The Re-Election of Donald Trump

In recent weeks, Donald Trump's prospects for re-election have improved noticeably in betting markets.  For most of the early part of this year, his odds hovered around 30%.  Three weeks ago they jumped up to 35%. They currently stand at 39% on Predictit.org.  This surge does not correspond with an upsurge in Trump's approval ratings. The Real Clear Politics average of his approval ratings have stated between 42% and 44% over the last several weeks.  This upswing in the betting markets reflects two more fundamental realities than one politician's polling numbers.  Donald Trump's prospects are improving for two reasons:

1. As time goes by, Trump is being normalized. The American people are accepting behavior from Donald Trump no other president would ever dream of doing, because the American people are becoming numb to his vulgarity and weirdness. 

2. Donald Trump has utter and complete control of the Republican party.  Every single Republican politician is afraid of him, because he is immensely popular with the bloc of people who vote in Republican primaries.

If I had to bet today, I would bet against Donald Trump being re-elected in 2020. But his chances are better than a lot of thinking people want to admit. He is now embarked on a journey to Singapore for a meeting with the North Korean dictator. I think the results of that summit will have a big impact on the 2020 race and I want to sketch some thoughts about 2020 before the meeting happens.

I.  Donald Trump's 2020 Message.

Donald Trump's 2020 campaign will be predicated on simple assertion: that he has made America great again, just as he promised in 2016.  There are three policy claims that he must make, and he will make them with a straight face no matter what the facts on the ground say.  

1. I made the economy better.  He will point to whatever statistics help this cause. Right now he can accurately say that the job market has got stronger during his presidency. He will credit his tax cuts and deregulation if that's still true in 2020.  If not's still true in 2020 he will find some reason why voters should only think about how strong the job market was during the first half of his presidency. 

2. I made the country safer.  Donald Trump will point to the destruction of ISIS as his greatest accomplishment. ISIS has lost almost all of its territory, a trend that began while Obama was still president, but which did accelerate in 2017.  And it does not seem likely that ISIS will make much of a comeback as a de facto sovereign entity. It will be quite easy for the Republican party to craft compelling 30 second commercials featuring people who were tortured by ISIS and who now have a measure of freedom or been able to return to their home. It's a good starting point for claiming success on the world's stage.

The North Korea gambit is all about wanting a diplomatic victory to show that he is a great deal maker.  Trump's incentive is to get a deal that he can call "denuclearization." Kim Jong Un might have a corresponding incentive to get something done too. 

Kim was educated at a boarding school in Switzerland. He knows what the west has to offer and he has to know, on some level, that his father and grandfather's model is no way to run a state. But he also wants to retain political power and the lifestyle of a dictator.  He probably needs some western capital to make that happen.  If he's ever going to make a deal to get that capital, he might as well make it with the current president, because Trump will not make ANY demands related to human rights or political reform. Trump only cares about being able to claim that he got North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.  So Kim could agree to a very loose, wishy-washy statement about ending their nuclear weapons program.  Such a deal will have no teeth and will not make any demands of verification before 2021, other than some symbolic photo ops of Kim's people dismantling some equipment. They will make some rhetorical concessions and empty gestures, like they did when they staged a demolition of their nuclear testing site. In exchange, they will get the prestige of having been treated as a peer by the president of the United States and they will get some sanctions relief. I think Kim will tempt Trump with the possibility of making money for his family and for his other rich asshole friends. 

Donald Trump would love to tell you that he took nuclear weapons out of a mad man's hands. He would also love to tell you that he made an incredible deal that will somehow make gas cheaper or decrease our trade deficit or create some jobs.  He's not big on details and he's way over his head on this trip.  But I think he will get a deal of some kind done, because his inner circle is committed to making that happen and they don't really care about the consequences of a bad deal. Whatever deal he makes, Donald Trump will brag about it-long, loud and wrong.

3. The Democrats are pussies. The Democrats need to nominate someone, and that nominee will have to emerge from a protracted primary battle where everyone fights to prove that they are th most anti-Trump option available to voters. 

Donald Trump's most outrageous policy changes have been in the sphere of immigration. He is breaking families of asylum seekers up. He is still intent on building that stupid wall and he is willing to shut the government down to do it.  To the extent that the wall is shorthand for his insane 2016 campaign, he has to go all out for it. It is an extension of his political persona, and therefore must be defended at all costs. For the same reason, the Democrats have to resist the wall at all costs. In the short term, the wall is hurting his poll numbers. But by 2020, he's going to be beating the xenophobia drum as often as possible, because either way, he can win on it.

If the wall gets built, he will say "Look, I did this amazing thing and now we are safe."  It it does not get built he will say "Look, I tried to save you but the Democrats blocked me and now we have gangs running around and cops getting shot" and making hay out of whatever unfortunate headlines he can point to.  

The Democratic party is vulnerable on this issue, again.  The Democratic base is rightly incensed by Trump's immigration policies. The 2020 Democratic primary race may just turn on who can get to the furthest left on issues of immigration enforcement.  But they could pay a price for that in the general election. Trump will demonize brown people in whatever way works to make voters question the ability of the Democratic nominee to lead the government-to fight for average Americans. He will definitely run 30 second commercials about some crime committed by an undocumented worker here in the states or maybe about some crime wave or other in European countries that are driven by immigrants from Muslim majority countries. 

There will be a 4th dimension to Trump's 2020 campaign.  Something personally insulting about the Democratic nominee. Lyin' Ted Cruz, Lil' Marco Rubio and, of course Crooked Hillary Clinton will know what I am talking about. Trump has the mind of a bully and he has reason to believe that people like watching him be cruel to other politicians.  No matter how the Democrats nominate, he will find a weakness and he will beat it like a drum.  Commie Bernie Sanders, Crazy Joe Biden, & Pocahantas all have easily identified monikers. But over the course of the Democratic primary, he will figure out what to call whoever the nominee is, and there will even be a chant to replace "Lock Her Up!" It will not be subtle.

