Election 2020

[pbrower2a]

(01-04-2020, 12:20 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(12-31-2019, 06:53 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I believe the Senate gets to vote on the rules of the trial, with 51% of the vote required.  If they decide on a secret vote, Trump is schrod.  The threat of retaliation is gone.  As is, a Republican cannot win a primary if he opposes Tump, but will not be able to win a general election if he supports Trump.  A secret vote would be one way to avoid that trap.

Keep in mind. A couple of Democratic Senate seats where won by Democratic candidates in red states when the Democratic party still had the benefit of doubt working for it like it still 2018 which it no longer has today after the recent House impeachment debacle.

The only two Democratic Senators running for re-election in 2020 in states that Donald Trump won are Doug Jones, who got elected under freakish circumstances unlikely to be replicated in Alabama, and Gary Peters, the only other freshman incumbent Democrat up for re-election in any state in 2020, and in a state that had gone for the Democratic nominee for President every year beginning in 1992. Others are in states that Hillary Clinton won. 

Doug Jones has little to lose by voting to remove the President. The only way in which he wins if is if he gets a re-match with Roy Moore, who probably cannot win the Alabama primary this time considering what a pompous a$$ he was the last time. Gary Peters would lose a primary challenge if he voted to keep Donald Trump. If I were a Republican I would be more concerned about Collins in Maine, Gardner in Colorado (both in states that voted against Trump), McSally in Arizona (got appointed after losing a Senate election), Tillis in North Carolina (approval polls are abysmal), Ernst in Iowa (Iowa is a legitimate swing state and a clean government state), and Georgia (Democrats have been getting closer every year, and two R seats are up, one by an early retirement).  

Michigan increasingly looks like a freak win for Trump in 2016 on about the scale that Indiana was a freak win for Obama in 2008. All but one poll that I have seen, and that one looks as if it is contaminated with the results of a poll connected by a right-wing political journal, show Trump losing Michigan decisively. 

I recognize that you consider Donald Trump so wonderful that he should win a landslide with promises of imposing a new feudalism in America... but you don't even know your own state well for its political attitudes.  Minnesota was close to going for Trump in 2016; it is not now. 

If I were a Republican I would not brush off the 2018 midterm election so easily. Democrats won absolute majorities of House votes in a midterm election in states that have 284 electoral votes and an unambiguous plurality in another state (Arizona) with eleven electoral votes. I see that for now as a floor for any Democratic nominee for President. Add to that -- Trump is underwater in approval in four electorally-large states (Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Ohio) with 78 electoral votes. I see him winning all of those or losing all of them. Then there is Texas, which looks iffy.

Republicans usually do better in midterm elections than in others. If I see any analogue to 2018 as a midterm, then it is to 2006, a portent of the near-landslide by Barack Obama. The tea Party voters who haven't died off are still there, but their numbers are not increasing. Millennial voters, about 60-40 D are replacing older voters on the whole about 52-47 R in the usual turnover of old and young voters by about 1.5% a year. 

Trump may be solidifying his base, but he is offending everyone else. It may not matter that those who never voted for him and never would are becoming even more intense in their contempt for him, and that such will not hurt him more in the 2020 election. It's what is in between that matters.  A hint: Goldwater and McGovern both had enthusiastic bases.