First, It may be wise to remember that no one predicted after the 2006 midterms that Senator Obama would be nominated or elected in 2008. Second, do you remember anyone talking about Donald Trump bursting on stage and winning the election in 2016? I certainly did not see them coming.
Let’s consider a couple of things about 2020:
1) President Reagan, President Clinton, and President Obama were elected after losing a lot of seats in their first midterm.
2) President Trump will actually be running against a Democrat in 2020. We will have a choice rather than a theoretical debate about this or that.
For all the good news 2018’s midterms have given Democrats — a House majority, a Senate seat from Arizona, seven more governorships, and an all-blue congressional delegation from Orange County — they have also shown that President Trump has a clear path to re-election in 2020.
Midterms historically maximize the relative turnout for the opposition party.
More voters overall will go to the polls in 2020 than did so this year, just as more people voted in 2016 than did so this November.
But the ratio of Democrats to Republicans will be narrower, if the past anything to go by.
What this means is that races Democrats narrowly won this year would probably have been lost if they were fought in a presidential year, and races that Republicans narrowly won would have been won by a greater margin.
Let me add this.
We saw a perfect storm for the Democrats in 2018. For example, congressional candidates had money that they won’t have in 2020. The party was generally unified around their hatred of President Trump. The candidates ran very disciplined campaign talking “health care” rather than DACA or the caravan.
It won’t be that way in 2020. Most of the Democrats seeking reelection will face very competitive campaigns. They will have to explain why they couldn’t get anything done. Someone will have to explain why they voted for Speaker Pelosi after saying they wouldn’t. They will have to vote on whose taxes go up to pay for their health care plans.
President Trump will have to fight in 2020. He has a problem with suburban women and it needs to be addressed. The GOP needs to present a message, something that we didn’t see this year.
Again, it’s too early. However, I did not see anything this year that means that President Trump will be a one-term president.
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