Trump Very Easily Could Be Reelected
By 
I want to riff on what Paul said last night.
On another note, after posting the grim NYT story about Trump’s re-election chances, I realized that the way I’ve been dealing, psychologically speaking, with the entire Trump phenomenon is by being in denial, in probably a literal sense, about the possibility of his re-election. I don’t think the odds of that happening are good, but that they are more than negligible is not something I can contemplate without falling into despair. So at an emotional level I just deny that it can happen, even though rationally I know that the odds are far from negligible.
I would say the chances of a Trump reelection are 50%. We might not want to believe it could happen, but of course it could happen. First, the vast majority of the people who voted for him the first time are more than happy with their vote. Add to that a feckless lying media ready to slander Democrats. Add to that six months of Republican hate ads, lies, and propaganda campaigns no matter who wins the nomination. Add to that the Democratic Party’s own pathetic inability to seemingly figure out how to respond to any of this, always surprised by the lies and propaganda. Add to that the racism and misogyny that motivates the electorate. Add to that the fact that old white people vote at high rates. Add to that voter suppression in critical states (good luck winning Florida with Ron DeSantis in charge!).
Now, there are plenty of reasons to believe it won’t happen. Trump drew an inside straight to win that election in 2016 and it takes almost nothing for him to lose those three key states. Democrats control more states than they did in 2016 and so there will be fewer shenanigans. But it certainly could happen. And this is why the fight against fascism must be unflagging. I’ve heard so many people say they are “tired.” Well, I don’t even know what that is supposed to mean, except to say that people are probably spending too much time being political junkies and following the news cycle and not enough time doing something useful like organizing. Because we haven’t done nearly enough to fight back against Trump, especially since the midterms. Moreover, when Trump leaves (assuming he leaves office when he loses, which I doubt), nothing changes except that more competent Republicans will waive that fascist flag higher. This is not going away at any point in our lives. So we have to fight more and harder to defeat this infection.
At the same time, there’s plenty of reason to believe the Times poll that everyone is focused on is totally out of whack. First, it’s a big outlier. Second, there’s some weirdness in there.
One reason I’m not too worried about the NYT poll (other than it being 1 year from the election) is that I find it hard to believe that Trump is performing 10 points better with Black voters and 5-10 points better with Hispanic voters than 2016.
That’s just not realistic folks! pic.twitter.com/3Xduu9GJ8G
— LeftData 🔥 (@LeftData) November 4, 2019
I guess it isn’t impossible, but it sure seems unlikely that this is the case. But the reality is that for most people, Trump’s presidency hasn’t personally affected them. This is the insidious nature of fascism. It’s always someone else getting attacked until it is you. We claimed in our national mythology that we learned from this after the world’s last major bout with fascism but of course we did not. Turns out fascism is awesome if you are an angry embittered racist and we have a hundred million or so of those. And that’s a scary force.
I make no claims as to the future. But there are plenty of reasons to think that Donald Trump may well win a second term as president, even outside of the cheating and such.