Because in 2020 they’ll be running against Donald Freakin’ Trump, whereas in 2016 they were just … um …
But they’ll be running against actual President Trump, not the-guy-who-could-never-really-get-elected Trump.
Knowing this country, the most likely outcome is that Trump wrecks the country, blames it all on Obama and the Democrats, and gets re-elected anyway.
That depends on the candidate. Democrats have already proven twice that they won’t turn out to defeat a candidate they hate(2004 and 2016). They only turn out to support a candidate they love.
“We’ll find it much easier to defend our lines after the enemy has pushed us backwards a few hundred miles!”
Not only that but as mentioned before there are also such a thing as* state elections*, and many of their legislative chambers or executive offices run on 2-year cycles or on a 4-year cycle offset from the presidential, so many will come up in the next couple of years (NJ and VA governor come up in 2017!) already. This does not only affect the redistricting but more importantly creates the opportunity for showing to the people on the ground you ARE changing the system and your policy proposals do improve their lives, and provides the “farm system” for future office seekers. So THAT part has to start being worked on immediately and it’ll be a big challenge.
And yes, counting on a great OMG WHAT HAVE WE DONE groundswell to get rid of President Pumpkinhead is the path to failure. You need to give these voters, the ones who only showed up with motivation for Obama himself but when it came to a downballot candidate or for Hillary, did not care to die on that hill, something/someone to vote FOR.
Most of these prognostications kind of depend on something we DON’T have…more than half the country not being blind to reality and mired in the idea that “my opinion=fact”.
Two-thirds of voters thought Trump was unqualified to be President. The chance he is going to do anything to change their minds while in office is negligible.
All the Democrats have to do is nominate someone who most voters don’t hate. Where that candidate is ideologically is really beside the point.
That’s where you’re mistaken. It’s actually very easy to change minds about your qualifications for office when you already are in office. All Trump has to do is be mediocre and most voters will consider him qualified to be President. They still might not like him, but anyone who occupies the office and doesn’t fail miserably gets taken seriously as a President by the end of their first year.
I agree, I just think the chance he will be capable of achieving mediocrity is…well, not literally negligible, but much, much less than 50%.
Okay. All we need is a candidate people don’t hate by election day.
How do you do that?
And please consider that between nomination and election day, there is at least a year. A year for the right-wing media to dig as deep as they want, spend as much time as they want constructing a narrative, and reinforcing any tiny little potato they can dig up. A year for the mainstream media to, at the constant chiding of the right wing about “bias”, spend time on these scandals, acting as though they were real or reasonable issues.
Find me the candidate who people don’t hate after that.
Barack Obama seemed to do OK. Some people are going to hate whoever Fox News tells them to, but they are a minority. We just need to find someone who most people don’t hate, which describes pretty much every major politician in both parties except for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
Worrying about how the opposition will smear your guy is only really an issue if you know your candidate gives them plenty of ammunition. Any candidate that enters a race with a clean slate and has no disqualifying skeletons in their closet will make it out okay. It’s all about vetting. Democrats drew the entirely wrong conclusion about Clinton. They assumed she was vetted because she’d been through the wars and come out of it stronger. What they didn’t count on, but should have noticed right away, is that she continued to give her enemies ammunition.
You misspelled “she continued to be lied about and having her enemies dig up innocuous events that they then spun mercilessly to look like crimes”.
If the Democrats were capable of playing their cards right one would be in office right now.
They did okay in 2006, 2008. and 2012. Although the Republican wins have been bigger, they aren’t more numerous.