also thought it was a smart strategic move to never allow the Fab Four (Luke, Leia, Han, and Chewbacca) to get back together for at least one scene in The Force Awakens. Instead, in one scene, he has General Leia Organa ignore Chewbacca, just arrived from a bloody battle with the First Order, as if he was there to fix the high-speed internet connection on Resistance Base D’Qar.

Fine, J. J., if you and Disney thought it was a good marketing strategy to openly reject the deep affection the legion of Star Wars fans harbor for the original characters, go for it. But, in doing so, perhaps…maybe…you should have created memorable characters in their place. Instead, you offered moviegoers three poorly-formed (and very forgettable) characters that will never be the stuff of movie legend.

The names Rey, Finn and Poe are never going to be the cultural reference points for the current generation the way the names Luke, Han and Leia were for my generation — and for generations after that through our children and grandchildren.

[As a matter of fact, my friends and I — fitting the classic nerd profile as defined in the late 1970s and early 80s— considered Leia the most competent member of that trio and cringed for actor Carrie Fisher when she wore the “bikini” in Return of the Jedi. So, I discount charges of misogyny when weaved into any explanation for why so many Star Wars fans are disappointed in the Disney Star Wars movies.]

All Abrams, Johnson, and LucasFilm President Kathleen Kennedy had to do is make three great Star Wars movies and this whole Fandom Menace brouhaha would have been stillborn. But they didn’t.

Instead, they jettisoned the original Lucas-created myth for a new one that is incoherent and just plain dumb. Twenty minutes into The Force Awakens, Rey is flying the Millennium Falcon like a savant, and the film’s explanation is that she read flying manuals in her spare time on Jakku (her home planet). That’s lazy screenwriting.

As a result, LucasFilm’s incompetence will force Disney to invest more billions — beyond the billions already spent to create Star Wars-themed lands at Disneyland and Disney World — if the entertainment behemoth ever expects to get a stockholder-friendly return on its initial $4 billion purchase of the Star Wars brand.

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And who could blame Disney if they tried to stigmatize legitimate criticisms of their Star Wars trilogy movies by linking them to the alt-right? Disney has never held back from intimidating professional movie critics and entertainment journalists, why should the Mouse treat citizen critics any differently?

As for actual hate groups and hate-filled people who love to insert themselves into online discussions where their special brand of venom can taint otherwise legitimate opinions, the social research community would be well-advised to tighten their empirical methods before smearing large groups of people with their broad brushes. [I realize that broad-brush-smears are the norm in today’s hyper-partisan society and will be hard to end.]

Nobody disputes that racists and misogynists exist on Twitter and in the podcast ecosystem. What Professor Lacina failed to answer, however, is what variation exists within those who expressed their disdain for the Disney Star Wars movies and how does this compare to the more general category of those of spread offensive speech?

In lieu of evidence, the corporate entertainment media too often defaults to ad fontem arguments: The most frequent critics of TLJ and TROS are white men, therefore, those critiques must be rooted in racism and misogyny.

In the future, if Disney wants to create new Star Wars icons who embody female empowerment, they should start by green lighting good scripts with fully developed characters.

But we don’t have to look to the future for those female cinema icons, we already have them in characters such as Carrie Fisher’s Leia Organa, Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor (another iconic sci-fiction heroine who was thoughtlessly trash-binned by the most recent Terminator sequel), or Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley from the Alien movie series. All three are infinitely more substantive than Rey Skywalker. Hell, until someone can explain to me how Rey was able to instinctively navigate a catamaran over 50-foot waves, I’ll take Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow or Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn over Rey. And, please, don’t tell me she used The Force.

The problem with the Disney Star Wars saga wasn’t toxic males within the unwashed masses trying to hold down the rise of female-centric story lines. The problem was sub par movie scripts that put political agendas ahead of story and character development.

Bad screenwriting spoiled the Disney Star Wars trilogy, not the long time fans.

If Disney had crafted three classic Star Wars saga movies, there wouldn’t be this exaggerated controversy about the power of the folkloric Fandom Menace. Instead, we’d all be excited about the next Star Wars trilogy up Disney’s sleeve…which, if I can speak for most of my Fandom Menace confederates, we are not.

As it is, I’m officially over Star Wars.

