Election 2020: A Rude Awakening is Coming. Will It Be for Trump's or Biden’s Supporters?

Yesterday my Medium feed (recommended articles) included a story titled A Rude Awakening is Coming for Trump and His Supporters.  Now generally I do not have time to read everything that gets sent to me in this fashion. Nevertheless, some things do catch my eye. The article essentially outlined all the reasons this author believes a Biden/Harris landslide is coming. More interesting to me, however, was reading the comments that followed. 

The 5 minute read explains why Trump and his zealous followers will soon be facing the biggest disillusionment of their lives. 

After reading half the comments, I thought it might be fun to play off the title of Frank Lucacovic's essay because the confidence on both sides seems to be so strong that it will indeed be a rude awakening for one team or the other when this thing is over.

Here are some of the comments, extracted from over 130 attached to the original piece. You can read the whole article here first if you prefer, or start with these excerpts. Or skip these excerpts and read the growing river of responses there if you like.

What's interesting to me is hearing people on both sides talk about this election as if it won't even be close. That may be the biggest surprise for some. My own personal fear is that whoever wins, the results will be disputed.

13 SELECT COMMENTS

1.

I appreciate your confidence but you may have overlooked two key factors. Many Trump supporters are either shy in their political opinions, or outright lie to pollsters for fun. This factor will decide many of the swing states that Democrats think are in the bag.

2.

Your wishful thinking lost me in sentence two - which contains two parts pure opinion and one fact.

For the coming Biden landslide you describe to be true, we'd be on the verge of a 1984-style Reagan win. Not even close - Reagan had momentum, near hysteria - he could draw 10k to small towns in blue states. Biden can't draw his entire family to an event.

Like recent past, this will be a tight election decided by one or two states.

The early voting numbers seem to be muxh stronger with Republicans than Democrats, so I think you may be surprised there.

Proclaiming victory 2 weeks before the election is just not smart. But, please, go ahead.

3.

As a mere observer from the other side of the pond, I find this piece and the comments on it a bit depressing - because so predictable and emotive. A word like 'evil' should be weighed very carefully and to dismiss all your President's followers as 'ignorant and selfish' shows a huge contempt for those who think and feel otherwise. And no, I'm not a Trump fan!

4.

Much as I dislike Trump and all he stands for, right now, after Giuliani's latest revelations regarding the contents of Hunter Biden's hard drive, I wouldn't put a cent on Biden winning. Neither he nor his family deserve to be near the White House any more than the Trumps do. US politics is one giant swamp.

5.

Biden is corrupt, senile and a patsy for the elites who lost control when Trump came in and messed up their swamp.

The biden family along with many politicians on both sides are deeply fincanced by foreign interests and I don't think americans want to go back on the plantation.

There is no energy in Biden or the so-called democratic platform that is consistently veering further left and offering nothing but hate and fearmongering.

Remember what the talking points were in 16? WW3 is coming and NATO will fall apart, bla. bla.. and now NATO is stronger than ever, North Korea and Islamic State are pacified. There are peace deals being made with Israel and Arab nations. China has lost its grip. US is energy independent. Pedofile rings and human trafficking being unraveled like never before.

The screeching leftists have the microphone and are supported by mainstream media and big corrupt money. But they don't stand a chance against the calm and thoughtfull people who still are the majority and will decide the vote.

6.

I wonder if this was written before or after the bombshell news about Hunter Biden's laptop and the implications of corruption it portrays for Joe Biden.

7.

Trump is going to win ... in a landslide. The Biden-Harris ticket is the weakest in the history of presidential elections. See you in two weeks.

8.

Frank I pray you are correct but I fear you are placing too much faith in polling numbers. Almost all political polling in the past 50 years has leaned heavily on telephone polling. We have reached a time where the overwhelming number of households no longer own a home phone and even among those with a home phone it is there for emergencies and rarely if ever gets answered for fear of telemarketers. A good number of those who just use cell phones also don't answer if they don't know who it is or they will let it go to voice mail and return the call if it is someone they actually do know. Additionally, one of the strongest parts of Trump's base is white males without a college degree. From the research I have done, it is a demographic almost impossible to quantify in polling data and they will come out heavily for Trump.

9.

