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Who’s Trump Bringing to the Party?
The good news: If Trump can turn white, non-college-educated, non-voters into voters, he could easily win the presidency, and show the GOP a formula for winning presidential elections for a decade or two. There’s about 47 million people who fit this description, and they’re overrepresented in many swing states. The bad news: Trump doesn’t seem to be doing that. Voter registration is increasing everywhere, but not where these people make a larger-than-average portion of the population.
So what’s going on? It could be that Trump is motivating slightly more new voters against him than for him. Or, perhaps more likely, it could be that white working class voters are out there to be activated, but Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee have waited until too late to build the analytics and ground infrastructure necessary to identify and register them. That’s where Clinton and the Democrats have excelled. The absence of a discernible pro-Trump registration spike in key states doesn’t make it impossible that there will be a white, blue-collar “Trump surge” on Election Day. But it means he’d need to build that surge of voters out of the smaller pool of 14.7 million white nonvoters who are already registered, rather than realizing his full potential with the much larger pool of 47.1 million “missing” working-class whites.
Of course, if Trump had a campaign organization that was out registering folks, maybe this would be different. Another lesson for 2020.
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Hey I’m not saying I like any of them. They’re all disasters, I’m just pointing out that there are young Democrats out there who could pose a serious 2020 challenge.
Eric Garcetti
Oh, I meant the problems with them getting elected president. I could see any of them getting nominated as Democratic candidate because despite the names you’ve listed they really do have a lack of notable talent.
Any evidence that Trump won’t run again? Any evidence that Pence wouldn’t run to complete Trumps term? Any evidence that Trump’s misjudgements wouldn’t not rebound to the Republican nominee?
I should make clear that if Trump wins now I hope your scenario comes true. Trump retiring in 2020 would be good for us if he won but I don’t see Trump as a retiring kind…hope I am wrong though.
A Clinton loss will throw her wing of the party into disarray the Sandernistas will be calling the shots and Trump will give them a real opening. If you think Herself is bad wait until you see what they throw at us in 2020.
Well the same thing was said in 2004 and then a little-known State Senator gave a convention speech. So…
Fair point. But how much of that was the unique factors of a financial crash, Hillary scaring off all other contenders, George W. Bush’s non-response to five years of relentless attacks and John McCain’s almost historically bad campaign (it would be historically bad except for ORCA in 2012 and Trump’s non-campaign).
I think you underestimate Obama’s political accumen.
I’m not sure how much he has and how much of it is the apparatus that was built around him – he seems genuinely insulted that people don’t do what he wants.
Actually I think that he will be personally miserable as president. It is lot more work than he thinks it is and is pretty thankless task at that. Additionally I am not sure he will not want to run again and risk losing. I suspect he would find a few signature victories and state he had done what he came to do and return to private post presidential life.
Not sure if this list qualifies as much of a threat.
After a Trump presidency they would be a huge threat, that is the problem.
I have to disagree with you there. They would be a YUUUUGE threat.
I was talking with a friend who had been a public school teacher for decades (art). He told me something that really turned on the light: nearly all school administrators are jocks. That’s because phys-ed teachers have very little after-school work (you don’t have homework for phys-ed). And so with nothing better to do, they brush up on their credentials and become administrators. Ever wonder why sports have utterly dominated school, turning playing children into micro-pros? That explains it all.
@topher, was this comment meant for another thread? Not sure how it fits in here
He was commenting on a little side-bar that Lois, Midge, and I had starting around comment #17.