Tucker Carlson: Republicans Shouldn’t Get Too Confident About 2020

Lou & Trump Campaign Manager Discussing Important Issues @realDonaldTrump Will Be Running On in 2020

Lou: “You didn’t mention border security, you didn’t mention immigration.”

Parscale: “Well I think on immigration he’s already in the winning column.”

Bruh… pic.twitter.com/tDaNPFlIgI

— The Columbia Bugle ?? (@ColumbiaBugle) January 21, 2020

In the 2020 election, Donald Trump will have the shrinking conservative base, the Republican establishment and his Jewish donors. The Republican Party that he conquered in 2016 with his insurgent nationalist and populist campaign will be much more united behind him.

The current plan is to win back the suburbanites who defected to the Democrats in the 2018 midterms by portraying the Democrats as radical socialists which will be easy to do if Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren is the nominee. The college educated Republican women who Trump has alienated are probably unreachable at this point. The GOP also seems to believe in its perennial fantasy that it is going to win over a larger share of blacks and Hispanics.

The keystone of Trump’s coalition in the 2016 election was his ability to turn out disaffected, rural, White working class voters, especially in the Upper Midwest and Rust Belt, in enormous numbers that wasn’t accounted for in the polls. He also had to bring just enough suburbanites home while the black vote for Hillary shrank from Obama levels. Millennials who had voted for Bernie Sanders were also upset about the DNC rigging the primary for Hillary and stayed home in protest because the entire media had assured them that Trump had a 90% chance of losing the 2016 election.

If Bernie Sanders wins the Democratic nomination, the Millennials who stayed home in 2016 will turn out in force for him in 2020. There will also be significantly more Millennial and Gen Z voters in 2020 and fewer MAGA Boomers. The vast majority of Democrats don’t care about anything but defeating Trump and would vote for Sanders in spite of their reservations about him. Bernie Sanders has a better record than Trump on trade and foreign policy. He will also make health care and student loan debt the central issues of his campaign. Woke Bernie will also pivot back to 2016 Bernie in the general election after defeating Elizabeth Warren.

Will Trump have the same level of support from his nationalist and populist base in the 2020 election? Will he turn out the same number of disaffected, rural, White working class voters with a conservative record? I believe that he is going to lose a big swath of them who were excited in 2016, but who have since wised up to his bullshit. In a Bernie vs. Trump race, do you go with Bernie who wants to cancel your student loan debt while dissolving the border or Trump who wants to raise legal immigration and expand the travel ban to include Belarus?

In 2016, Trump converted lots of disaffected non-voters into Trump voters. In 2020, I think he will convert a large number of Trump voters back into disaffected non-voters who sit out the election. I don’t see anything close to the energy and vibe of the 2016 campaign. I see a bunch of excited conservatives and traditional Republican voters and there are too few of those people to carry Trump to victory in 2020.

Note: I’m fully aware of my own bias. I don’t think Trump has expanded 2016 coalition though. I think it has shrunk around the edges.