Do you think Trump will win in 2020?

[Mean_Mr.Mustard]

For a fun walk down memory lane, refer to this poll from July 2016 in which 82% of responders predicted Clinton winning the election.

A few comments from that thread:

[ul]
[li]Hillary in a landslide.[/li][li]It is going to be Clinton. It was always going to be Clinton.[/li][li]Clinton, by more than predicted.[/li][li]There simply aren’t enough uneducated angry white male sexist racists out there to win for Trump.[/li][li]I can’t see how (Clinton) can avoid being elected right now.[/li][/ul]

(I know it’s easy to cherry-pick with hindsight, just presenting these comments to illustrate how perfectly wrong we can be with great confidence)
mmm

[Kolak_of_Twilo]

The vote in the electoral college will be similar to what it was in 2016, the Democrats may pick up Wisconsin and/or Michigan but probably not Pennsylvania, thus ensuring reelection for DJT. Depending on how poorly the Democrats do they could possibly lose Minnesota, New Hampshire and the three states mentioned above making it actually a bigger win for Trump.

[Euphonious_Polemic]

I voted “yes”, because I have completely given up on the American public. I think that there are way, way too many idiots out there. And Trump’s minions will probably engineer a war or something

[Kent_Clark]

I don’t seem to have voted in the 2016 poll. That may be because my wife had returned from visiting her mostly blue-collar relatives just before the poll was put up, and said, “You know, I think Trump can win this thing.”

Since the only choices are yes or no, I’ll just say, you know, I think Trump can win this thing again.

[Defensive_Indifference]

@Euphonious_Polemic

I voted “yes”, because I have completely given up on the American public. I think that there are way, way too many idiots out there. And Trump’s minions will probably engineer a war or something

Pretty much this. And the Democrats will figure out a way to completely fuck it up. Also the Russians will put their finger on the scale for Trump again.

[Barack_Obama]

The only way he will win is if the Democrats don’t elected Bernie to run against him.

[Ethilrist]

The people who were dumb enough to vote for him in the first place haven’t gotten any smarter, and the Democrats haven’t learned, as a party, how they screwed things up.

[Kolak_of_Twilo]

@Barack_Obama

The only way he will win is if the Democrats don’t elected Bernie to run against him.

And I would say nominating Bernie would give the election to Trump in a walk.

[nearwildheaven]

I voted no, but only because I’m an optimist.

[Grrr]

I had a few weeks of optimism (that was nice). But that’s gone now.

Trump wins.

Frankly, I’m getting to the point to where I just don’t care anymore.

Republicans are assholes. And Dems are fucking stupid.

Just try not to blow up the world before I die… Okay?

[nearwildheaven]

If Trump does win in 2020, it’s highly unlikely that he will survive a second term IMHO.

[Steophan]

If the Democrats put up a young, energetic, exciting candidate - like Bill Clinton or Obama were - then they will win. So, in the real world, Trump will win again.

[sweepkick]

@Grrr

Republicans are assholes. And Dems are fucking stupid.

*evil assholes.

But yeah, my thoughts exactly.

[septimus]

I didn’t vote. Right now my line is what Las Vegas calls “10-11 and you pick.” Much bigger than the issue of Democratic stupidity are (1) Will the economy be strong 15 months from now? and (2) How well will Bolton and Putin coordinate the timing of their war-mongering efforts to keep their orange puppet in power?

I’m not sure this thread will help Democratic strategists much. Here they learn that the two worst things they can do are to nominate Bernie Sanders, and NOT to nominate him. :rolleyes:

[Locrian]

@Kolak_of_Twilo

And I would say nominating Bernie would give the election to Trump in a walk.

Fully agreed.

[Paul_in_Qatar]

Sixteen to eleven that the President will be reelected. That is quite frightening.

[Jack_Batty]

I voted no, because the alternative gives me hives.

[Budget_Player_Cadet]

Other relevant questions: “do I think there will be an election in 2020”, “do I think the vote count will matter in 2020”, “do we all understand that voting and elections boil down to ‘laws’ and do we all understand how the Trump administration has treated election law to date”, et cetera.

It’s too early to call any of those questions. I realize this may sound hysterical, but we’re talking about a president who continues to baselessly contest an election he won. A president who probably would be in jail if he wasn’t the president. A president who keeps making “jokes” about extending his term, or staying in office for 10-14 years. Nancy Pelosi is worried too, and she’s not really much for radicalism or fearmongering last I checked.