II.  The Consequences Phase of the Trump Years.

On Friday, Maggie Haberman tweeted out a very interesting observation.  The White House staffers that only met Trump during the transition period all say that Trump has gotten much worse in recent months. But the people who have known Trump for a long time tend to say that his behavior is the same as ever.  The fact is that Trump was intimidated by the presidency for the first year or so. He knew he was in over his head and he reigned in some of his worst instincts. But as 2018 stretches on, he is reverting to his old self. He is becoming the world class asshole that he always has been.

The reason for this confidence is that he is surrounded by sycophants and spends eight hours a day watching a television network dedicated to talking about how successful he is. I suspect that many people reading this blog will have a hard time believing this sentence, but it's a very important one: Donald Trump genuinely believes that he is a great president. 

Like any other narcissist, Trump is able to create excuses for any failures. But his real passion is taking credit for success.  He think the continued drop in unemployment is only happening because of his brilliant tax cuts. He also believes, with equal fervor, that the federal debt has exploded because of past sins by Democrats. No amount of evidence can convince him otherwise. He thinks the stock market boom of 2017 was due to his presidency. The fact that the market is lower in June than it was in January is the fault of fake news and lying Democrats.  This dexterity of mind is great for one's confidence, but reality can't be shut out for ever.

It's not clear when Trump's ignorance will begin to manifest itself  in negative economic news. The tax cuts have not yet caused any increase in economic growth. Last quarter we grew at just 2.2%, but the forecast is slightly better for the rest of the year. And we haven't yet seen signs of a weakening job market, although wage growth has been less than expected.  So Trump might cruise through 2018 and 2019 without a recession. But he's also beginning to play with fire when it comes to trade.

As his confidence in the Oval Office has grown, Donald Trump has begun focusing on the issues that he always cared about. International trade and trade deficits have been a point of interest with him for decades. He seems to think that a trade deficit means that one country is stealing from the other. This is balderdash, but we live in the age of alternative facts.  The president thinks this is true and he remains dedicated to the proposition that the United States should only be a thief, never a victim of  such "theft".  

Trump is beginning to act brazenly here. He is threatening to impose all kinds of tariffs, on both rival nations and our traditional allies.  Most glaringly, he is promising to impose tariffs on Canada.  He is claiming that this must be done for national security, a notion that is utterly preposterous, but that happens to be the only reason he can impose these tariffs without congressional approval. So facts be damned, we're going to punish Canada.  Canada, of course, intends to respond in kind.  That's how trade wars work.  Yesterday Justin Trudeau said that Canada will not be pushed around.  Our president threw a hissy fit in response and refused to have the United States sign off on the joint comminique of the G7 nations. That's all a little inside baseball now. But if he follows through with these tariffs, there will be tremendous consequences for American consumers and workers.  

It is possible that the economy will continue to putter along with reasonable growth rates and job creation numbers. That will strengthen Trump's chances of winning an election. But it's also possible that his trade wars and continued attempt to undermine Obamacare will have the kinds of consequences that voters remember on election  day.  Trump's prospects have improved because he has good fortune on the economic front. I don't think that can hold for another 29 months of this level of stupidity, but the margin of the election will be determined by how severe those consequences are.

III. Mueller.

Robert Mueller has compiled a year's worth of information about the ties between Donald Trump and the government of Russia. Not a single stitch of information has leaked from his shop. That's an impressive accomplishment that makes it difficult to handicap the outcome of his investigation.

This is what I suspect will happen. Sometime in 2018 or early 2019, Bob Mueller will call a press conference. At that conference he will announce a new round of indictments. Those indictments will include people in Trump's inner circle. It might include his son and/or son-in-law. He will also lay out the case that Donald Trump obstructed justice by firing James Comey in order to impede the investigation of Russia's election interference.  He will explain that he does not intend to indict Donald Trump because he subscribes to the consensus view that sitting presidents can not be prosecuted for crimes.

This announcement will infuriate a lot more people than it pleases. Many Democrats will be frustrated by the decision not to indict Trump. And Republicans will be faced with yet another moral dilemma: accept the findings of a respected law enforcement professional or side with the raving tantrums of an incompetent, compromised and dishonest president. If the past 17 months have taught us anything, this will not be a hard choice for most of them. 

There has been a lot of talk about a looming constitutional crisis. We could get lucky and avoid something really awful, but I am not optimistic. The constitutional crisis began last week when the president publicly declared that he was above the law and not a single prominent Republican office holder bothered to repudiate him.  If we go forward with the battle lines that Trump has drawn, then the ending will be very ugly.

But Mueller is likely to persuade a lot of independent voters that the sitting president is corrupt. That will probably prevent his re-election. But even under those extraordinary circumstances, the outcome will not be certain.  Donald Trump has captured a major political party. It is now his toy. For the moment, the economy is lumbering on with modest growth and a stable job market. The world has not presented Trump with a military or humanitarian crisis of a big enough to be made truly horrible by his ignorance and ineptitude. 

Donald Trump's presidency may coast to a soft landing, which will set up a very close election. In 2016, there were ten states decided by less than 4 percentage points. Donald Trump won six and Hillary Clinton won four. But more importantly Trump won the biggest states in this group, capturing 102 electoral votes to 21 for Hillary. Both parties will have multiple paths to 270 electoral votes.
The motivation of the Democratic base will be extremely high and that should be enough for them to win. But the Republican party will rally to their leader and they will run on the same spiteful promises and ugly nationalism that won the last election. It could be enough to win again. That is the political reality of the United States of America as we enter the next, even uglier phase of the Trump presidency.