Do you think Trump will win in 2020?

Politics & Elections
181

There’s a tendency among a lot of hard-line progressives to point out that political belligerence worked for the Republican party, and they’re not necessarily wrong. Where they’re wrong is in assuming that they can make it belligerence work for the progressives.

What worked for them, won’t necessarily work for us. And that’s because progressives are strongest when they work together and build coalition across ethnic, religious, socioeconomic, and even some ideological lines. When they are able to unite under an umbrella and accept some differences with one another, progressives are hard to defeat because they will simply outnumber the conservatives.

Conservatives, by contrast, may be outnumbered, but they are more unified, and they are in no small part unified by strong cultural ties, and they are uniting under the banner of white christian capitalist nationalism. It’s a minority of the population that subscribes to their worldview, but those who are bound more tightly than their opposition. This is why the conservatives benefit from political polarization because they can use the progressives’ strength, which is diversity, as a way to break them apart along various fault lines.

Progressives will have to tolerate differences of opinion, with centrists having to stomach some of the stinging attacks from progressives and progressives having to accept the need for compromise. If they can’t tolerate each other, they will fracture, and it would be a total disaster for the country.

182

The hard right is large enough with good enough turnout that their choice needs only a little support from anyone else to win, especially given the way the deck is stacked both structurally and by gerrymandering. They ARE the GOP at this particular point in time with very little else still there.

The hard left is both smaller and with lower turnout. They can assure success for the hard right but cannot win without being part of a broad coalition. They are far from a majority of the Democratic side.

183

It’s like the US has become a nation of parliamentary government. On one side of the aisle.

184

This is just one person’s observation, but here goes.

A few months ago we (Northern Virginia area) had a primary for sheriff, County DA, stuff like that. The current Republican DA was solid conservative; family man; church guy; tough on crime, etc. His oppenent was a Trump-supporter who sent out flyers railing against the “liberal” incumbant and how he “didn’t support Trump,” blah blah blah.

Well, I go to vote. It’s being held on a Saturday morning. I figure I’ll just pop in and vote for the incumbent and be on my way. But damn if I didn’t end up standing in line for almost 2 hours. It was like a MAGA party. I felt like if I said I was for the incumbent, I would have been the turd in the punchbowl.

Sure enough, the Trumpista won. Like 63 - 37.

I was not expecting this. Ignore this at your peril. (Again, a data point of “one.”)

185

Unless the Dems can come up with a viable not pander candidate…don’t see it. I am no Trump fan.

186

You are making the assumption there aren’t people who sat out the last election who love what DJT is doing and are motivated to turnout because all his tough talk appeals to them. Again, all he has to do is keep the states he won in 2016. The Democrats have to come up with a candidate who can change that and get some of those states to flip. Expecting Death to do the job for the Dems is not a smart strategy.

Quoted because it bears repeating.

187

Yep. Harris’s attack on Biden made is very easy for trump to win.

and people wonder why I never trusted her.

188

And you’re making the assumption that there are people who sat out last time and who love what Donald is doing. If they loved it all that much, why weren’t they at the polls for him three years ago?

I’m not seeing much evidence either way. The only thing close to resembling evidence is the way Dem turnout in the most recent midterms ratcheted way up from 2014.

189

It wasn’t just that, although it probably helped President Trump. Personally, I think this did him more good than anything else coming out of the debates so far.

190

She’s doing the party a favor – testing Biden. He needs to be tested (as do all the candidates). That’s a big part of the purpose of the primary. If he can’t handle this, which is pretty mild an “attack”, then he sure as hell can’t handle the general.

Good for Harris. We need a robust and sharp-edged primary – our eventual candidate will be stronger for it.

191

Andy, agreed—within reason. Bernie went too far in ‘16.

Divemaster, how is an unpolled local GOP primary relevant to the accuracy of polls about a presidential general election? Who has claimed that MAGAs have not taken over the GOP primary electorate? :confused:

192

My observation was just that Trump-type voters were motivated and numerous. Even for an off, off election where typically maybe 10 people a hour wander into the polling venue. It was a packed house. Not sure if that indicates anything at all in a general sense. These people may be silent NOW, but come election day? They will be loud.

193

Republicans actually had a surge of turnout in 2018. But that was dwarfed by a bigger surge on the other side.

194

Now that’s some funny shit.

Regards,
Shodan

195

I think some of you may be ignoring something: One of the big problems with Trump in the last election was that the mere thought of him being president seemed ridiculous, and a lot of people likely voted against him because they thought that his being president was just inconceivable, and that they couldn’t imagine him doing the job.

