Let’s start with the obvious: Donald Trump is the least qualified, most odious individual ever to occupy the office of the Presidency. He has no redeeming qualities. He is all vice and no virtue.
Nonetheless, I fear he is going to win re-election in 2020. here’s why.
1. In a contest between an exciting lie and a boring truth, the lie has the advantage. Trump, as we know, lies every time he opens his mouth and that, you would think, would be enough to guarantee his defeat. But if you think that, you misunderstand the purpose of his remarks and his tweets. Trump speaks and writes not to communicate facts but to communicate attitudes. What attitudes? At bottom, the attitude that the privileged have earned their privilege and the less-fortunate deserve their misery. Wrapped in this general proposition is the racist notion that whites are disproportionately privileged because they are disproportionately intelligent, hard-working, etc. From this it follows that if some segment of the white population is suffering, their suffering is caused by others: immigrants, people of color, Muslims, Jews, etc.
2. The President controls the news cycle. And never have we had a President more conscious of and savvy about the power of his personal microphone. Trump has demonstrated again and again his willingness and ability to engage in headline grabbing stunts that push news that might be genuinely bad for him off the front pages. The most well-known example is his success in getting Wikileaks to dump the Clinton emails the day after the Access Hollywood tape came out. That event created the mold that has defined the administration’s news management ever since.
3. He has a vast war chest. The oligarchs to whom Trump is dispensing government largesse by the barrel have rewarded him with oceans of money for his re-election campaign. Even if Democrats ultimately come together behind their nominee, she will begin the campaign with one hand tied figurately behind her back as Trump outspends her in all the battleground states.
4. He has an electoral college advantage. The populous, mostly blue, states are under-represented in the electoral college and sparsely populated red states are over-represented.
5. He has his own media empire that praises him and savages Democrats 24/7/365. Fox News is the best-known province of that empire but it includes 1,000 or more AM radio stations that pour out pro-Trump propaganda night and day. In San Francisco, America’s most liberal city, there are three full-time right-wing radio stations. The market leader has the all-star line-up: Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, while the others feature B-team figures like Hugh Hewitt, Sebastian Gorka, Glenn Beck, etc. Up and down the AM dial all you get is a constant stream of pro-Trump propaganda.
6. He has a digital army of Russian bots flooding social media with fake posts and an unknown number of Russian hackers preparing to penetrate open, Internet-connected voting machines and change results in Trump’s favor.
7. The economy is still strong. OK, the tax cut did not deliver the promised 3% growth and his trade policies are bonkers, but with jobs plentiful and inflation low, who among the voters really cares? If the same economic parameters hold a year from November, there will be strong “don’t rock the boat” sentiment even among voters who can’t stand Trump.
8. You can’t beat somebody with nobody. Until the Democrats settle on a candidate, Trump has the luxury of running unopposed. By beginning his re-election campaign two years in advance, Trump has jumped far ahead of the Democratic field.
9. His base is fanatically loyal to him, willing to forgive all his shortcomings in exchange for his soul-soothing reassurance that white Christians are the real Americans, the patriots, the hard workers, the deserving, the makers, while the black and brown Democrats are a collection of subversives, losers, foreigners, the lazy, undeserving takers. If, as seems possible, the Democrats put someone other than a white Christian male at the top of their ticket, that choice will simply amplify Trump’s message among his base.
10. In short, the deck is stacked in Trump’s favor and it will take a maximum effort and a united Democratic Party to overcome those odds. Is there any current candidate who can pull the Democrats together to make that effort? If there is, I don’t know who it is.