Trump Will Probably Lose 2020

[_cinepro]

There's a planning strategy for projects called a "pre-mortem" that uses a particular technique to get people thinking outside the box. Basically, you imagine that you are meeting in the future and the project was a failure. Now, you must explain why it failed. If you can imagine such a meeting and imagine looking back at the failed project, you will quickly see the inflection points that are most likely to fail.

Instead of thinking about all the reasons Trump might lose next year, it might be interesting instead to imagine that we are in January of 2021 and Trump is preparing for his second inaugural. What happened that allowed him to win a second time?

The first thing that comes to mind for me would be that the Democrats picked a candidate that appealed to a small subset of Democrat voters, but left the middle wide open. And when it came time to make a choice, enough voters once again held their noses and voted for Trump on the basis of what they perceived as a strong economy, and untenable proposals coming from the opponent.

[_EAllusion]

Clinton ran hard to the middle. She lost. One of the reasons she lost is that left wing voters stayed home or voted 3rd party relative to Obama. Would this had been different if she didn’t swerve so hard to appealing to moderate independents and Republicans? Hard to say. What isn’t hard to say is that it isn’t obvious that being economically progressive is bad politics.

There’s a trap that people routinely fall into where they think that what is good politics coincides what they want out of politicians both in terms of policy and style.

If Trump wins, which he has a decent shot of doing, I guarantee you there will be a wave of people claiming he won because Democrats didn’t adopt all their personal preferences even though the main reason Trump won is simply because he’s the incumbent.

[_Analytics]

Poorly educated whites are continuing to flock to the Republican Party and are offsetting age-related demographic trends for now.

It's hard for me imagine somebody flocking to the Republicans now who voted against them in 2016. I suppose there are people who voted for Hillary because they thought that Trump was too extreme, but will now see Trump as the new normal and will vote that way because anybody who is honest, decent, and competent will seem radical by comparison.

[_Some Schmo]

And when it came time to make a choice, enough voters once again held their noses and voted for Trump on the basis of what they perceived as a strong economy, and untenable proposals coming from the opponent.

I think it's pretty clear that untenable proposals are not deal breakers for Trump fans. They lack basic judgment.

Democrats can strategize all they want, but unless they can BS and fire up voters, it doesn't matter. This country doesn't really give a crap about policy. They care about rah rah team we're #1.

[_EAllusion]

Obama won re-election.
W. Bush won re-election.
Clinton won re-election.
H.W. Bush lost re-election right at the end of a recession.
Reagan won re-election.
Carter lost re-election in the midst of a severe recession.
Nixon won re-election.
Johnson opted not to run due to Vietnam.
Eisenhower won re-election.
Truman won re-election.
FDR won re-election.
Hoover lost re-election in the middle of the Great Depression.
Coolridge won re-election.
Wilson won re-election.
Taft lost re-election in unusual election with Roosevelt dividing his party.
Roosevelt won re-election.
McKinley won re-election.

There is a pattern here.

[_EAllusion]

Poorly educated whites are continuing to flock to the Republican Party and are offsetting age-related demographic trends for now.

It's hard for me imagine somebody flocking to the Republicans now who voted against them in 2016. I suppose there are people who voted for Hillary because they thought that Trump was too extreme, but will now see Trump as the new normal and will vote that way because anybody who is honest, decent, and competent will seem radical by comparison.

It’s nonetheless happening. I read a survey just the other day showing Republican ID among poorly educated whites is up a fair amount compared against 2016 in WI. It’s mostly, but not entirely offset by well educated women increasing their support among Democrats.

[_EAllusion]

Obama won re-election.
W. Bush won re-election.
Clinton won re-election.
H.W. Bush lost re-election right at the end of a recession.
Reagan won re-election.
Carter lost re-election in the midst of a severe recession.
Nixon won re-election.
Johnson opted not to run due to Vietnam.
Eisenhower won re-election.
Truman won re-election.
FDR won re-election.
Hoover lost re-election in the middle of the Great Depression.
Coolridge won re-election.
Wilson won re-election.
Taft lost re-election in unusual election with Roosevelt dividing his party.
Roosevelt won re-election.
McKinley won re-election.

There is a pattern here.

If Trump loses, it will be because he is terrible on a scale that borders on miraculous or because a recession started at the end of this year. The latter seems unlikely at this point, so it's probably just that Trump is amazingly bad.

If Trump wins, that's easy to explain. Incumbents almost always win because a critical mass of swing voters tend to just vote based on their sense of how the country is doing and rationalize their decision to the particulars of conversation around that election cycle. What you are likely to see is Trump's numbers gradually creep up as people stop saying Trump is bad and find ways to be comfortable saying he's doing a fine job to rationalize their pro-incumbency vote based on a vague sense that things are going fine.

Trump should win. This does not feel inevitable because the fact that he's an unfathomably corrupt moron filled with malice does have some impact on public opinion.

[_EAllusion]

If the US does enter into a serious recession in February of 2020, Trump is going down like Hoover and his loss will have a down ballot effect. Republicans are getting wiped out just in time for legislative districts to be redrawn. The direction of the country will become radically different for the foreseeable future.

That's probably not happening as forecasts for a recession in the next 12 months are currently floating around 20% and the Fed is already moving to cut rates, but it is interesting to think about. It's stunning how much people's lives and the course of history is impacted by dumb luck like this.

[_moksha]

Why Democrats lose in 2020:
1. The economy. Trump has not yet ruined the economy.
2. Petty hair-fire fatigue. The best lack all conviction
3. Patriotism. White Nationalism
4. Not just 1 McGovern, but currently 24.
4. 1 Joseph Goebbels vs 24 Squabblers

[_Some Schmo]

I don't consider the next election a referendum on Trump. It's a referendum on the sense and morality of the American people.

I don't like our chances. Americans are slow learners.

Certainly, I hope Trump loses. I just refuse to get sucked in to believing Americans aren't dumb enough to make the same mistake again. That's a road to disappointment. I'd rather have low expectations and be pleasantly surprised.