Last updated on July 18th, 2023 at 11:26 am
Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election prospects continue to collapse as he is making moves to appease the extreme right-wing of the Republican Party.
Although he insanely claimed to have won the presidency in 2016 by a massive landslide, the truth is he barely won the electoral college, and lost the popular vote by a large margin.
He won electoral votes in three key states — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — by less than 100,000 total votes. Those are states that had previously voted for Democratic presidential candidates for several decades.
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And now new polls in those three states, plus some others, show that his moves to the right have weakened his approval ratings and severely diminished his chances of winning reelection.
According to a report in Axios, Trump is facing what they call a “map from hell” in 2020.
Instead of solidifying his support among a majority of the electorate, and moving to the center to make his policies more appealing, he has been courting extreme elements, including white nationalists.
Because of demographic shifts, Republicans now must worry about Arizona, Georgia, Texas, North Carolina and other states they have been considering as easy wins for them. Voters in all those states are now younger and more racially diverse than in the past. And Trump has done nothing to appeal to those voters.
A recent poll in Florida shows that the majority of voters there do not want him to be reelected.
On top of that, Trump’s victories in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania in 2016 will be almost impossible to duplicate if Democrats nominate a good candidate.
“That’s part of the reason for the fascination with more centrist Democrats like Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) and former Vice President Joe Biden,” Axios wrote. “The states that Trump won, but could easily lose, are swingy — not super-liberal.”
Statewide polls in Wisconsin reveal Trump “has a precarious path to victory,” said the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Trump’s disapproval now greatly exceeds his job approval in all of those states.
The Detroit Free Press also warned of “serious headwinds” for the president, writing:
“Less than half of likely voters believe he’s doing a good job, according to some recent polls, and many, if not most, plan to vote for someone else.”
In fact, one poll in Michigan showed that just 31% of voters there plan to vote for Trump if he runs in 2020.
POLITICO has reported that Democratic gains in Pennsylvania during the 2018 midterms should alarm the GOP, saying:
“A GOP collapse threatens to torpedo Donald Trump’s re-election prospects.”
A high percentage of Republicans continue to support Trump, but this number is deceiving. His high level of GOP support looks impressive, but the actual numbers are a real problem. According to the Brookings Institute, in 2004 Republican affiliation was at nearly 40 percent. But by 2016, it had fallen to about 30 percent. The most recent polls indicate Republican affiliation has dropped to about 20 percent.
The Republican Party is Dying, and Trump Is Killing It
Many polls — as well as last November’s midterm results — show that younger voters, women voters, minority voters, college educated voters, and suburban voters have moved away from the Republican Party in record numbers. What’s left in the party are people with extreme views on immigration and on race, who strongly support Donald Trump.
Our current president proved that he is not a leader by his response after the New Zealand massacre of Muslims. He continues to do things that make him wildly popular with white nationalists and racists, but alienate from a majority of the American electorate.
In some places, like California, the Republican Party is almost dead. And by taking extreme views on so many important issues Donald Trump is helping to kill it in the rest of the country also.
In next year’s election — if he is able to survive and actually run for reelection — Donald Trump will indeed be facing a “map from hell.” But it is a map that he has created for himself, and he is likely to suffer the consequences while going down to an historic defeat.
I am a lifelong Democrat with a passion for social justice and progressive issues. I have degrees in writing, economics and law from the University of Iowa.
