In Reply to: Khổ cho đảng REP :( posted by GS on Jul 24, 2020 at 14:39:11:
Here's Why Mitt Romney Thinks Donald Trump Will Win Reelection
Igor Bobic
July 23, 2020, 2:24 PM
Mitt Romney is one of Donald Trump’s biggest Republican critics on Capitol Hill. He’s the only GOP senator who voted to convict the president for abuse of power earlier this year, and he regularly calls Trump out on policy and personal conduct.
Yet the Utah lawmaker, who was his party’s presidential standard-bearer in 2012, believes Trump is likely to win reelection this November.
Asked why he foresees that outcome, especially with most public polls showing Trump trailing badly behind presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, Romney offered three reasons.
Sen. Mitt Romney thinks President Donald Trump is favored to win reelection. (Photo: MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
“There are enormous advantages to being the incumbent, number one,” Romney told HuffPost on Thursday. “Number two, I think [Trump] will tack more towards the middle in his communication than he has so far.”
“And number three, I think the voters that are most animated in opposition to the president tend not to come out to vote ― and that’s young people and the minorities. They’re active in polls, but not necessarily active at actually getting out to the polls,” the senator said.
The futility of expecting Trump to somehow moderate his tone aside, Romney’s theory about the nature of the electorate and polling is an interesting one.
Current polling methods don’t accurately sample minority and young voters for a variety of reasons. Racial minorities for whom English is not their native language and young adults are often underrepresented in phone surveys, for example. Pollsters attempt to correct for those difficulties by applying sampling weights based on their assumptions about the ultimate makeup of the electorate. Partisans on both sides of the aisle have attempted to “unskew” unfavorable polls by tinkering with those assumptions.
Moreover, Romney might not be right on who will show up to vote in November. He lost to President Barack Obama in the 2012 election due to unexpectedly high turnout from young people and minorities. He later blamed his defeat on what he called “gifts” the Obama administration gave to key voter blocs, including African Americans, Hispanics and young women.
Romney’s loss came as a complete shock to the candidate and his campaign, who believed they were headed for victory on Election Day based on rosy internal polling. Romney’s confidence in victory was so great that he reportedly never even wrote a concession speech.
Neil Newhouse, his campaign pollster at the time, suggested that the voters who turned out in 2012 were overall much younger and less white than the campaign anticipated, especially across the Sun Belt states.
“The Colorado Latino vote was extraordinarily challenging,” Newhouse said in 2012. “As it was in Florida.”
In other words, don’t count out all those young and minority Americans fed up with Trump. But Biden has also shown an unusual strength among older voters ― a group that at least in modern history has tended to favor GOP presidential candidates. That could give him a path to the White House that doesn’t necessarily rely on a surge of young and minority voters.
Love HuffPost? Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
Bloomberg
Romney Says He Will Oppose Shelton’s Fed Board Confirmation
Laura Litvan and Christopher Condon
July 23, 2020, 7:42 AM
(Bloomberg) -- Republican Senator Mitt Romney of Utah said he will vote against Judy Shelton, one of two Trump administration nominees to the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors.
”I’m not going to be endorsing,” Romney told reporters Thursday. “I will be voting against it.”
Shelton, an informal adviser to President Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016, is nominated along with Christopher Waller, a director of research at the St. Louis Fed. They both won the support of a majority on the Senate Banking Committee on July 21.
Full Senate
The two now require majority approval by the full Senate. If, as expected, Democrats vote in unison to reject Shelton’s controversial candidacy, her confirmation could be blocked by Romney and three additional Republicans voting against. No floor vote has yet been scheduled for either nominee.
Senator Lisa Murkowski, the Alaska Republican who’s sometimes bucked her party in the past, indicated that she is likely to support Shelton’s confirmation.
“Right now I’m leaning toward it. I have a few more things I want to read, probably tonight. But right now, yes.”
Shelton is viewed suspiciously by many in central banking circles for policy views that are well outside the mainstream -- including a history of admiration for the gold standard -- and for being a political loyalist who might bend to Trump’s will. Shelton appeared to abandon her long-time advocacy for ultra-tight monetary policy when she emerged as a Fed candidate, publicly aligning herself with the president’s calls for lower interest rates.
Waller is widely expected to receive majority support with some Democrats supporting his confirmation.
Limited Impact
William Dudley, former president of the New York Fed, said earlier Thursday that Fed governors “outside the mainstream” have very limited ability to create problems at the central bank because no single governor can determine policy.
They “will have a voice, but they will not actually set the path for monetary policy or regulatory policy -- that will be set by Jay Powell and Randy Quarles,” Dudley said Thursday in an interview on Bloomberg Television, referring to the Fed chair and one of two vice chairs. He was asked about about Shelton’s potential impact at the Fed.
Shelton critics fear most, however, that she might be picked for the Fed’s top job when Powell’s term expires in 2022 if Trump is re-elected. Such a promotion would require another confirmation by the Senate.
(Updates with Shelton details and Williams comments from fifth paragraph)
For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com
Subscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.