Besides, it is not like Star Wars is as cool as Guardians of the Galaxy, reminds my son. [I know, Disney owns that too.]

• K.R.K.

As always, comments and profanity-rich insults can be sent to: kroeger98@yahoo.com

By Kent R. Kroeger (NuQum.com, January 8, 2020)

Occasionally, I pocket my ego and read comments left by readers of my various essays and articles.

Two essays in particular, Trump’s market share problem and Trump should deny his enemies their ultimate victory, attracted an unusually high percentage of negative responses, as both essays seemed to annoy strong partisans on both ends of the political spectrum.

In both essays I argued Trump’s probability of reelection is significantly reduced for three reasons: (1) A shrinking Republican base, (2) a shrinking pool of swing voters who could potentially alter the outcome on Election Day, and (3) Trump’s stubbornly low (almost invariant) job approval rating.

Many readers vehemently disagreed with my conclusion.

Donald Trump supporters disagreed with my pessimism about his chances of being reelected, while Trump-haters suggested I am a Republican troll trying to promote complacency among Democrats and thereby ensure his reelection.

However, as those who know me can attest, I possess no strong affinity towards any party or ideology.

For me, Trump is a market researcher’s dream challenge. How does a president so deeply disliked by nearly half of the U.S. adult population get reelected?

It is not going to be easy.

In the polling era, only one president — Barack Obama — has been reelected with a job performance rating as low as Trump’s is less than one year out from Election Day. At this juncture in Obama’s first term, his Gallup job approval stood at 42 percent (see Figure 1 below), compared to 45 percent for Trump in Gallup’s December 2–15, 2019 survey.

Figure 1: Comparing 1st-Term Job Approval for Trump, Obama & G. W. Bush

However, there is a major difference in Trump’s situation. Obama was above or near 50 percent job approval for the first year of his presidency. Trump has never sniffed 50 percent approval, his highest approval being 46 percent approval, according to Gallup. A strong, though not conclusive, piece of evidence that Trump may have a maximum approval threshold around 46 percent.

Is 46 percent approval enough to win reelection?

According to one of my anonymous readers, 46 percent approval would make Trump very competitive in the next election. For evidence, he/she directed me to a popular vote econometric model created by political scientists Michael Lewis-Beck and Charles Tien (see Figure 2). Their two-variable model predicted Hillary Clinton would win 51.1 percent of the two-party popular vote in 2016 — which was exactly her two-party vote share.

Figure 2: The Lewis-Beck-Tien Presidential Vote Share Model

There is no guarantee the Lewis-Beck-Tien (LBT) model’s bulls eye accuracy in 2016 will be repeated in 2020. In every election, one model is always going to have the most accurate prediction, either by chance or model validity.

Nonetheless, the LBT model has predicted the winner in all presidential elections since 1948 (with the exceptions of 1960, 1968, and 1976).

The LBT model also has the virtue of simplicity — just two variables: Presidential approval in July of the election year and GNP growth in the first two quarters of the election year.

Assuming current conditions remain constant through Election day, what does the LBT model predict for 2020? The LBT model predicts Trump will win 49.4 percent of the two-party presidential vote. Even if we assume no economic growth in the first two quarters of 2020, the LBT model predicts Trump will receive 49.2 percent of the two-party vote if he maintains 45 percent job approval through Election Day.

Accepting the predictive validity of the LBT model — and its failure to predict the 1976 winner (Jimmy Carter) gives me significant pause in this regard — Trump will be competitive in 2020, all else equal.

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Given this evidence, therefore, do I retract my previous conclusion that Trump has little chance of winning reelection in 2020?

Yes and no.

Even before considering the possibility of another Electoral College victory and popular vote loss by Trump, there are other econometric models using presidential approval and the economy — besides the LBT model — to predict presidential popular vote outcomes (descriptions of the most widely cited models are found here). And, currently, these models predict Trump will receive between 45 and 50 percent of the two-party popular vote.

So, yes, I was wrong to assert Trump has a meager chance of winning reelection. In reality, he has more than a punchers chance.

Yet, I stand by my other conclusion that Trump has little room for popularity growth. The Donald Trump we see today — in terms of job approval — is likely the same one we will see in November 2020.

As I stated in my February 2019 essay, “Donald Trump, the candidate, has a market share problem. His support has very little upside and — as of now — has a maximum potential market (vote) share of just 45 percent among eligible voters.”

