Thread: Good King Trump
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Old 02-26-2018, 11:07 PM
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erimir erimir is offline
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Default Re: Good King Trump

Quote:
Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger View Post
Matt Latimer warns that, despite everything, Trump could very well win re-election unless the Democrats manage to get their act together.
I mean, I know that his approval rating isn't at it's lowest level ever, but -16 is not on track to win.

Democrats are also back up to +10 on the generic ballot.

The fact that things look better for him than they did two months ago does not equate to him winning. He certainly has a non-trivial chance of winning reelection. It might be essentially a tossup based on historical patterns - an incumbent with a decent to good economy is favored to win. But approval ratings provide more direct evidence, and his aren't and have never been good enough to make him favored for reelection (if he had the same numbers in November 2020) aside from the very first few weeks.

People are underestimating the chances of him being reelected, sure. It's closer to 50-50, but the thing is that this is because conditions can change. It won't just happen without any obvious indicators.

If Trump is reelected in 2020
  • his approval rating will probably be closer to break-even or even positive by the time voting starts
  • the economy will probably not be significantly worse than now, or at least be be trending positive compared to 2019
  • he will probably not have done anything significantly more disastrous than he has already. Starting a war with North Korea and then hundreds of thousands or millions dying on the peninsula, for example, would probably not help him get reelected
However, while the economy will probably be fine for the next few months, we can't predict what it'll be like in 2020. It could well be significantly worse or in recession. There isn't much reason to expect it to be healthier based on his policies, especially not for working people. It could be, in spite of his policies. We don't really know. There are a lot of economic factors that don't have much to do with Trump. (Note that economies across the world have generally been doing well.)

There's also no reason to expect Trump to "pivot" and stop doing stupid shit or avoid chaotic turnover. He eventually gets tired of everyone. They say something that he finds insulting, but that can be hard to predict. John Kelly said something that Trump found insulting and the domestic abuse thing has been embarrassing and Javanka seem not to like him anymore...

On the other hand, if Democrats do win control of the House and/or Senate, conditions will change and Trump could choose to react to this by jettisoning GOP priorities since he will no longer need the GOP for protection. At that point, improving his poll numbers will be better protection than giving Paul Ryan what he wants. Or Democratic investigations and oversight into not just Russia, but his and his administration's corruption and incompetence across many departments could be dealing out negative headline after negative headline. Russia is hardly the only reason to investigate Trump. So instead he may get nothing done while having less ability to control the headlines.

But either way, Trump's not "on track" to be reelected. The scenarios where he wins reelection probably require conditions to change. Maybe consistent growth continuing will be good enough to overcome all the dysfunction even though thus far he has managed to remain historically unpopular for a president with these economic conditions. But either way, conditions will change. They're not at all guaranteed to change in his favor. But since we can't rule that out, his reelection remains significantly possible.

Although I think a bit less than 50%, since the chances of Trump making a truly catastrophic mistake or dying/having a debilitating health crisis (he's not the healthiest looking 71 year old) or Mueller's investigation revealing stuff even Trump can't shrug off or the economy going into recession are non-trivial and any single one of those could bring him down.
Quote:
Who speaks for the Democratic Party? Depends on what time it is. What does the Democratic Party stand for?
Can you answer these questions for any year in which the minority party won back control during a midterm?

In 2010? 2006?

This question basically just describes "being the minority party before selecting a presidential nominee".
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Thanks, from:
Corona688 (03-01-2018), lisarea (02-27-2018), slimshady2357 (02-27-2018), The Lone Ranger (02-26-2018), The Man (02-27-2018)
 
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