While the nation reads through the highly redacted Mueller Report, here’s something else to ponder from Philip Bump of the Washington Post:
“Shortly before the election, we looked at two conflicting metrics that suggested very different results in the House contests.”
“According to Gallup data on past midterm elections, the strength of the economy suggested the Republicans would lose only a few seats in the House, fewer than 10 — at least, if past behavior was a guide. At the same time, though, Trump’s unpopularity meant it was more likely that the Republicans would lose far more seats, perhaps as many as 40.”
“Both of those things couldn’t be true. The Republicans couldn’t both fare decently because of the healthy economy and terribly because of the unpopular president.”
“They lost 41 seats. The ‘unpopular president’ theory was a better predictor of the results than the ‘good economy’ one.”
I really have no idea what the economy will look like in November 2020, but assuming that we’re not in a recession and the unemployment rate is still low, the president should be in a position to worry about other things than the performance of the economy during his tenure in office.
It’s true that the results from the midterms suggest that perhaps he shouldn’t take too much comfort in that, but maybe this is the wrong way to look at things. Republican candidates for office did not do well in 2018 despite a decent economy, and this could have been a result of the Republican president being unpopular. But another possibility is that they did poorly because that unpopular president wasn’t on the ballot. That may seem counterintuitive, but if we look at the difference in how Democrats performed in the midterm elections of 2010 and 2014 and how they performed during President Obama’s reelection campaign in 2012, it’s not hard to see that a president’s party can underperform when he or she is not one of the candidates on the ticket. Obama’s base turned out for him, but they did not turn out for congressional Democrats.
Obama was more popular in 2012 than Trump is likely to be in 2020, but it’s still possible that congressional Republicans will fare better with Trump on the ballot than they did without him on it. The sad fact is that Republican voters support this president in overwhelming numbers, but they don’t generally give good grades to their congressional leaders. It’s likely that Trump will have an easier time getting the base to the polls than Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan did in 2018. And that should benefit Republican candidates for Congress.
These elections are often decided on differential turnout as much as persuasion. In 2018, the Democrats were eager to vote as a way of expressing their displeasure with the president, but Republicans didn’t race to the polls to defend him by protecting his congressional majorities. The motivational gap between those two groups was at least as important as the state of the economy or the overall approval numbers for the president. It was at least as important as anything the congressional Republicans were doing or not doing with their power.
In 2020, we should not expect differential turnout to be as much of a factor. Both bases will turn out, and therefore other factors will be more important. The economy will be one of those factors. Persuasion will be another.
OK, so here’s another possibility, and really any prediction about 2020 right now is absolute nonsense, no matter who’s making it because that election is a long ways away, but what if Trump does something that makes him look weak in the eyes of his base? They won’t turn Democratic but they could either decide that the problem was that Trump just wasn’t Trump enough and get behind someone so extreme that he’s unelectable, or be discouraged by Trump’s weakness and just stay home.
People are also discounting Weld; O’Donnell had a good piece a few nights ago on the fate of sitting presidents who have faced a primary.
. . . primary challenger is generally a pretty good indicator of a weakened incumbent.
OT — but you really should start a thread on this.
I’m reading the Mueller report. I predict Barr’s attempts to spin this will prove to have all the power of a fart in a hurricane.
p.2:
“… if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment. The evidence we obtained about the Presidents actions and intent presents difficult issues that prevent us from conclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
That’s just for starters.
I forgot to say tat the above quote is on p.2 OF VOLUME II.
Here’s an important quote from p.2 of volume I:
“The report describes actions and events that the Special Counsel’s Office found to be supported by the evidence collected in our investigation. In some instances, the report points out the absence of evidence or conflicts in the evidence about a particular fact or event. In other instances, when substantial, credible evidence enabled the Office to reach a conclusion with confidence, the report states that the investigation established that certain actions or events occurred. A STATEMENT THAT THE INVESTIGATION DID NOT ESTABLISH PARTICULAR FACTS DOES NOT MEAN THERE WAS NO EVIDENCE OF THOSE FACTS.” (My emphasis.)
The fly in the ointment are how much the trade war with China hurts red states in the Midwest. And how much the communities care about their own poverty. But if those Midwesterners in financial straits discover that the `others’ are not getting hit as hard as they are, we might finally get the tsunami we want.
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Voters, including his own, will remain pissed about the 2018 Tax Scam. They have yet another tax year to go through where they may end up owing again. It’ll be on their minds come election day.
Saying the GOP will be “the party of healthcare” and actually being seen as such are two different things. Voters are apt to disbelieve him on that. BTW, if there is one thing that is driving Sanders popularity, its that.
Regardless of how successful Barr is in bamboozling the press over the “Mueller Report” its getting drilled in the public’s mind that Trump is a crook. As the other investigations drone on, there will be more information that will come out, to fuel that.
Unless the democrats screw up big time which, given them, its possible, I don’t see Trump winning in 2020.
Neither can I, but let’s see the nominee.
Good point on the taxes.
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I heard on the radio this morning that Sanders talk about medicare for all caused health care stocks to go down and they haven’t yet rebounded.
And that is because, of course, MFA likely will mean the beginning of THE END for private insurance, as we know it. As someone who has had private insurance through employers for most of my adult life, I can appreciate why the audience literally cheered when asked the question if they’d be willing to ditch their private insurance for MFA. Health insurance companies have not treated their customers well, to say the least, because they didn’t have to; benevolence was never part of the equation. Thanks to anti-trust exemptions akin to major league baseball, they weren’t beholden to the marketplace. A result was that health insurers have run death panels for profit, for decades…for profit! Why the democrats allowed the right to cement in place even for a second the narrative of the ACA running death panels when there were many examples of policyholders or their dependents left to die, literally, because the insurance companies refused to pay for care so they could increase their profits, is just mind-boggling.