Given a shrinking political center amidst a highly partisan electorate combined with a Republican base also in demographic decline, Trump has a market share growth problem that is only getting worse. There simply are not enough likely and potential Trump voters to ensure his reelection. Which is way many pundits and forecasters, not just me, have questioned Trump’s base-focused electoral strategy.

Among them, political blogger Kevin Drum, wonders if the Republican Party is prepared for the day of reckoning should it continue Trump’s base-focused strategy in 2020.

In 2012 I thought that the Republican Party had gone as far as it could to get votes from the white working class. There was just no more blood to be squeezed from that particular turnip. But I was wrong — barely. In 2016 they did what no one could have predicted by nominating a guy who was an all but open racist. And it worked, buying them just a few more votes than it lost them. Once again, they gained a few years.

But it can’t last forever. The Republican Party has already gone much further down the road of lashing itself to the cause of white racial resentment than I would have guessed possible. How much longer can it last? Like most bubbles, longer than you think. But someday the bubble will burst. The big question is, what will happen next?

Trump’s limited market growth potential is evident in the December 2019 YouGov.com poll, which found 47 percent of U.S. adults possess a ‘very unfavorable’ opinion of Trump (see Figure 3). No other major politician comes close to the intensity of Trump’s unfavorability. The next closest is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at 38 percent of U.S. adults having a ‘very unfavorable’ view of her.

Conversely, 30 percent of U.S. adults view Trump ‘very favorably’ — more than any other major U.S. politician. The next closest political figure in this regard is Vice President Mike Pence at 22 percent.

It is this large, intense pro-Trump base that fills his pep rallies and gives the media pundits the impression that the incumbent president will be hard to beat in 2020.

“Look at crowd sizes and enthusiasm as a better metric than opinion polls which oversample Democrats,” writes Denver physician and conservative writer Brian Joondeph, MD.

Unfortunately for Dr. Joondeph, the evidence does not support his idea of using crowd size as a proxy for electoral viability. And the YouGov survey plainly shows us why: Trump’s loyal base (30% of the population) is swamped in size by the number of Americans that can’t stand him (47%).

What the YouGov survey also tells us is that most Americans have strong feelings about Trump, whether they be positive or negative. Only 7 percent of U.S. adults lack an opinion on Trump.

Figure 3: Favorability Ratings of Selected Political Figures (December 2019)

At first blush, the 47%-Very-Unfavorable figure does not bode well for Trump’s reelection chances. My analysis of the 2016 American National Election Study found that three percent of eligible voters with a ‘very unfavorable’ view of Trump in October 2016 voted for him anyway (see Figure 4). That some Trump-dislikers did this was apparently driven by their even greater distaste for Hillary Clinton, particularly on their perception of each candidate’s honesty.

Figure 4: Favorability Ratings of Selected Political Figures (December 2019)

Even if we subtract the 1 to 2 percent of Trump-dislikers who will still vote for him (3% of 47%), this puts him in a deep hole as he tries to pull off another Election Day miracle: Trump starts with 45 percent of eligible voters most likely unwilling to consider his candidacy. In other words, Trump has little margin for error to work with heading into the 2020 campaign.

But virtually the same argument could be made from the perspective of the eventual Democratic Party nominee. In a highly-polarized electorate where almost 80 percent of adults have already made up their minds about Trump — and half of all eligible voters find our political system so irrelevant to their lives they don’t even bother to vote — a small percentage of swing voters can tip the balance.

Figure 5 (below) is a back-of-the-envelope exercise that shows how close the presidential popular vote could easily be in 2020 — despite the substantial favorability disadvantage Trump takes into the contest.

Using Trump’s favorability distribution from the December 2019 Economist/YouGov Survey, along with voting ratios estimated from the 2016 American National Election Study (ANES), I generated a two-party popular vote forecast for 2020.

And the winner will be: The eventual Democrat nominee…51% to 49%. This forecast is almost identical to the LBT econometric model forecast detailed earlier in this essay.

Figure 5: 2020 Presidential Vote Forecast

This forecast should not be surprising. American presidential elections tend to be relatively close. And despite my earlier musings on the dire situation facing Trump and the Republicans, I am now convinced Trump has a legitimate chance of getting reelected.

• K.R.K.

