Why Trump Will be Re-elected
Disclosure: I voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. I will vote for the Democratic candidate in 2020, regardless of who it is. I’ll do this because it’s easier to make a difficult choice than the wrong choice.
Election Day 2020 is closer than we think. Sure, we have yet to see the end to winter; we have an entire summer ahead. However, once all the states get their primary votes counted, November 3rd will be less than four months away. Here is the breakdown: Super Tuesday is on March 3rd. A week after this political “holiday,” six other states will have their voices heard. April will see eleven more states vote in the primary. Over the course of May, six more states will vote. June is the last month to hold elections, with seven states and territories wrapping up the work. Then in July, the Democratic National Convention will be held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. From that point on, the Democratic candidate will only have about 3.5 months, full time, to campaign against the president.
Within this primary and post-primary stretch, there exist simple, opposing objectives between Democrats and Republicans. All the GOP has to do is wage an outright campaign against every and any Democratic hopeful. It doesn’t matter who the liberals nominate. The Democrats have a steeper and more ambitious task: unite both wings of the party (moderate and progressive) and then beat a sitting president. This is one of the difficult, nearly insurmountable, factors that point to a rather swift and very likely re-election of Donald J. Trump.
Re-election favors incumbency. Well, this bodes true for recent American presidents. Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama — the three immediate predecessors to Trump — all sought and achieved two terms. George H. W. Bush was the last incumbent president that saw defeat in a bid for a second term, and the year was 1992. If the trend holds, Trump will win in 2020. There are reasons for this trend, a trend that reveals a more favorable result for the incumbent than the challenger: fundraising and party infighting.
President Trump wasted no time setting his sights on 2020; he filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on the very day he was inaugurated. This was his “two birds with one stone” throw — a message to…
