[ul]
[li]Voter turnout will be sky-high. Perhaps the highest-ever in a presidential election.[/li][li]Trump can’t run as the new outsider bring change and shakeup; he is the entrenched incumbent this time around and it would be the D candidate who would represent change.[/li][li]Trump already starts out with significant $$$ advantage; he registered for reelection on the very first day of his presidency and already has over $100 million in his campaign war chest. It shouldn’t take long at all for the Democratic nominee to accumulate lots of donations, though, given the intense fervor of D supporters.[/li][li]Democrats will for sure play hard for the Upper Midwest and Rust Belt this time around.[/li][li]There’s a good chance the mud-slinging in 2016 won’t even hold a candle to 2020. I saw a post on Reddit where someone wrote that their desire to see just how chaotic and entertaining the 2020 election will be was one thing that kept them from committing suicide.[/li][/ul]
It is quite uncommon for an elected President to fail to win re-election, if he runs for it, if his party was NOT the incumbent party at the time of his first election.
In fact such a failure has occurred only three times in all of American history: twice in the 19th century (incumbent Cleveland lost to Benj. Harrison who lost to Cleveland 4 years later), and once in the 20th century (Carter lost to Reagan during severe economic and foreign crises).
If people are feeling good about the economy, Trump will be a heavy favorite in 2020.
Honestly, it doesn’t take much dredging to come up with much on Biden. Sort of comes with the territory for being in high profile politics for 40+ years.
That might be an advantage for him. Like Trump, most of Biden’s baggage is baked into the national conscience. No other contender can really say the same (Liz Warren possibly excepted).
I don’t know if people feel good about the economy. Usually that means ‘can I find a job easily, and are wages and benefits going up’. Despite gdp growth, low unemployment etc those things aren’t true. Wages and benefits aren’t budging (and weren’t under Obama either) and the low unemployment rate is partly misleading due to a lower labor participation rate.
As far as money, Hillary had far more money than Trump and she still lost. Money isn’t everything.
Nobody is going to make an honest comparison of Biden’s record versus Trump’s record and decide that Joe Biden is the worse choice. Just as nobody made an honest comparison between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump and picked Trump.
The people who “chose” Trump are the diehards who decided to vote for Trump long before the campaign. It doesn’t matter who the Democratic candidate was; they would have found a reason to reject them. Any effort to win these people over is wasted.
A good list, but I’m not totally convinced about voter turnout. The Democratic party is going to have to decide how progressive they want their nominee to be. It seems far less likely that a moderate like Hillary can get nominated, which makes Biden a long shot, IMO. I also think that’s why Sherrod Brown decided against running. Either moderates or progressives are going to feel left out and that could hurt turnout. There are also racial and gender fault lines to be mindful of. Trump’s GOP doesn’t have these concerns.
In terms of what to expect, I worry that 2020 could be a new and dangerous turning point in terms of the politics of race. The rise of white nationalism and its relentlessness in pursuing more mainstream acceptance and political legitimacy is frightening, and in some ways reminiscent of the Klan’s push for similar legitimacy between 1915 and 1925.