Pundits are paid to opine, so opine they must. I am not a pundit, but a culturally observant person who is often asked: “How is ‘it’ going?”
When this is not about the revolution in higher education, then the “it” is a reference to the 2020 Presidential election. I no longer write about what I wish would happen, given my other work, but I do try to keep up with what is likely to happen. After all, the next administration will rule on education, higher and otherwise, and so judicious guesses help with planning. My business friends are in a similar position.
When I ask them “How is it going?,” they shrug. They do not know. Let’s lift our heads from the tiny details, this poll, that BREAKING NEWS STORY, the rumor on Twitter, the President’s tweets, and see what are the election basics.
My General Thesis on the Election: The President should be favored, but is at best fifty-fifty today.
Truth be told, so far as I can tell, everyone is guessing, but my general take on 2020 remains the best guess I have or have heard: this is a referendum on President Donald John Trump. Media makes every day seem critical with Big Stories, but the situation is very stable:
- Most presidents are re-elected.
- The economy is sound or growing.
- Almost all presidents are re-elected in such a situation.
- Americans are in combat, but (perhaps) fewer than in the last administration.
- Most Americans do not approve of the job President Trump is doing and most do not like him personally.
- A static 38-44 percent of Americans do like the job the President is doing.
As a result of incumbency and the economy, President Trump should win easily. As a function of his unpopularity, he could easily lose badly. As a result, I have argued that he must keep his disapproval ratings below fifty-two percent.
Why?
He needs people who have consistently disliked his performance to vote for him. This is easy to see happening since people can like the way things are generally without liking the person doing them. However, there is limit to the number of people willing to do this. Taking the last-election as a best case scenario (Mr. Trump unknown quantity against very unpopular challenger), I think he can pick up about four percent of those who disapprove. Given the electoral college, if Mr. Trump gets more than forty-seven percent of the vote nationally, he is likely to win. So if he is under fifty-two percent disapproval on Election Day, then he is likely to win. (He might not, but he should be favored.)
The Problem Presently for Mr. Trump
The problem for Mr. Trump is that he has rarely stayed under that number and is now much closer to 55% disapproval. Let’s be plain: Mrs. Clinton lost with 48.1% of the national vote. She almost surely would have won with 49%.
Unless Mrs. Clinton is the nominee, Mr. Trump will start the race much more disliked than his opponent. He almost surely cannot win, even if he can muddy the Democratic nominee, with disapproval at 55% or higher. He would need a major third-party candidate and Tulsi Gabbard notwithstanding that seems unlikely.
If he remains at the low end of his normal range, he is losing. There are obvious reasons for this at the moment:
- Impeachment proceedings.
- Syrian policies that some of his core supporters might find unappealing.
The news is always bad for Mr. Trump, administration successes (as in the economy or in foreign policy) are not given the same press as problems. Some successes are spun as problems: “Will the economy tank?” When you read such a headline, the rooting is obvious and the answer plain too: “Eventually.”
Note, however, that the core situation remains the same: Mr. Trump is still in his same band of popularity as he has been since being elected. He is still at worst a fifty-fifty chance of being the victor.
What Could Change Things
However, there are three reasons for thinking the present situation might not hold:
- Impeachment.
- The move of the Democratic Party toward Warren.
- The savvy media campaign, personal charisma, and massive money advantage the President has.
On Impeachment
Ignore anyone who tells you he knows what will come of impeachment. There is no precedent and the range of reasonable outcomes move from the Democrats failing to get the votes in the House (least likely, but possible) to the House impeaching and the Senate removing (second least likely, but possible.)
Moderate Democrats in the House might not vote for impeachment.
One can plausibly count seventeen or so Republicans who might vote to make Mike Pence President.
There are many scenarios in between those extremes. If Trump goes to trial in the Senate next year, who knows?
On Warren
Senator Warren would be the most liberal mainstream candidate in my lifetime. Many of my friends are cheered by that fact, most are not. The Democratic Party must believe it can win with any candidate, so can afford to go for the policies the activists want or buy the (dubious) theory that there is a large enough base to win with a very progressive candidate who has yet to show an ability to move the more centrist core of minority voters necessary for a Democratic victory.
Vice-President Biden is running a terrible campaign, but remains a viable candidate only because so many core groups in the Party share this worry. Biden has run more than one terrible campaign for President before this one, so there is no reason to think he will improve.
Can Warren win?
Sure, after all, Trump won, but note this: Clinton did not enrage the business community the way Warren will. This group is reachable, big business in particular is socially liberal, but a Warren nomination will lead to a flood of money against her campaign that can only be compared to the 1896 election. The joke then was that Bryan was outspent 16-1 . . .a reference to his advocacy for the coinage of silver (inflating the currency) at 16:1 to gold. The plutocrats were not the only ones frightened by Bryan . . .small business, open to a Democrat like Grover Cleveland, rebelled as well.
Things did not go well for Mr. Bryan.
Mrs. Clinton outspent Mr. Trump, but Trump also got massive free media for his traveling road show. Could Mrs. Clinton have kept her loss as narrow without her giant spending advantage? I doubt it.
Mrs. Warren will get swamped, not by pro-Trump ads, but by the business community running anti-Warren, pro-free market ads. Can she survive that?
She might, if like Mr. Obama she motivated the core of the Democratic Party to show up in record numbers. The track record of energetic wonks from Massachusetts stirring the base of either party (Dukakis, Kerry, Romney) is bad, really bad. The media falls for this every time, but Massachusetts isn’t North Carolina, Arizona, or Michigan.
Really.
Mrs. Warren is obviously very smart. She is a good communicator, if dull as white bread in extended discourse. That might be attractive after four years of Mr. Trump or it might be . . . Boring.
Can she win? Of course, she can win: any major party candidate not named Bob Dole can win.
Nominating her strikes me as a powerful risk for Democrats, though outside of Biden, there is no one with broader appeal. Maybe the President is so toxic anyone can win. Maybe.
That worked against John McCain after the Bush II administration, but the high-risk nominee Senator Obama had world class charisma, motivated the base, and great speaking skills. He ran in his first election, one should recall, to the center which is something Warren will not be able to do.
On Trump
The President is underestimated as a campaigner. He won a race everyone thought he would lose in part because he is good at campaigning. He can tell a good joke, has learned to give a decent speech from a teleprompter, but is unparalleled at reading his particular audience and keeping them amused. A Trump rally is an event, you can decide what kind, but an event it is.
A Warren, Biden, or other Democratic rally is another Democratic rally.
You can hate this or love this, but this is a gift. Trump does not do rhetoric naturally, he converses. This is great television. No Democrat running has even mediocre television/video skills. They are too hot (Harris), too fake-seeming (Beto), or too professorial (Warren). Biden is sad. Only Sanders is an authentic star, but Sanders will be blocked again by the party.
So what is the state of the race?
Trump should win, but may not. Why? Trump is Trump and America will decide if it wants more. Maybe, maybe not.
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