This article, and others in mainstream media, is truly remarkable. EVERYTHING TRUMP DOES IS WRONG AND EVERYTHING BIDEN DOES IN RIGHT!! Remarkable indeed. Biden does not even have to campaign and he will win. In other words, the media elites who graduated from Ivy league schools and other universities are so much smarter than the average American, they will effectively pick the president for the people and tell them which box to tick. The strategy? Constantly report negative news on the guy they don't like, suppress and hide the bad news about the guy they like. Do this constantly, day in day out for 3-years, and then say the voters chose. By the way, any voter of public figure who strays from that narrative should be cancelled. That is the cesspool of pathology that palms itself of for American journalism as they lecture China and Russia about freedom of the press and propaganda. I haven't even dealt with the world's number one propaganda and indoctrination machine-Hollywood.

10.

You realize Clinton was up more vs Biden in swing states last election and Trump won. You also realize nbc and wsj polls in 2016 also had clinton at +11 in same first half of October time period. Common sense says just look at turn out and parades for Trump.

11.

It’s stunning how many people still feel that the spoiled man-child currently sitting in the Oval Office is acceptable to be the leader of this nation. Really? He’s an incompetent embarrassment, a narcissist and a liar. Only the wealthy seeking tax breaks and those who would aspire to be like him will vote for him. It’s frightening to think anyone admires him enough to see him continue his plunder of this country. They have truly set their bar very low. The dumbing down of America & celebrity worship is directly responsible for this debacle.

12.

Sure Biden is going to win, you can see the support in his rallies.

Also, he thinks he's running for senate:

“that’s why I’m running as a Democrat for the Senate” (min 25:20).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kouqhEQCjoI

13.

I've spent time reading articles from both sides. What I've noticed is that both sides are anticipating a landslide victory. Both sides believe that if they do lose the election, it will be because of fraud and corruption.

Emotions are running sky high on both sides and both sides believe the other side to be morally flawed at best, and an enemy to be defeated and cast aside at worst.

What should be very concerning to us as the American people is that we are being set up to be even more divided after the election than before - regardless of the outcome.

To quote Abraham Lincoln who quoted Jesus, "A house divided against itself cannot stand."

As we allow ourselves to become more divided, the house begins to collapse from the inside out.

* * * * 

Margie’s 1972 Search to Find Bob Dylan: The Adventures of Day One (A.J. Weberman)

Misccellaneous Dylan memorabilia*

Margie Marcus was a 41-year-old suburban Chicago housewife whose spirit and soul were flatlining until one day the music of Bob Dylan snapped her back to life. She describes the experience as a zeitgeist in her life in which previously she had been immobilized in a cocoon shell and afterwards broke free, discovering she had wings and could fly. This life transformation began as a result of picking up a Dylan album from a Highwood record shop a couple years earlier. After buying that first record she bought everything and wired her record player all the way through the back door of the kitchen and on to the patio where she could sit for hours and listen to Dylan and literally memorize his work. 

Her awakening set in motion correspondence with interesting people including author Joseph Heller, and co-founder of Rolling Stone magazine Ralph Gleason. She was especially interested in people who were writing about Dylan, including Anthony Scaduto who’s book Bob Dylan had been released the year before and A.J. Weberman, the Dylanologist who infamously made a name for himself by picking through Dylan’s garbage.... Over time she developed an obsessive desire to meet the man who changed her life and when the opportunity came she took it.

What follows is Margie’s 1972 account of her whirlwind trip to New York to meet Dylan in person. Day 1.

Left Deerfield on a 7:00 a.m. plane to LaGuardia Thursday, January 13 exhausted before I started. I had sprained my foot two days before and limped around the whole previous day to the trip, which only made every bone in my body ache. Arrived in NY at 10:00 NY time and had every intention of unpacking and falling right into bed for a nap. Instead, decided that there was too much to be done, so unpacked and immediately got on the telephone.

Called my brother first, made arrangements to go to a play that evening, called his wife, and then got down to business. I went to New York to find Bob Dylan and there was no time to be wasted.

Bowery bar from an earlier era.