I look at it this way: private insurance had a good run from the time they went from nonprofit to a
for-profit model, raking in hundreds of billions, if not trillions off the top of total dollars spent by consumers on health care. Not caring one whit along the way about the deaths they caused by denying care to increase their profits. If their stocks are taking a hit at the thought of them having to finally face a reckoning for the horrible “service” they provided their customers, it’s not undeserved. And if the yacht and mansion collecting CEOs that raked in billions in profit are really worth what they were paid, they will find other services their companies can provide to stay profitable in business. Otherwise, they don’t deserve to survive.
Very nice summary. I also had company provided health care. For most of the time it was pretty good and the company paid 80% and very little co pay and deductible. That is no longer the case.
Our health care system is broken in my view. It is the health care insurers as well as the providers and drug companies. It needs to be fixed.
With the caveat that Dem-bashing like that above — without any explicit recognition that the Dems are always up against both the serially lying opponent AND the “referee” (i.e., the *WtUCM, which are rarely, if ever, more corporate than on healthcare issues, and whose false-equivalent both-siderism makes them consistent enablers “catapulting the propaganda” into the public discourse for lying Banana Republicans) in trying to get their own message heard through the din — is more than just a wee bit unfair. Yeah, no doubt, Dem messaging could stand improvement, no question. But it could be consistently perfect, and its effectiveness would still be substantially hampered by the *WtUCM’s incompetence/malfeasance.
To illustrate this, let me edit your quote above a bit to reflect this:
Perhaps that topical shift helps illustrate how laying entirely on Dems the failure to effectively refute and debunk the “death panels” lie, while not even seeming to notice the critical role of the *WtUCM in enabling that lie, is . . . erm . . . problematic?
*Worse-than-Useless Corporate Media
At some point Trump has to exit the trade wars or his stock market may be harmed as well as the economy.
The president’s Party always takes a hit in midterms, and the degree is based on their personal popularity. Obama’s approval in 2010 and 2014 was bad, but he improved it by 2012 election time. Yet, Republicans still turned out in staggering numbers in 2018 — this differs with 2010 (when Dems had reduced turnout relative to R’s and were widely exposed in the House), and 2014 (with record low turnout among both parties, but Dem turnout even lower than that). I’m of the opinion this is because the strongest R voters are aged 50-64, and they’re the highest propensity to vote no matter what. They will have this advantage for another 5-10 years.
I think it’ll be a good experiment in any case, and will prove definitive for future. I think R’s were maxed out in 2018 with Trump at 45% approval. If we go into 2020 with Trump at 45%, he will get 46-47% of the vote, leaving potential for ~53% for the Democrat if third party is low. If he’s at 40%, look out, the Dems could hit 55%.
Trump will definitely turn out his base. He has ignored actual governing to focus on activities, including leveraging every policy, to keep his base voters riled up. Everything he does as president is exclusively focused on that.
That said, how are we defining base? If it is defined as republican voters, democrats win in a turnout war IF we get our voters, including those who sat out 2016 for whatever reasons to the polls, simply because there are more of us. We got the numbers. Dems need to start working NOW on countering voter suppression schemes though. They also need to address why some democratic voters sat out 2016.
If it is defined as the coalition that put him in office in 2016, which was his base PLUS disaffected democrats and Sanders voters who foolishly voted for Trump or other erstwhile democratic voters who also foolishly went third party, the net effect of which helped visit Trump on all of us, I don’t see Trump appealing to them this time around. However I do see the possibility of dems snatching defeat from the jaws of victory when it comes to these voters, as a result of how the primary process plays out, and who the eventual nominee is. Unfortunately.
Agreed, its way too early to predict with any degree of confidence, but overall I believe if dems get their voters to the polls, they win.
I suspect there will always be disaffected dem voters who feel butt hurt and will cross over. Maybe even more this time around. Here’s hoping not so this time around.
I have found in my small circle of friends that Trump supporters are pretty solid. Seems nothing shakes them and the more you argue against it the more they hang on. So we have to get the party out to the polls.
Trump’s base is uncommonly small for a President in the second half of his first term. Only extraordinary levels of voter suppression appear likely to allow him to win in 2020 unless he improves his approval from voters with no political party preference. Right now the President’s approval numbers with those voters are abysmal, and he isn’t doing anything I can identify which is likely to win over the broad section of them.
What this argument ignores is that Trump nationalized the elections to an unprecedented degree. Normally, unpopular presidents try and let Congressmen localize the election. The President certainly doesn’t come out and fly all over the country making speeches explicitly arguing that HE is the one issue on the ballot.
Trump made endless open appeals to GOP voters to support HIM. He made the election a referendum on Trump, and then declared victory because the Republicans picked up 2 Senate seats despite losing governorships and 41 House seats.
No matter what Democrats want, the 2020 election will be a simple up or down vote on Trump, because he will insist upon making himself the constant focus. He’s an attention whore of the worst sort, and nobody has ever been able to convince him to just shut up and keep silent in his own self interest.
Yes, good point and it’s what I was trying to get across above. Republicans turned out at General Election levels already! We had 50-51% turnout in a nationalized environment in 2018, with 2016 being 60%. 2014 was a lowly 37%, 2010 was 42%. We already saw what happens when the bases turnout and independents vote for D’s, it’s a 53-46% result.