Is Trump's re-election inevitable?

[pbrower2a]

If he wants to run again... and the election is rigged.

[pbrower2a]

You also have to realize that historically it is less than normal for an incumbant to be defeated.
I can't help wondering if Trump will be primaried, however.

Clinton "won" in 1992, but it was after twelve years of GOP control of the WH, not four.
Jimmy Carter lost, but Carter is a Democrat and Trump is not.
The only time the GOP has lost the WH after only four years is 1892.

Democrats should be careful to predict a win in 2020. Is overconfidence ever a good thing?

The partisan label means far less than does the quality of performance. If Donald Trump performs badly as President (and Presidents now have responsibility for economic results, too), then he too can go down.

There is no obvious precedent for Donald Trump.  He ran an iconoclastic campaign in which he promised to 'stick it' to millions of Americans, and I expect him to keep that promise and create a large number of resolute opponents by 2020.  Will that come with improving lives for most Americans? I doubt it.

If a one-term President, then the analogies are weak for the elder Bush (incumbency fatigue will not have set in) and stronger for Hoover (got caught with a financial panic) and Carter (economic malaise. hostages in Iran). Anyone who wants to believe that the Obama recovery will continue on its own with a President who will gut the policies behind it needs far more imagination than I can supply.

I expect him to be a disaster in foreign policy because he knows nothing and will listen only to yes-men. Domestic policy? All for the Few. He wants the same sort of real-estate boom that Dubya had. Americans knows how well that worked the last time and will be chary about it. I have yet to figure, unless it is for the super-rich, for whom he will "Make America Great Again", a vapid and meaningless slogan (because of its vagueness)  that can be turned on its head with Presidential incompetence.

Deporting all the illegal aliens will require a huge build-up in detention facilities... and internal passports for all Americans. There will be family break-ups because the 9-year-old is an illegal alien and the 6-year-old is a US citizen by birth. And what will be the use of those detention facilities after the 'illegal aliens' are deported? Political prisoners?  No thanks!

Even more disturbing would be that America will be less attractive for people to immigrate to. Donald Trump has suggested an Education Secretary hostile to high-quality public education. Think about it. If you are an Indian with a tech degree and you have the choice between taking a job in the USA or in Great Britain and the educational system in America is gutted, then where would you go? Also consider this: some illegal aliens own businesses. 

As America becomes a less-attractive place to live, expect real estate values to plummet. So you can be an engineer and your kids can be fast-food workers or retail sales clerks... maybe you might want to take your engineering degree elsewhere. There will be lots of houses with sellers but no buyers. But that means that people will be unable to use their housing equity as an ATM for the Good Life.

Pay will rise? Not if the Corporate Right gets its way and gets to end collective bargaining. Tax cuts will be strictly for the Master Class.  Elite spending does not  drive the economy.

One way or the other, Donald Trump will be a disaster as a President.

[pbrower2a]

Yes, especially if his opponent is the Goofy Loon elizabeth warren.

She's a very popular politician. So no.

If the opponent is Kanye West or someone boring like Martin O'Malley then he'll get a 2nd term.

You know she only beat Scotty doesn't know Brown by a few points, right? Who is the nasty woman popular with outside of her Massachusetts and California base?

I distinctly remember you insisting in 2012 that Brown would win reelection.

That might very well be true. I know I learned from my mistake in believing in any such failures of 2012. Now we have the Greatness of Trump to take the fight to the enemy.

Unless this is ironic, the Personality Cult has begun to emerge before President Trump is inaugurated. Anyone who opposes or even falls short of the requisite enthusiasm of support will be a damnable enemy.

We have not had a President like Trump  when the government had anything near the assets and power that the Presidency now has. I have no cause to believe that he has the temperament or training to be adequate in foreign policy, economic stewardship, or political advocacy. He has shown himself competent only in appealing to the greediest and least learned but angry segments of the electorate. One satisfies the greediest with mass suffering in economics for everyone else and the  angry buffoons with pulling others down to their levels of economic failure.

We have over 200 years of heritage of resistance to any baby steps toward despotism.  To be sure, democracy can die anywhere, but there will be much resistance.

[pbrower2a]

Unless this is ironic, the Personality Cult has begun to emerge before President Obama is inaugurated. Anyone who opposes or even falls short of the requisite enthusiasm of support will be a damnable enemy.

We have not had a President like Obama  when the government had anything near the assets and power that the Presidency now has. I have no cause to believe that he has the temperament or training to be adequate in foreign policy, economic stewardship, or political advocacy. He has shown himself competent only in appealing to the greediest and least learned but angry segments of the electorate. One satisfies the greediest with mass suffering in economics for everyone else and the  angry buffoons with pulling others down to their levels of economic failure.

We have over 200 years of heritage of resistance to any baby steps toward despotism.  To be sure, democracy can die anywhere, but there will be much resistance.

This would be interesting except for the fact that it is Hillary Clinton who claimed Republicans are the Enemy, and it was Barry who created those pen and phone powers.

Live and die by the sword.

All Presidents are unique, and so are their times. But like most others,  Barack Obama had a voting record and a record of public service. He got frequently-harsh scrutiny from the media. His temperament was obvious to all of us, and it was tame enough.

I'm not going to make too much of his ethnicity as a difference. He was a very conventional choice. He had an agenda, and what you saw was a reasonable indication of what you were going to get.

Donald Trump? Experience only in the private sector. Schooling? Definitely no law degree.

Not since at least George Wallace (if by major one means getting any electoral votes or getting 10% of the popular vote) has any major Presidential nominee so resorted to dog-whistle racism. Calling for violence and imprisonment of opponents?

If I were in the position to offer someone a job involving some complexity of thought I would expect to occasionally hear some complexity in communicating some reality in life. Few complex jobs can be expressed entirely with canned phrases at an elementary-school level of thought. What is necessary for an assembly-line worker (arguably the simpler the mind the better) is very different from what I would expect in a foreman.

For analogues to Donald Trump I must look outside the American experience, and the analogues scare me. Short fuse? Vindictiveness? Use of language that can mean just about anything to anyone depending upon the concerns of that person?  Utter disregard of the validity of the concerns of people on the Other Side? Admiration of tyrants?

A more conventional conservative, let us say Jeb Bush, wouldn't be so troublesome.

I expect that once people start demonstrating against his policies he will start faulting those people for disloyalty to America. After all, loyalty to the Leader is the definitive loyalty to the nation, is it not?

Sure -- in a dictatorship. We Americans are familiar with dictatorships -- but elsewhere.