RMF5630 said:
whiterock said:
DeSantis.
I don't think there's much need to consider anyone else. The Trump supporters would flow to DeSantis in large enough numbers to make the rest of the race just a contest for the VP slot.
I.E. DeSantis is sitting on approx 25%. What percentage of Trump's approx 60% would DeSantis have to receive to win? Answer: a third. At 45% support in what will likely be a crowded field, there wouldn't be enough votes left for anyone else to mount a credible challenge. (remember, primaries are winner take all = no runoffs.)
So who here thinks more than 2/3rds of Trump supporters will flow to the likes of Pence, Haley, Pompeo, etc......
Gotta keep in mind primary vs general. Trump may be able to win primary, but general? He brings alot of bad blood, distrust and motivation against him holding office again.
This could end up being a classic "could he vs should he?" If Trump runs, you will see a motivated progressive and Democratic base and will the Independents go to Trump after 2020? Whether he is guilty of a crime or not, the turmoil he was involved with and his juvenile response is a negative to many, even if his loyalist don't want to admit it. The best you can say about his 2020 behavior is he acted poorly.
I still don't believe the January 6th Commission is legit or that Trump did anything to get him banned or prosecuted, but he did not handle the situation well and placed many in very tough situations. Poor Cassidy had to clean up the spaghetti before donning her cape and saving Democracy...
original question implied primary. And the primary will not be particularly competitive. If Trump runs, he wins. If he doesn't, DeSantis wins. The next most viable alternative scenario to that is that DeSantis continues to strengthen enough to knock off Trump. That will be on the order of single-digit probability, but that will give Oso, et al enough to dream of unicorns & pixie dust. I continue to suggest that the assembled experts here recognize that a Trump-DeSantis ticket is the mostly likely outcome of all, by an goodly margin.
When we look at the general, Trump is materially out-polling DeSantis, consistently outside the margin of error. He's also outpolling the two most likely Democrat candidates, by similar or greater margins.
None of that is saying what should/ought.
Saying what is and therefore what is most likely to be.
Trump is going to run stronger in the general than most here realize. He will be a juggernaut all the way thru to the WH. The legislative package Manchin just signed on to virtually guarantees it. You cannot continue to deficit spend while simultaneously raising taxes in the midst of an economy mired in historically bad stagflation and expect the economy to rebound your direction. In fact, the new green energy package is a recognition of that....Dems know their time is passing and they will spend the rest of it hammering thru their wish list, to make the GOP spend all its energy undoing it all over the 2022-2026 period. The war in Ukraine will drag on for at LEAST another 6-12 months, further stifling economic recovery around the world. So the US economy is going to get worse and worse and Dems will have nothing to run on. Even a new pandemic won't help them, given the way they mismanaged Covid. In the face of that, they will face a slashing populist with the right ideas who has exactly the kind of record of success needed to exploit the dynamics of the cycle..
2024 will better match Trump's skills than 2016.
Trump critics are completely misreading the landscape.
That's what happens when one lets their hopes lead their logic.