If it comes to a quote-unquote “normal” election… I have zero faith in the American people. Absolutely none. Regardless of who the democrats run, they will have to contend with a vicious propaganda campaign spearheaded by the largest cable news channel in the country and supported by every country that prefers a weakened, marginalized USA, most notably Russia. They will have to deal with the reality that, these days, right wing campaigns do not play fair - they just break the law and accept the consequences long after it’s too late for it to matter to the far more important outcome of the vote (who cares about a few million dollars in fines three years after the fact if you got what you wanted?). They will need to push back against all of this and still manage a decisive victory in an electoral map that means that republicans can still win the election despite losing the popular vote by millions. And they will have to deal with a corrupt government that has shown a willingness to lie, ignore the law, and break the law to defend Trump, and a “liberal” media establishment that’s all too eager to frame that law-breaking in ways that benefit the Trump administration. And if they do run someone willing to push for real social reform, they may have to deal with billionaires launching third-party campaigns explicitly to sabotage them (Howard Schultz comes to mind).

Put simply, I have little to no faith that the democratic party can win this. They’re not vicious enough, they’re not organized enough, and they have consistently underestimated the threat Trump poses to our system of governance.

[Budget_Player_Cadet]

I mean, just look at Trump’s rhetoric from the launch of his 2020 reelection campaign.

“They would shut down your free speech and use the power of the law to punish their opponents,” he asserted. “They would strip Americans of their constitutional rights while flooding the country with illegal immigrants.”

“Our radical Democrat opponents are driven by hatred, prejudice, and rage and want to destroy you, and they want to destroy our country as we know it,” Trump said.

(Taken from Vox.)

Meanwhile, here’s the democratic response, and what’s wrong with it:

This is something I’ve heard House Democrats complain about endlessly since they’ve taken the majority: Let’s talk about all of the great bills we’ve passed, that the Senate isn’t touching, instead of these distractions. House Republicans said the same thing when they had the majority. The implication is always that there’s some glitch in the system—media inanity, mostly—preventing voters from appreciating the important work legislators are doing on kitchen-table issues, or that the electorate is simply not receiving the relevant information.

But maybe they are receiving it loudly and clearly: House Democrats are passing, essentially along party lines, all sorts of legislation that they designed and wrote to be passed essentially along party lines. These bills have no chance of going anywhere because Republicans, who control the Senate and the White House, have no interest in them. Voters will care about them when there’s a government configuration—specifically, unified Democratic control of the House, Senate, and White House—that might enact them into law. But for now, the important work of the House is that which it can control regardless of Mitch McConnell’s cooperation: investigating the president, who is long past due for it.
When voters elected a Democratic House for the first time in eight years last November, they weren’t expecting any grand legislative breakthroughs between the two parties. A week after the 2018 midterms, Pew conducted a survey showing that while the “public is generally positive about the outcome of last week’s midterm elections … most Americans think that neither Democratic congressional leaders nor Donald Trump will be successful in getting their policies passed into law during the next two years.” Sixty-one percent of voters, including 49 percent of Democratic voters, believed that Democrats would be unsuccessful in getting their programs enacted over the next two years. Asked whether “partisan relations” would get better, worse, or stay the same, just 9 percent said they would get better, while 44 percent said they would worsen and 46 percent said they’d stay the same (i.e., bad).

[asahi]

I learned my lesson about writing Trump off.

If the economic conditions are strong, he has probably a slightly better than 50% chance of winning outright. He’ll struggle to win simply because he’s a polarizing figure, but that polarization is also what could make it challenging to defeat him because his supporters are motivated to support him - his supporters know what they’re getting, and they like what they see.

Regardless of the economy, Trump’s problem is that he’s increasingly alienating the independent voters. He cannot win the electoral college if he doesn’t have their support. The math just isn’t there. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve already written off winning the popular vote and instead are focusing on squeaking out an EC victory, and perhaps doing so by contesting the legitimacy of the results in some states with the aim of blocking a clear EC majority and sending it to the House, where he would probably win.

Now if the economy sours or if there’s something else like a botched disaster response or an unpopular war, then Trump is toast and Republicans will be trying to save themselves. And he might even face impeachment before then.