Trump Looks Solid for 2020
By Conrad Black
May 6, 2019 1:29 PM
He keeps getting stronger as the Democratic field grows more dismal.
Most of the elements are now in place for a decisive electoral victory for the current president, and a clear mandate to drain the swamp of all that he ran against. It is aberrant that with the economy performing at historic levels, and international relations steadied and easing toward a more satisfactory relationship with China and North Korea, the president’s approval ratings are in the upper forties rather than the low sixties. He is about where President Obama was at this point in his presidency, but Obama had not been successful; all he had done was Obamacare, and it was already seen by the country as being far from a comprehensive or optimal solution to the shortcomings of the American health-care dilemma. Trump, by contrast, has taken a flatlined economy, where middle-class and working-class purchasing power had not moved in nearly 20 years, the work force was shrinking, and GDP per capita growth was down to 1 percent and not accruing to the lower two-thirds of the population at all, and produced over 3 percent income growth for all socioeconomic echelons. The country now has more positions to fill than unemployed people, and the unemployment rate is down to the level of 1969, a figure that was appreciably reduced by having 550,000 draftees in Vietnam.
Even if existing trends continue, this president will probably do better than Mr. Obama did in winning his second term in 2012. Inept though he was after the first debate, Mitt Romney will almost certainly have been a stronger candidate than whoever emerges from the mountainous scrum of mediocrities, cranks, and tired geriatrics contending for the Democratic nomination now. There are no surprise candidates left in the wings; the only new face who has gained ground is Mayor Peter Buttigieg, and he is not a serious nominee for more than a rise to senator or governor or, on a stretch, vice president.
The veterans, Sanders and Biden, are more old hat, vieux jeu, than ever. We all get older, but Sanders is just as vapidly socialist and innumerate as ever, and Biden is the same old amiable stumblebum we remember. China is our friend, he says; 83 per cent of Americans, he seems not to understand, have received tax cuts, not just the rich Democrats in Wall Street, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley. Either of them could stir up a bit of enthusiasm for the proverbial “last hurrah†(Edwin O’Connor’s novel and the subsequent film about legendary Boston mayor and Massachusetts governor James Michael Curley), but the idea of either of them actually defeating this president, with this president’s record, is nonsense. It would be, as in the novel and the film (starring the always outstanding Spencer Tracy), a sentimental roundup for a politician who had tried one time too many for high office. Their time and appeal are outdated, but they may be judged to have earned the chance.
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/trump-looks-solid-for-2020/
