They say a week in politics is a long time, so making any
predictions now about the 2020 election is dangerous. Nevertheless, as
democratic candidates like Kamala Harris announce their intentions to run for
president I am tempted to predict that Trump is highly likely to be re-elected,
and even that Republicans might possibly re-take the House in 2020. Whether that is good news or bad news depends
on your politics.
My prediction is based on the guess that the extremists in
the current and likely crop of candidates are going to push all the Democratic
candidates so far to the left in the primaries, each trying to outdo the others
in virtue signaling, that the winner is unlikely to be electable. What I don’t see is any movement emerging to
try increase the Democrat’s appeal to the blue-collar working class in the
middle of country that they used to represent and that Hillary blew off so disastrously
in the last election.
To win again, Democrats need to retake those voters in Ohio
and Michigan and Pennsylvania and other Midwest states that Hillary lost in
2016. They need to retake them in the face of a robust economy, record low
unemployment, a resurgence in US manufacturing jobs, and rising working class
wages – all things Trump promised in his 2016 campaign. And so they have to
offer them something more appealing than just lectures about white privilege or
cultural appropriation or toxic masculinity or socialist doctrines or other identity
politics platitudes that play so well among the California liberal set. They
need to offer them something concrete and positive in their day-to-day lives. And
I don’t yet see them doing that.
Posts
