Looking Forward to the 2020 Election? I know I am
“Ding Dong, the witch is dead
Witch old witch? The Wicked witch
Ding Dong, the wicked witch is dead”
Happy Day
Wake up you sleepy head
Rub your eyes, get out of that bed
Wake up, the wicked witch is dead
[The Wizard of Oz, 1939]
Introduction
I’ll be singing the above lyrics on Tuesday, November 3, 2020. It’s a great metaphor for what will likely happen assuming the Election Day occurs on time. There are obviously a lot of differences between Donald Trump and all previous United States presidents. Donald Trump is, of course, undeniably the worst president in United States history. But, there is one similarity he does share in common with all previous presidents.
In general terms, all presidents are never more popular than the first day they get elected. It’s all downhill from there no matter who is president. Donald Trump’s popularity has never exceeded even half of all voters. He has never increased his core base at all. And now, like all previous presidents, will lose key segments of the population based on demographics.
In addition to the rationale provided in the following article by Evan Siegfried, there is this to consider: One thing that really separates presidents in history is their ability to handle a crisis during a national emergency where many lives are at stake.
The number one president was (in my opinion) Abraham Lincoln who had to deal with a divided nation at war with itself. He, along with his generals, ended up preserving the union and the nation throughout those tumultuous years in our history.
Second place goes (in my opinion) to Franklin Delano Roosevelt who was Commander-in-Chief during the Great Depression and World War II. While his handling of the Japanese internment was a grave travesty of justice, his genus with New Deal programs, legislation and handling of World War II Allies with effective diplomacy, sets him apart from many other presidents.
At the bottom of the heap is Donald Trump, that “twitter-twisted” buffoon with a narcissistic personality disorder. He’ll one day go to his death thinking he was a legend in his own time. Reality would suggest he’s really just a “legend in his own mind.” But we all know better. He was impeached by the House of Representatives and that will, unto itself, be an everlasting mark on his presidency.
As we all know Donald Trump did not test positive for the Coronavirus. He did however test positive for stupidity and for a narcissistic personality disorder. It’s hard to know, what benefits, if any, Trump voters in 2016 acquired as a result of their electing Donald Trump. It is unlikely “trickle-down economics” worked for them any more than any other American during the last 3+1/2 years of a Donald Trump presidency.
Donald Trump did not cause the Coronavirus to come into existence. However, his handling of the crisis will go down in history as one of the greatest screw-ups of all time. When the Trump supporter starts burying family members, just as others will and have, they may look back in time to their original vote for Donald Trump, as the greatest mistake they ever made in their life. In their quiet moments they may ask themselves, “What the hell was I thinking!”
So, what is likely going to happen with the 2020 presidential election? Well, on a more analytical basis, the following article, written by a Republican Strategist, details the biggest risk in 2020 for Donald Trump. Enjoy the article.
Trump’s biggest risk in 2020 isn’t losing young people. It’s losing their grandparents.
“The president may still win the majority of seniors but, if he does so by a significantly smaller margin, that spells problems in swing states.
By Evan Siegfried
The Trump era has seen seismic shifts away from the Republican Party among key voting blocs, like the oft-heralded suburban women, as well as made difficulties predating Trump that the GOP faced with other groups, such as millennials and young voters, even worse.
But little noticed amid the midterm bloodshed was the behavior of one of the party’s most important voting blocs — senior citizens — that should worry each and every Republican in Washington and beyond.
People 65 and older have long been solidly Republican, serving as reliable voters who can be counted on to not only turn out more than other blocs, but also do so with less effort on the part of campaigns. Their support was evident in both the 2010 and 2014 midterm elections, when the GOP won these voters by 21 and 16 points respectively. So, too, was it visible in the last two presidential elections, as senior voters backed Mitt Romney by 12 and Donald Trump by eight points.
OpinionTrump’s 2020 chances changed with the midterm election. He can’t ignore Democrats anymore.
However, 2018 witnessed a startling shift toward Democrats; the GOP managed to win voters 65 and older by just two points.