But now he’s the incumbent president. A certain amount of, “What the hell will happen if TRUMP were elected?” fear is going to be eased by that. And the truth is, once you get away from his poisonous personality and execrable behavior (which has already been discounted, because everyone knows about it), Trump has actually presided over a fairly normal center-right administration. His Supreme Court picks have turned out to be not crazy right-wingers, but thoughtful conservatives within the tradition of moderate conservative justices. Neil Gorsuch just voted with Ruth Bader Ginsberg against the rest of the court, for example.

The economy under Trump is better than it’s been for decades. Unemployment is the lowest it’s been in 50 years, and personal incomes are rising after a decade of stagnation. It doesn’t matter if he didn’t have anything to do with it - Presidents always get the credit or the blame for the economy under their watch.

If Trump were a normal president with normal manners and behaviors, the economic situation at this moment would pretty much guarantee his winning in a landslide. But he’s not, so all bets are off.

At this point, of course everyone is just guessing. The three big factors to look for are how the economy is doing before the election, whether any major international conflicts occur before the election, and who the Democrats wind up selecting to go up against him.

The first two items are out of the Democrat’s control, and on the third they look ready to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The progressive party of young people is currently front-running two septuagenerian white males and one septuagenerian white female. The other rising candidate is an ex-prosecutor who does not exactly have a woke record on enforcement. Almost every candidate seems to have endorsed policies FAR to the left of where the American public is, such as open borders along with free healthcare for illegal immigrants, single payer health care, free college for all, a universal basic income and other policies that are not only to the left of the country, but to the left of the mainstream of the Democratic party.

Finally, it remains to be seen how the Democratic candidates will handle Trump. Trump utterly destroyed his Republican challengers - some so bad (looking at you, little Marco), that it destroyed their status a rising stars in the party.

Trump’s party trick is that he seems to be able to get away with obnoxious behavior that others can’t. When Rubio tried to go toe-to-toe with him on insults, somehow it made Trump look better and it destroyed Rubio’s credibility. I have no idea how he does that, but he did it again and again to every candidate the Republicans threw at him, and it worked every time.

And now that he’s been president, count on him throwing that in the faces of his opponents. “Little mayor Pete thinks he can run a country. I was facing down Iran while he was getting owned by grandmothers on the local school board.”

This next election is likely to be the craziest one in American history. The stakes are through the roof since the parties have become extremely polarized. We’ve never seen candidates like these before, and no one knows where the Overton window for candidate behavior is anymore. It’s going to be a wild ride, and the outcome is completely up for grabs at this point. But I have to give a slight nod to Trump, just because of the value of incumbency and the fact that he’s not going to be nearly as scary to people as he was in the previous election. He’s no longer a joke candidate. That’s got to work in his favor to some degree.

196

Jimmy Carter calls Trump out on his 2016 win - saying Trump ‘was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf’.
Maybe some of Trump’s older, “Christian” supporters might begin to lose faith.

197

Nah. They’ll quickly pivot to insulting Carter, and telling themselves that Carter is not “A Real Christian” like Trump is.

198

Wowww. I see this 180 degrees the opposite way. Namely, that a lot of traditional, well educated Republicans in the suburbs cast an uneasy vote for Trump in 2016. “He is kind of crazy on the campaign trail, but once he gets into the Oval Office I’m sure he’ll settle down. And I just can’t stomach Hillary, and the FBI is investigating her…” Instead, in marked contrast to the placid picture you paint, which I find utterly unrecognizable, his presidency has been a nonstop parade of grotesques, a complete dumpster fire. They are out on him.

Ron Brownstein knows the numbers better than anyone:

And here’s a 538 piece from Sept. 2017 that illustrates how quickly this “cooling” happened:

199

What that says to me is that a distressingly large portion of the electorate is changeable with regard to their opinion of Trump. To me, that largely has to mean that they are ill-informed or subject to advertisements and propaganda (domestic or foreign, it doesn’t matter).

Which means that neither side can count on their vote; nor can they be counted on to vote sensibly (by my definition of sensible, of course). That means that it’s largely going to come down to manipulating the election with regard to voter turnout.

One side seems better at that than others, historically. But 2018 showed us that Democrats could learn.

So it seems that it’s still anybody’s game at this point. I’m pessimistic, just because the number of people who put up with Trump, though they do not support him, is truly shocking to me. Especially fellow Rs in Congress.

I suspect that 2020 will be much uglier than 2016.

But I’m often wrong about these things, so here’s hoping.

200

I just figured I’d remind everyone that the American voter…is fucking stupid.