With a Roaring Economy, Can Trump Lose? Sure, and Here's How
At one time or another, some or all of the Democrats running for president have either proposed, endorsed or are considering implementing the items on the laundry list you’re about to read.
Medicare for All …
The abolition of private health insurance ...
A 70 percent top income tax rate …
A tax on wealth, levied every year …
Free college tuition at public institutions …
Forgiveness of student loan debt …
Reparations for slavery …
Elimination of border enforcement …
Free health care for immigrants who sneak into this country …
An expansive (and expensive) remaking of the nation’s economy to combat climate change …
Abortion rights apparently with no restrictions …
A return to “forced” busing to achieve integration in public schools …
Packing the Supreme Court …
Impeachment of the president …
And one candidate (Bernie Sanders) thinks felons in prison should be allowed to vote and another (Beto O'Rourke) favors confiscating certain kinds of guns …
This is some of what today’s Democratic Party stands for, a party that has moved so far to the left that it’s not only your dear old Dad who wouldn’t recognize it, neither would JFK, LBJ, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton or even Barack Obama.
Is this what the American people want, a fundamental change in just about every facet of American economic and cultural life? If it is, Donald Trump is a goner. But just because progressives are playing deep left field and hold sway over the party, that doesn’t mean the rest of the country is ready to reshape the country in the progressive Left image.
Whoever wins the Democratic Party’s nomination, of course, will try to move to the middle, the place where you have to be to win a general election. But that will be more difficult than anytime in recent memory. Joe Biden may be able to pull it off, (though he keeps moving to the left in an attempt to stay relevant), but the others would have a very tough time. And even Biden would be lugging his party’s progressive baggage all over the country, distancing himself from the Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren wing of the party – without distancing himself from their voters. The Flying Wallendas would have a hard time navigating that tightrope.
So things are looking up for Donald Trump, right? If unemployment stays low, if the economy is still humming along, if he escapes a 2020 recession, can he really lose to a candidate from a party that even old-time, traditional Democrats might not want to vote for?
Yes he can.
It’s not exactly breaking news that Donald Trump is his own worst enemy. The only people who love him are the people who love him. And there's really not a whole bunch of them; nowhere near a majority. He’s the only president in the polling era never to reach a 50 percent approval rating.
Even Peggy Noonan, who wrote moving speeches for Ronald Reagan and who is among the most thoughtful, fair and civil members of the commentary class, says in her Wall Street Journal column that Donald Trump is “a mental case.”
“It would be nice here to say, ‘I don’t mean mental case. I mean his mind is a raucous TV funhouse, that he is immature, unserious, and at the mercy of poor impulse control, that he doesn’t exercise power intelligently but emotionally, and with an eye always to personal needs.’ But mental case will do.”
And then there’s Conrad Black, an avid Trump supporter, who recently took to National Review to tell everyone how wonderful the president is, but adds that, “It does the president no favors to pretend that there are not still a significant number of people who have an uneasy feeling that although his administration is in policy terms quite successful, and the president has faithfully tried to carry out most of what he promised in the raucous 2016 election campaign, he is yet too bombastic and evidently egocentric to maintain the dignity of his great office.”
“Now it’s time to show some class,” Conrad Black concludes.
The problem, of course, is that Donald Trump is incapable of showing the kind of class Conrad Black is hoping for, and incapable too of toning down the bombast, or putting a lid on his ego.
So if the election is a referendum on left-wing policies that would profoundly alter the American landscape, if Democrats run on the conviction that this country is racist to its core, and that it’s good policy to confiscate weapons the Left doesn’t like, then Donald Trump stands a good chance to win a second term.
But if it’s a referendum on Donald Trump and his combative, take-no-prisoners style, his chances go way down.
As a headline over Conrad Black’s essay in National Review puts it: “If the president can become a bit more presidential, his reelection will be all but assured.”
Yes, and if he had wings he could fly.