There are signs that this is not a fluke, and that the Trump era has caused senior citizens to abandon the GOP in numbers big enough that could produce huge electoral consequences for both congressional Republicans and Trump alike. In April, a Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 53 percent of senior citizens would “definitely not vote for” Trump in 2020. (This disquieting result was obscured in the national discussion by the fact that 62 percent of women overall and 57 percent of white women with a college degree stated that they definitely would not vote for Trump — the aforementioned shift among suburban women.)
And it is not just the one poll that indicates seniors are unhappy with Trump and the Republican Party. A May Monmouth University poll revealed that 58 percent of Americans 65 and older believe that the United States is headed in the wrong direction. And, earlier this month, a Politico/Morning Consult poll found that 60 percent of seniors say the country is headed on the wrong track and 54 percent disapprove of Trump.
OpinionTrump doesn’t care about governing or even 2020. He just wants to be loved.
When you drill down to the state level, the national trend continues. According to a May 2019 Quinnipiac poll of Pennsylvania voters, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden not only leads Trump statewide by 11 points, but he also beats the incumbent president 58-38 among Pennsylvania voters 65 and older. That is a far cry from how Trump fared with these voters in 2016: He won them by 10 points.
Of course, some Trump defenders will follow the president’s lead and resort to the familiar refrain that the polls are rigged, fake news or some other such dissociation from reality. But the Trump campaign itself has already begun a major Facebook ad campaign targeting senior citizens. Does such a move sound like a campaign that is comfortable that it can hold its 2016 voters and is looking to expand its base? Of course not. It is arguably a sign that the Trump re-election effort is trying to stop an exodus of existing supporters.
It is important to remember that this migration of senior voters away from the GOP and Trump is happening despite the arguably strong economy. Polls have repeatedly shown that voters of all stripes acknowledge that the economy is in fantastic shape, but the majority say they are not personally feeling its benefit. In a new Economist/YouGov poll, just 25 percent of seniors and 25 percent of Americans overall say that they are better off financially than they were a year ago.
And in a new Quinnipiac poll, 77 percent of Americans 65 and older say their economic situation is good or excellent — but Biden still beats Trump among them 56-39 and the president registers a 54 percent disapproval rating. These are roughly the same numbers and sentiments found prior to the 2018 midterm elections.
Americans, including our seniors, view the great economy like it were a great party they’re hearing about, but were somehow not invited to attend.
The Trump campaign and its allies will argue that the president will win the 65 and older voting bloc in 2020 and, in all likelihood, they are correct. However, the question is not whether they will win it but by what margin Trump will win it, because the smaller the margin, the bigger the problem for the president in swing states.
And for a president who essentially won in 2016 by just 77,744 votes — Trump’s margin of victory in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin combined — the combination of winning voters 65 and older by a smaller margin, losing suburban women, making no inroads among millennials and, potentially, a Democratic nominee who could capitalize on the energy that his party saw in 2018 could spell electoral calamity for Trump in 2020.”
Evan Siegfried
Evan Siegfried is a Republican strategist and commentator and the author of “GOP GPS: How to Find the Millennials and Urban Voters the Republican Party Needs to Survive.”
Final Comments
No one has a crystal ball that can predict who will become President of the United States in 2020. However, analytics and demographic polling would suggest Donald Trump is on his way out of the White House.
Prosecutors in New York are waiting for Trump to be just a citizen again. It is extremely unlikely that either Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders would ever pardon Donald Trump, or in any other way protect him from prosecution.
As one observer of the political scene the last 5 years, I have to say I feel nothing but ill will for Donald Trump the President. For Donald Trump the person I kind of feel sorry for him. As a child Donald Trump experienced some unexpected vicissitudes of childhood such as having a racist domineering father (He was arrested at a Memorial Day parade in Jamaica, Queens, New York at a KKK rally in 1927) and a neglectful mother. There was no one to build up his self-esteem in a normal way.
When it comes to a narcissistic personality disorder it is one of the hardest and most difficult disorders to treat. With such a personality type in the White House as president, that is placing the country in a very dangerous position.
The Reasoned Society 