08-20-2019, 08:36 AM
(08-19-2019, 08:03 PM)Hintergrund Wrote: As long as his "Approve" %s don't fall below 30% or so, don't bother me. 'Cause before that, nothing's gonna happen.
Indeed, nothing will happen before the 2020 election. Trump is beyond guidance that could change his ways.
Because much of the margin in the popular vote in 2016 for Hillary Clinton came from a small number of medium-to-giant states (especially New York and California), Trump can still win only 45% of the popular vote and win. The States elect the President, and the People do not.
But this caveat fails to recognize that
(1) Trump is not keeping states that he barely lost within range of him picking them off
(2) the three states that he most barely won (Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) are spiraling out of reach
(3) if Wisconsin does not get him, Arizona will -- and I saw a poll by a pollster that usually gives sunny views of Trump give him a disapproval rating of 52%
(4) although Trump keeps has base intact by doing his worst to people who were never going to vote for him anyway, that will not be enough. Goldwater and McGovern both energized their bases -- they just did not win the possible swing voters, and
(5) there is no evidence that Trump is able to win the same shaky voters that he got in 2016.
Even Obama was in a hole at times in 2011 -- but never that bad; besides, Obama is a far craftier politician than Trump. Although Democrats would fare best with another Obama-like candidate in competence and character, they do not need someone that good to defeat Trump.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.