About 11:30 I called A.J. Weberman, freak garbage picker and leading Dylanologist. Woke him, asked him if he remembered me from previous correspondence (he did) and asked him if he would be there all day and if I could come up to see him. He lives in a tenement in the Bowery and although I called and knew nothing would stop me, I asked a few people about going to that neighborhood and they told me forget it. So, I promptly got into a cab and headed for the Bowery. That scene was an experience in itself. I knew I needed my head examined when on that rainy, dark afternoon we pulled up to 6 Bleeker Street where there were bums lining the streets, garbage set out in front of the tenements and no doorbell to even ring and see if he was there. There was an iron gate with 3 different locks on it on his door. It was the kind of place where you had to holler up, “Hey A.J., are ya there?” I asked the cabbie (he was a nice one and knew I wasn’t about to let him leave until he came up with Weberman) to get out and call A.J. So, for a price, he did and when the gate opened there he stood--just like he looked in the Rolling Stone, hair disheveled. I think I woke him again (he looked very sleepy) and his fly was unzipped with the end of his shirt sticking out. That was my first introduction to the man I had read about in the papers for so long.

I looked up a long dark flight of stairs with a black cat squealing in front of me and thought, since I had never exposed myself to a neighborhood like this or a circumstance like this with a stranger, “O.K. honey, this is it. You go up, but you may never come down.”

Up we went to the 2nd floor, where once again, he unlocked several locks into his ‘office’ apartment. It was cold in there, but bright. The place was strewn with hundreds of papers on a long table and filing cabinets where he keeps all of his papers and information on Dylan. Strung along the walls were wires on which were hanging all assorted articles and pictures of Dylan and Weberman and everything Weberman has written for the various Village papers. I sat down and didn’t know where to begin with my questions.

The guy is 26 years old and got his BA from the City College of New York as an honor student. Instead of going to school he quit and started studying Dylan’s music and became a Dylanologist, which means a scientific study of all of Dylan’s songs. He has in his possession a collection of rare Dylan tapes of unreleased songs, interviews and everything there is to know about Dylan. His study consists of what he calls concordances. They look like bookkeeping books only twice as big. Each word that Bob Dylan has ever used in a song he has cross-checked and found the symbolic meaning to--at least in Weberman’s eyes. He will sell these concordances for $100 each-they have all been computerized and are incredibly unbelievable. The years of work this has taken is hard to believe.

He is going to Knoxville, TN to the U of Tenn to speak sometime in April for which he will receive $200. He tried several years ago writing a book on Dylan. He showed me the manuscript and said he couldn’t get it published because publishers wanted $1,000 apiece to reprint each Dylan song. He says the book was academically oriented.

It was Izzy Young who told Weberman where Dylan lived in the Village. Izzy Young is the owner of the Folk Lore Center where he sells instruments and folk music for people. From this information, Weberman went to Dylan’s house and started going daily through the garbage to learn about Dylan. He found a letter from Johnny Cash the first day--then continued daily pickups and became a nationwide topic of conversation. He drove Dylan and his family nuts with the many things he did to get to Dylan. He gave Dylan a birthday party for about 400 people in front of Dylan’s house-all in vain but strictly for publicity because Dylan was in Israel where he had gone for his 30th birthday.

I was in the tenement apartments both the office floor and his ‘home’ floor for about 3.5 hours. I became really nervous and itchy toward the end because I had seen all I could see and talked all there was to be talked about Dylan to Weberman. We went from the office upstairs about an hour before I left and when I went up there I met Weberman’s girl Ann whom he sent on an errand while he recorded a tape for me from a reel-to-reel to cassette. She had a dazed look and moved like a ghost.

When we left the apartment--he locked several different locks both upstairs and downstairs and we went outside into the rain--he took me to Bowery Street to catch a cab. But first, we had to go around the corner to a store to break a $20 bill I had--I owed him $5 for the tape, then he hailed the cab and asked me if he could ride a few blocks with me. As he got out we shook hands and he gave me the name of a fellow Dylanologist in Chicago who ‘studied under him’ for quite a while.

Weberman is now writing a book called “You Are What You Throw Away,” presumably to be published by McMillan for which he will receive $7,500. Should be out in 5 months, he thinks. We’ll see.

Next: How what she learned at Weberman’s led her to Dylan’s door.

*memorabilia shot is from a wall in this blog writer's garage. The Bowert photo is public domain from Wikipedia.