I think Trump will win due to an unprecedented use of information warfare by our adversaries that will simultaneously activate and deactivate different voting groups within our country.

• Faction 1 (Woke Liberals): The extreme left who need to believe in a candidate’s morality before they can support them, and I think they’re easy to convince not to vote
• Faction 2 (Anyone But Trump): Those who hate Trump and will vote for anyone to get him out. They can more easily be convinced not to vote
• Faction 3 (Independents): Are undecided, and will either be swayed by disgust for Trump or disgust for the Left. They are easy to convince not to vote
• Faction 4 (Trump Devotees): Adore Trump, and they will vote in extremely high percentages

This is not a formal analysis, and I am neither a pollster nor a political scientist. This is simply how I see the factions that will be in play leading up to the election.

I believe November’s outcome will pivot on information campaigns that push and pull on these various groups—specifically, the Woke Liberal faction and the Anyone But Trump Faction.

For the Woke Liberals, it’s fairly easy to get them not to vote. You simply have to convince them that Biden is an antiquated sexist who acted inappropriately to women in the past—possibly up to the point of rape. That’s probably going to be easy to do, so the only remaining question will be how many of these voters move to the Never Trump camp.

The Never Trump camp is harder to dissuade because they’re already holding their noses. They’ve already told themselves they don’t need to like the Democrat, and that they just have to do their duty and get Trump out.

My problem with them is the reasoning seems shabby. It feels hard to vote someone out when you don’t believe in the alternative. In that scenario, any complications around voting are magnified. If you’re busy at work that day, if there are fewer polling places, etc., etc. There are a million small reasons that can add up to stop you from voting someone out.

So now let’s look at various pieces on the board.

• There is a massive backlash against the Woke Left in this country. The country is far less left than the left thinks it is, and those who are moderately conservative have been aggravated by extreme left views. This is a huge activating function for turning Independents either towards Trump, or against voting altogether.

Forget the fact that it was he who completely failed to respond back in January/February.

• If Trump can convince Independents that the left hurt the economy, many of them will vote for him. The longer the lockdown goes on in various forms, which continues to cause additional damage to the economy, the more Trump will be able to point at someone’s pain and say, “See! That’s what they did to you!” If this becomes a battle of narratives and emotions around economic pain, I don’t think Biden and the left will have a chance. Trump is remarkably good at blaming other people for his mistakes and getting people to believe him.
• Biden can do extraordinary damage to himself during the next several months. Trump cannot. If there are to be any gaffes, revelations, or bombshells that surface before November, they will most likely harm Biden, which will influence the Independents, Wokers, and Never Trumpers to abstain or switch to Trump.
• Inaction favors Trump. If things were to be so convoluted and distorted that people didn’t know which way was up, the result is most likely to be people staying home and not voting. That means that the dedicated Trump fans—which are guaranteed to vote in extreme numbers—will be the strongest force on the field.

There are, of course, some trends that hurt Trump.

• People generally hate him as a person—even many conservatives
• If the economy continues to worsen (which seems inevitable), any clear-headed person is likely to place at least some of that blame at Trump’s feet

I simply worry it won’t be enough.

I think disgust for the left will be too strong a force—combined with Trump’s ability to point blame at that same left for the economic damage caused by the lockdown.

That, combined with Biden being such a horrible candidate, will cause independents to either not vote or vote for Trump.

The surfacing of non-Woken-approved behavior on the part of Biden—combined with his likely collection of fresh gaffes—will take the extreme left off the board.

So that really leaves the Trump Acolytes vs. the Never Trumpers. How much can the left rally to produce a white-hot hatred for Trump that knocks down all other considerations, and actually motivates people to go out and get the job done?

I think they’re shit at it. They can’t rally anyone for anything. Whenever they open their mouths to name an enemy and march against it, they end up choosing Christmas songs, which further alienates the center of the country.

The left sucks at narrative. And the narrative is going to matter more than ever in this one.

We have all this division. We have all this chaos. We have all this anger. We have all this pain.

Those things are crying out for a story, and the left doesn’t have one. Their story is Trump is bad.

Trump’s story is that everything was fine before China started a virus and the liberals broke the economy.

And far, far too many people will take that story, because, at least it’s an answer. It’s an answer with handles. It’s easy to follow.

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To me that wins the undecided vote, or at least a significant portion of it.

And then Biden and the DNC will combine their powers to kick as many balls into their own goal as possible, resulting in much of the left being paralyzed into apathy.

1. Activate the center and right with a clear narrative blaming China and the left
2. Move more independents to the right by highlighting the stupidity of the left
3. De-activate the left by highlighting Biden’s flaws
4. Mobilize a pro-Trump voting block that’s even bigger than last time

That’s the move that will win it for them, and I fear it could actually be taken by a wider margin than last time.

And finally—as a magnifier to all of this—I believe Russia will exacerbate every single aspect of this in the favor of Trump. I think they could easily spend more than a billion dollars to move the population as much as possible as I’ve described above.

Based on all the polling, it seems like Trump only needs 3-8 percentage points to win.

Unfortunately, I think between the narrative advantage they have, the massive backlash against the left from the middle, the large number of people who are actually pro-Trump and not telling anyone, and the help from Russia—they will easily move things by that amount.

I really hope I’m wrong, and that would be really easy as well.

1. The economy continues to crash and it’s so glaringly obvious that it’s Trump’s fault
2. The Russian influence on social media has a small to medium effect, but not nearly enough to change things
3. The never-Trumpers come out in massive force and easily win

I really can see that happening as well, but it seems more logical and positive, which brings me to my last point.

Every single thing that’s happened with Trump has been unexpected. It’s inconceivable that he won. It’s inconceivable that he wasn’t removed from office. It’s plainly astounding that he’s sitting in the White House right now at all.

So it just seems patently stupid to think—oh, don’t worry, the never-Trumpers are going to win this for us! Case closed!

That’s exactly the hubris that has us in this position now.