With no Republicans publicly challenging Trump for the Presidency and supporters loyal until the end, Trump may breeze through his re-election in 2020.
Mid-March of 2019, months after the death of Senator John McCain Trump delivered direct attacks on the now deceased Senator from Arizona over social media. Tweets published by Trump’s official personal Twitter account on March 16th & 17th reference McCain’s alleged involvement in the Trump-Russia Dossier as an effort to work with Democrats to undermine Trump’s potential Presidency before the election in 2016. One of Trump’s remarks about McCain received over 30,000 retweets and over 122,000 likes, along with thousands of supporters rushing to his virtual aide.
Some analysts have concluded Trump’s recent attacks on McCain are an effort to appeal to his base and strengthen support against Dems. Trump allies and supporters often see McCain as a representation of lifetime career politicians, establishment Republicans, and the GOP elites who shied the voice and representation of other Republican demographics.
Suspicions by Trump loyalists raised as McCain and moderate Republicans continued to support the Department of Justice’s investigation of Russia’s involvement. Donald Trump quickly coined and popularized the term “Fake Dossier” and “Witch Hunt” in his party to rally supporters to his side and cast doubt over the current “unbiased” management of the US Government.
Political Hiccups
As we near the 2020 Election, Trump has still failed to make good on his campaign promise to “build that wall” which references our nation’s southern border with Mexico. Immigration, whether legal or illegal, has long been a talking point for Trump’s campaign and Presidency but his attempts to gather funding and organize the construction of his wall have fallen flat. After much criticism on the progress and details of his wall by his own supporting conservative platforms, Trump attempted to speed things up.
However, consequently, the US Government shutdown for 35 days in late December of 2018 until early 2019 as Trump played chess with Federal employees’ paychecks and welfare against House Democrats who refused to provide his requested $5.7billion for the project.
As of March 2019, President Trump declared at National emergency at the southern border, however, Congress quickly acted and revoked the declaration to which Trump vetoed said revocation. Another chess match between Trump and the Government awaits as Congress will now need a two-thirds majority in both chambers to override his veto.
However, Trump allies remark that the Democrats’ stance on immigration is undermining their strength and off-putting core-Republican voters who would have considered switching parties. Some conservative networks akin the move by the Democrats to falling into a Bear trap.
The Democrats
Nonetheless, the viewpoint of strength or weakness is dependent on perspective. Numerous Democratic congress members and politicians are making visible stands in support of visa-workers, immigration reform, DACA-beneficiaries, abolishing ICE, and returning migrant children to families.
Democrats on the campaign trail and even those in Congress are pushing blue agendas and policies which in 2016 many thought were too radical like Bernie Sander’s $15 an hour minimum wage, fighting climate change, and providing Universal Healthcare. Democratic Presidential candidates may have an in if they campaign harder in the Rustbelt and Sunbelt, areas where Trump succeeded in 2016 but failed to keep promises in. Taking advantage of these unkept promises and providing real timelines for results which could benefit more than one industry is where Democrats can see a real change in the voting outcome.
While there is no other current Republican challenger to the Presidency, die-hard Trump supporters will likely reelect Trump in 2020 over voting for an unfamiliar Democratic candidate. Trump has every network on his side already painting current Democratic candidates as radical, inexperienced, and failures in the policies they are preaching. If his stronghold continues it is likely that few in the Republican party will waver away from Trump unless Democrats work together to provide Republicans with some type of carrot to force them to switch to blue.