Gotcha. It depends on what the definition of “win” is. 
I saw E-DUB’s message after I posted, but thanks for clarifying.
This is cherry picking. At this point in his administration, Obama was at the Nadir of his approval, but before an after this time he went up higher, so that he was above water (net +8) by the time the election rolled around. For Trump, other than a 30 day honeymoon period has basically been flat. Peoples minds are made up and there is nothing anyone can do to change them. Trumps approval will be somewhere in the 40-45 range when the election comes around with a net approval of minus 10-15. The only question will be whether even this level of low approval is enough to win when you take into account,
- The structural advantage of the electoral college
- The likely low approval ratings of the Democratic candidate after the Republican/Russian mud machine is through with him/her
- The nationwide dirty tricks playbook to disenfranchise Democratic voters.
I would not at all put it beyond Trump to engineer some sort of Reichstag Fire in some form.
The difference is that the USA isn’t like post WWI Germany. We’re not looking for scapegoats. Sure, there’s old people watching Fox News that’ll blame immigrants or Muslims for everything but Trump has their vote.
I do find it interesting you mentioned the Chicago loop. During all the screaming from the ‘progressives’ about Buttigieg’s NDA, I took a second look at the one I had to sign when my Loop job was eliminated a couple months ago. 90% of it was security stuff since I worked next to the Sears Tower. As a rare person with a 24 hour pass, I knew all the back entrances and elevator codes that might be useful for someone up to no good.
It depends on third party runs, too. There’s a pretty decent chance Tulsi Gabbard runs a Russia-backed campaign to peel votes off the Democratic candidate.
Look at how he treated Puerto Rico.
Sorry, I don’t follow. I think we’re talking about Hurricane Maria? That was a natural disaster that he fumbled, it isn’t a terrorist strike.
Letting down the US citizens of PR doesn’t touch his base or those ignorant and not knowing PR residents are US citizens. It barely moved his support at all and in no lasting way. I can’t figure out how that equates to a terrorist strike.
I don’t believe a terrorist strike will favor him.
He only knows what his gun toting red neck supporters like. G-d knows what he will do if the Senate votes him out, or he is not re-elected.
I can imagine refusing to leave the White House, or trashing it and moving into a Trump Hotel or his joint in Florida.
Indeed. A close election, ideally a heavily disputed one, serves this end better than trying to false-flag Trump to a clear victory. A good messy public display of Trump being dragged from the White House on January 20, 2021 would fit this nicely. I suppose encouraging some white nationalist groups to violence through the use of internet trolling is about as involved as Putin/Russia has to get.
And if Trump (barely) wins, encourage his followers to gloat about it every chance they get and seize the opportunity to backlash everything in sight in the name of “taking back” America. Trump’s already a chaotic personality; Putin can just nudge America to follow suit, abandon/alienate NATO, and then proceed to rebuild the Russian empire.
I am aware that there are people who believe that Trump is the greatest President ever. But those people do not constitute a majority.
If Trump wants to get re-elected, he needs to attract voters from outside his base. And I don’t feel he is doing that. If anything, he has probably lost voters who he had in 2016. Even as a Republican, Trump needs to be at least a close second to be declared the winner.
And considering Trump is currently being impeached, I have to ask how bad you think things need to be to qualify as a calamity? Even if he’s not convicted, it’s hardly a sign that things are going well.
They don’t constitute a majority of the electorate at large but they DO constitute a majority of votes in the Electoral College. And in our current system, that is ALL that matters. Surely you know Trump could actually get fewer votes than in 2016 but still win because of how the EC skews things?
Adding 5 million angry progressive voters in each of NY, CA and IL and Trump will still get elected as long as he manages to carry the same states in 2020. And he won most of those states by such huge margins he could have less turnout and still win in most of them.
The fact he is likely to pick up a couple states like MN and NH that were close but went to HRC doesn’t inspire much confidence that he will lose.
No need to mince words. He’s already a Chaotic Evil personality…
You know who the *real *victims here are? The terrorists. All they want to do is strike a violent blow in service to their cause but now no matter what they do or when they do it, everyone will assume they’re part of some kind of conspiracy with the credit given to someone else entirely. It’s getting to the point of them having to ask if they should even bother.
Surprised nobody has mentioned the Wag the Dog idea where Trump creates a war to distract people. I can see him invading Iran to boost his re-election campaign.
The Onion beat you to that one.
Please explain how, after Iraq and Afghanistan, an invasion of Iran would even remotely boost Trump’s popularity.
well it is not logical but I think it will boost him. Rally round the flag always worked in the past. He may not even use many ground troops so it would not be full scale war, just bombs and missiles.
A la Cheney, Mike Pence could warn us against changing horses in mid stream.
There are quite a few testosterone poisoned guys in my area who would get off on the USA being in a “real, shooting war”.
“Quite a few” isn’t enough to make this politically feasible. The military is sick of deployments. Their families are sick of deployments. Trump very successfully spun himself as the anti-war candidate and it worked; the right wing is now, in the main, non-interventionist and isolationist. The warmongers like John Bolton proved incompatible with his administration.