Assume nothing: Will President Trump keep Mike Pence on the ticket in 2020?
By ANDREW MALCOLM
September 04, 2019 06:00 AM
For the next several months, the nation’s political focus will understandably be on the sprawling Democratic field, the horse race, the debating, the voting, the winnowing.
President Donald Trump will, of course, gratuitously tweet himself into those skirmishes to make news. Within his own party, Trump currently faces no serious challenger to threaten his reelection.
Credible challengers from within a president’s party never succeed in anything other than dooming the incumbent’s reelection. Think Ted Kennedy challenging Jimmy Carter in 1980 or Theodore Roosevelt challenging Howard Taft in 1912.
Any contemporary challenger from the GOP faces a mountainous hurdle, taking on a president with upwards of 90% Republican approval, even one with Trump’s steady but lackluster job approval record.
Unnoticed, for now, is any discussion of Trump’s vice presidential running mate in 2020. The natural assumption is he’ll stick with Vice President Mike Pence. Assumptions in politics are always dangerous. Ask Hillary Clinton about her presumed 2016 victory.
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