Here's your year-end reminder that absolutely no one knows how 2020 will shake out electorally, except that the election will clearly be a nail-biter for Democratic voters. No matter how many articles we read, polls we look at, and pundits we listen to—2016 is still too fresh. But as we brace for a year in which journalists are poised to both sides us to death while hunting down every last 2016 Trump voter who plans to vote for the orange menace all over again, let's keep in mind that there's actually three realms of possibility for 2020 outcomes. Right alongside the prospects of a narrow Trump reelection or a narrow Trump defeat, there's also a third option: Trump and the Republicans who enabled his crimes get absolutely ruined in 2020, delivering both the White House and the Senate to Democrats.
It's probably not the most likely outcome, but I got a brief glimpse of the revelatory universe where that could take place while listening to a “Talking Feds” podcast about the upcoming Senate trial. Toward the end of the hour, conservative commentator and anti-Trumper David Frum reminded listeners about the sizable swath of voters who voted for neither Trump nor Hillary Clinton and what that could mean for 2020 results.
"What people forget, last time, Donald Trump got 46% of the vote. The reason it looks like anything is because, of the 54% who voted against him, Hillary Clinton only got 48% of the vote, and that's on her," Frum recalled. "If the next Democrat, if nothing changes and a Democrat gets not 48 out of 54, but 53 out of 54—that is 1988. That is a big, big win. In that case, the Republicans lose North Carolina, maybe they lose Georgia, I don't believe they'll lose Texas, they could lose Indiana, they certainly lose Michigan. They are suddenly looking at, my god, you could have a real sweep."
Frum was commenting on the Fox News bubble Republican lawmakers live in when he made the observation. America to GOP lawmakers, Frum noted, “is white America, it’s non-coastal America, it’s the America they see on Fox—so they lie to themselves. … I think Republicans are going into this [impeachment] process quite convinced they have a real fighting chance in 2020. And at some point around May or June, it may hit them … My god, we are going to lose the Senate, it really is possible we’re going to lose the Senate.”
The irony of such a potential outcome for Republicans, Frum explained, is that before President Obama took office in 2009, the last time the Democrats really pushed through an historic agenda was in 1965 under President Lyndon B. Johnson.
"It comes once every half century," Frum said, but Republicans "may have created the possibility, instead of every half century, they're setting up the possibility for an activist Democratic president in 2021 that would not otherwise have happened. But for Donald Trump, 2020 would not be a change election.”
Look, more than likely, next year's election will be pretty darn close and no matter what, we’ll be sweating it out till the very end. But as long as we're heading into a year where journalists will over-hype the horse race and obsess over Trump voters and play up Democratic doom at the polls, we may as well keep this third, rather dreamy option in our back pockets for a rainy day. Next year is going to be a slog, so as we labor away to unseat Trump, oust Republicans from office, and create a brighter future, we may as well be dreaming big dreams.