Why President Trump is losing to Joe Biden

Incumbents are not supposed to lose reelection bids. They have tremendous advantage. Using government resources and funds to go around the 50 states in official time, while the challenger has to beg for funds to finance a very hard campaign. But this one is for the books. The incumbent is losing, and he himself is his own worst enemy.

I have a network of Filipino friends all over the US and we made a pact to conduct informal surveys every election time, since the Kennedy days in the ‘60s when I was a student leader. Based on my informal scanning of the American electorate (from as far west as Hawaii to the easternmost state of Maine, and from the northwest state of Washington to the southeast state of Florida), if the elections were held today, Joe Biden will win over President Donald Trump, but only with a slim plurality both in popular votes, as well as electoral college votes.

Trump will join the nine other presidents who held the presidential office for only one term; John Adams (the father), John Quincy Adams (the son), Martin Van Buren, William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush (the father). John F. Kennedy was elected in 1961 and assassinated in 1963. In US history, only one, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was elected four times. The US Constitution was later amended limiting the presidential term to only two. Barack Obama, George Bush (the son), Bill Clinton, and Ronald Reagan were two-termers.

Trump will lose not really because Biden is a terrific candidate, but because the incumbent has done a lot of blunders. Based on my informal surveys, the American voters blame Trump for bungling the COVID crisis, for not doing what’s proper and necessary in the issues of racism and police brutality, highlighted by the death of George Floyd. This is one rare moment in history when African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asians are united against the incumbent president. And unions, students, and naturalized immigrants are junking him. Trump has succeeded unwittingly to unite all the forces against him. Biden hasn’t done anything yet, and the breaks are all in his favor. Such a lucky guy.

The two successive US Supreme Court decisions are both adverse to the positions taken by the Trump administration. Trump's stand against the LGBT has been rebuffed. And Trump's vehement opposition against undocumented children entering the US southern borders also met Supreme Court disapproval. Never before did it happen that an incumbent US president was so defeated in the judiciary, as Trump has experienced last week. The greatest pain of all is that Trump's own appointee to that court, Neil Gorsuch, wrote the LGBT decision. Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative, appointed by Republican George Bush, wrote the DACA ruling.

And the unkindest cut of all is the exposé of former National Security Adviser, John Bolton. The Trump forces sought judicial injunction and restraining order, but the petition to block Bolton's very damaging exposé was dismissed by the court. Losing is becoming a habit and the signs are very clear, Trump will bring the Republicans down. 2020 is a year for the Democrats. That’s how the cookie crumbles.