How you know the Democrats think Trump is going to win

I know the conventional wisdom is that this election is too close to call. And it is. Predictions on the outcome are little better than guesses.

Still, this is Washington. And while prognostications in U.S. politics is fraught with risk, it doesn’t stop most of us — even though we know that, if you are right, nobody cares, and if you are wrong, it goes on your Wikipedia page forever.

Predictions are pedestrian, oftentimes biased, and generally uninteresting. But the reasoning behind them might occasionally offer something of value.

So, here’s the uninteresting part: I think that Donald Trump is going to win. As to what might be of value, I could start by offering some sort of geeky Washington insider piece of data, such as how new voter registration in critically important Pennsylvania has been trending in Republicans’ favor for more than a year now.

But that’s not the reason I think Trump is going to win.

I could, instead, offer an interesting anecdote from a high-ranking Republican from North Carolina, who was adamant that Trump would win: “Mick, North Carolina is a true swing state. But what people don’t realize is that it swings on the issues, not necessarily the candidates. In 2016, the No. 1 issue in the state was the economy. In 2020, the No. 1 issue was health care. The issue this year, without a doubt, is the economy again.”

His point: Trump won the state easily in 2016. He also won in 2020, but it was much closer, and most polling predicted that Biden would win. This year feels a lot more like 2016 than 2020.

I thought that made a lot of sense. But, although those insights certainly struck a chord, that still isn’t why I think Trump is going to win.

I think Trump is going to win because many Democrats are talking like they are going to lose. And while every campaign engages in some sort of expectations management, the Democrats have been oddly specific in their pearl-clutching this cycle.

They are complaining more and more about a relatively new, entirely fabricated, but certainly sinister sounding boogeyman that could steal away the election: the “Electoral College bias.” Nothing screams “we are going to lose” more than saying the game was rigged in the first place.

Electoral College bias is the more succinct, more academic, and more think-tank-slash-Ivy League-faculty-sounding incarnation of the regular Democratic complaints about Republicans winning the White House without winning the constitutionally meaningless popular vote.

The “bias” is linked to the Great Compromise that gave us different structures in the House and the Senate. That separation — with House members assigned by population and each state getting two senators — was critical in getting big states and small states to buy into the new Constitution. And yes, when it comes to the Senate, it did put small states on the same footing as the large. Indeed, that was its purpose.

So, while Pennsylvania and Virginia might have dominated early Houses (just as California and New York did for generations more recently), Vermont could have equal say in the Senate (again, just as it does today).

The leap from there to Donald Trump is pretty simple, as the Electoral College votes for each state are based on the number of House members plus the two senators.

The “inequity” supposedly stems from the proposition that since so many small states are heavily Republican, Trump has an unfair advantage. (Well, as long as you ignore Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, Delaware and Hawaii — all of which are smaller than Idaho, by the way.) Take those Senate votes away in the electoral college, and Trump wouldn’t have a chance.

Of course, you cannot have a real effort to undermine our elections — I mean, restore equity — without some high-quality “non-partisan” research. So, cue Pew Research, which just released an exhaustive study designed to remind all of us that nearly two-thirds of people would like to elect a president based on the total popular vote. It is unclear whether Pew asked people if they knew anything about the Great Compromise.

Finally, just in case you wanted to actually engage in a meaningful discussion of the historical and intellectual underpinnings of the Electoral College, beware: the Electoral College is also racist.

The effort to promote the so-called bias, then, has been a whole-of-the-left effort. Indeed, if someone else were engaging in such a systematic, coordinated attack on our constitutionally agreed-upon election processes, some people might call it “undermining democracy.”

But right now, it just sounds like Democrats see a Trump win coming, and they are greasing the skids for blaming an “inequitable” system. 

Honestly, I have no idea who is going to win next month. I just hope that whoever loses decides that it was because they lost, and not because the system was rigged against them.

Mick Mulvaney, a former congressman from South Carolina, is a contributor to NewsNation. He served as director of the Office of Management and Budget, acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and White House chief of staff under President Donald Trump.