As always, please send suggestions and complaints to: kroeger98@yahoo.com

By Kent R. Kroeger (NuQum.com, January 6, 2020)

In the basement of the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) main headquarters in southeast Washington, D.C. reside two reminders as to why the Democrats should never take an election for granted.

One is a metal filing cabinet that had been broken into during the 1972 Watergate break-in. And the other is a DNC computer server that had been compromised by Russian hackers in the 2016 election.

To be fair, there is no hard evidence that the Watergate break-in affected the 1972 election in which Richard Nixon beat George McGovern in an historic landslide.

In contrast, there is evidence the stolen “Podesta emails,” published by Wikileaks in October 2016, did have a discernible impact on the 2016 outcome by stunting Hillary Clinton’s momentum following her strong debate performances (see my analysis here).

Reminders of the Democrats’ 2016 election debacle are everywhere inside the DNC headquarters building located just three blocks from the U.S. Capitol: an “I’m With Her” sign is displayed prominently in one office; a photo of Hillary Clinton surrounded by supporters sits prominently on another office desk; and Clinton 2016 bumper stickers and banners sprinkled here and there.

One could be forgiven leaving the DNC offices with the impression the Democrats are still fighting the 2016 election. That is, in fact, an accusation leveled by many Republicans, conservative pundits and even a few Democrats.

“Democrats have made a serious mistake by launching impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump,” opined University of Chicago law professor Eric Posner on MarketWatch.com last October. “They are replaying the Republican impeachment of Bill Clinton in 1998, a futile exercise that damaged Republicans, enhanced Clinton’s power, and caused institutional damage as well.

But other than the obvious similarities— a president being impeached by a U.S. House under opposition party control at a time when the economy is strong — why might 2020 be different?

For one, 2020 is a presidential election year. Whereas, in 1998, Bill Clinton never had to face voters after his impeachment and Senate acquittal. It was easier for voters to defend Clinton knowing they wouldn’t need to rationalize his insalubrious Oval Office behavior in the context of a vote decision. Indeed, the MoveOn organization formed in September 1998 as sentiments grew that the Republican attempt to impeach and remove Clinton was distracting the government and public from more important matters.

Secondly, for reasons not necessarily understood, Trump’s job approval does not seem to be affected by the relatively strong economy experienced during his first three years in office.

When Vanderbilt political science professor John Sides compared the University of Michigan’s Index of Consumer Sentiment with presidential job approval, he found that higher levels of consumer sentiment translated into higher presidential job approval — except for two presidents: Barack Obama and Donald Trump.

During Trump’s term, as people’s views of the economy have grown more positive, his job approval numbers have barely moved (see Figure 1 for Trump’s RealClearPolitics average job approval ratings over time). The economy is up, but Trump’s approval has been basically flat since May 2018.

Figure 1: Trump’s Job Approval Ratings since January 2017

According to Sides, Trump’s current job approval rating is about 15 points lower than it should be given the historical relationship between economic conditions and presidential job approval.

“Perhaps some of Trump’s relatively low popularity is because he inspires such strong feelings in his detractors. Some of that can’t be ruled out,” conjectures Sides. “But much of this disjuncture between views of the economy and presidential approval isn’t about Trump as a person so much as the growing polarization of our politics.”

Sides also suggests Trump has not done an effective job emphasizing the strong economy; in part, because of the constant distractions constantly swirling around Trump (Russiagate, the Charlottesville protest, the Zelensky phone call, etc.).

Which brings us to the Democratic Party’s strategy on impeachment. Pelosi and the congressional Democrats are doing their damnedest to keep people thinking about Trump’s clumsy misdeeds and not let him receive credit for the economy and other policy successes. If the Sides analysis is correct, the Democrats’ impeachment strategy — with an indispensable assist from the national news media — might be working very well in that regard.

Focusing on the inevitable futility of the push to remove Trump misses its tactical importance for the Democrats. The more time the news media covers the events surrounding a ‘perfect’ phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymy Zelensky, the more Trump is constrained in controlling the nation’s political and media agenda. And, subsequently, the less likely Trump is reelected.

[Though recent events in Iraq and Iran should remind Democrats that a U.S. president has many opportunities and tools to control the public agenda.]

• K.R.K.

Please send comments to: kroeger98@yahoo.com