There is every indication that the Republicans will lose disastrously in 2020, for a number of reasons:
Trump is virtually guaranteed to be deeply unpopular by then, if he is even still POTUS.
The Republicans have many more Senate seats to defend in 2020 than the Democrats, due to Republican gains from the 2014 midterms.
Trump won’t be able to deliver on his promises to his core voters, who will be angry at him then.
In the same way that some folks who date abusive people for the “excitement” eventually begin to long for “boring but good” partners after a while, the American voting electorate, after 4 years of random, haphazard, here-and-there, unpredictable, bombastic Trump, will be desperately longing for a stable, plain, bland, establishment candidate again - and this is key - the Democrats will be committing a big blunder if they believe that the lesson of 2016 is that they need to nominate a celebrity or anti-establishment candidate to win. They needed to go anti-establishment this year (and failed,) but need to be pro-establishment in 2020.
The arc of history is long, but the tenor of Trump’s policy ideas do not bend towards being what most people in the U.S. would consider great. Nor do the very limited policy proposals offered in the past few years by Congressional Republicans when they weren’t solely focused on simply repealing Obamacare and obstructing.
It is possible to hope that Trump manages to eek out some positive change in America while also realizing that it is not likely and that preparing to replace him with someone who is more coherent, sober, compassionate, selfless, curious, and careful would be a good idea. Long story short - hope is not a plan. And in matters of national and international importance, it’s best to have a plan for all reasonable contingencies.
You realize this election means that politics is not going to be easily predictable for the next decade or so. There might be a party realignment going on that may lead to a third party or one of the two big parties being a centrist party. It’s unpredictable right now. A lot of it has to do with how Trump governs and that’s going to take time to see.
I just want to point out how incredibly wrong you were recently, and now instead of taking a step back and doing some self-reflection over your gross failure to comprehend the zeitgeist in this country, you’re now confidently issuing more bogus predictions?
Democrats will likely have an opportunity in 2020, but what happens depends more on Republican performance than anything Democrats do. The opportunity of the incumbent party is that if they please most people, then they will remain the incumbent party.
Of course, assuming Republicans follow their usual pattern, Democrats will get the ball again in 2020.
And I have to add: Also the Democrats won the popular vote. Close, but still shows how divided we are and we’ll need to ask Trump to maintain his promise to unite the nation.
Does anyone have data on how high Republican turnout was this year? Because if Republican turnout was high, and Democratic turnout was low, then that indicates that the GOP already hit its ceiling whereas the Democratic ceiling is higher, indicating that if *both *parties have high turnout, the Democrats would win.
But - for clarification - my thread says the Democrats will win in a landslide *if *they play their cards correctly. So there is an if; it’s not a blanket “Blue will win big in 2020” prediction.
Assuming no changes in the current composition of Class 2 of the Senate there will be 22 Republican and 11 Democratic seats in contention in 2020. Some of the incumbents will be getting up there in years by then and so there may be some retirements. Of those who will be over age 75 by the time of the 2020 election there are 7 (ID, KS, KY, MS, OK, TN, & WY) Republicans and only 1 (IL) Democrat in Class 2 of the Senate.
But don’t just blow right past 2018.
Assuming no changes in the current composition of Class 1 of the Senate there will be 8 Republican, 23 Democratic, and 2 Democratic-leaning Independent seats in contention in 2018. That is a lot to defend in a non-presidential year election. Of course there will be some old codgers up in 2018 too who might choose to retire. Of those who will be over age 75 by the time of the 2018 election there are only 1 (UT) Republicans, 3 (CA, FL, MD) Democrats and 1 (VT) Independent in Class 1 of the Senate.
Meanwhile the Democrats really need to put some effort into 2020 state legislative races. It’s a census year and the winners will get to gerrymander for the coming 10 years.
This is how Democrats fall victim to one of the classic blunders, setting sights on 2020 and not 2018. Every four years (the off-Presidential years) Democrats go, “ah shit, we forgot about midterms!” But that’s how you set up for 2020. There will be GOP seats ripe for pickin’ if the Democrats can get organized in time.
