Democrats: Donald Trump is Counting on you for his 2020 win
The election is ours to win if infighting doesn’t blow it again
by Camilo Arenivar
President Donald J. Trump is the only President in modern history to have never at least once at this point in his Presidency reached a 50% approval rating. Consistently unpopular, he is now also reaching approval ratings from 41–46% in the three states that gave him the election in 2016. In fact, in a recent poll in Michigan, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, and Elizabeth Warren all beat Donald Trump in 2020 match-ups.
But Donald Trump isn’t worried about any of that. He knows that the very nature of the impassioned awakened Democratic electorate will tear itself apart. His campaign instigated it in 2016 through Russian fake articles in social media and via the split between Bernie and Hillary supporters which was never really dealt with to allow for a healing. This allowed people who were against Trump to remain anti-Hillary and vote for losing third party candidates, giving the electoral college in PA, MI, and WI to Trump.
Trump might not even need the help of the Russians this time. He’s counting on you, the Democrats. No one can find dirt on each other and things to judge each other about faster than Democrats. Let’s look at how things are playing out so far with the 2020 candidates. Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand have launched exploratory committees. Tulsi Gabbard, Kamala Harris, Julian Castro, and Cory Booker have announced their candidacy for President. Beto O’Rourke and Amy Klobuchar will make their decisions by the end of this month.
Meet I mean Eat The Candidates
So what are we saying about the people running? Within a week of Tulsi Gabbard’s candidacy, articles about her anti-same sex marriage comments — from 2003 (when she was 23) — came out. There was also some attention to some of her anti-interventionism stances and “concerns” she was closer to Bannon than Obama on foreign policy. As far as her comments on LGBTQ equality, she evolved in 2011 into a position that Government should not be making decisions on people’s sexuality. The reality is Tulsi Gabbard should be judged on what her stances and plans are for 2020, not what they were in 2003.
Kamala Harris is chastised because her office in 2015 lobbied against allowing transgendered prisoners to have a sex reassignment surgery. She also was not as “progressive” in some of her stances as California’s Attorney General due to not always advocating for things that benefited prisoners. The transgender situation is a fluke when weighed against her hardcore pro-LGBT record. She declined to defend the state’s ban on equal marriage rights, ordered all clerks to marry same-sex couples with “no exceptions” once the ban was lifted, co-sponsored a bill to do away with the “gay panic” as a defense in violent crimes, and refused to entertain a ridiculous “Kill the Gays” ballot initiative intended to sentence people to death for “homosexual acts.” She was also fervently against North Carolina’s anti-transgender bathroom bill and co-sponsored the Equality Act to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Kamala Harris should be evaluated on what she plans to do as President — not a few items that were implemented by her office when she was Attorney General. She has been a Senator since 2017 and her legislative history there might be more relevant.
Cory Booker is called out for his closeness to the finance and Wall Street sectors. Some say he is sold out to Big Pharma, particularly calling out his decision to join Senate Republicans and voting against a measure to import cheaper medicine from Canada. However, Booker’s office said he supports the importation of prescription drugs but that “any plan to allow the importation of prescription medications should also include consumer protections that ensure foreign drugs meet American safety standards. I opposed an amendment put forward last night that didn’t meet this test.” With Cory, people need to listen to his answers on why he did the things he has done before jumping to conclusions.
Beto O’Rourke, who will not announce until the end of February but leaped to the top of potential 2020 candidates after his narrow loss to Ted Cruz and his uplifting concession speech, has also come under fire. “Not Progressive enough”, “not a team player (read: he is not a robot who does whatever Party says he must do)”. He is even pooh poohed because his neither a woman or a person of color and that’s just what the Party should be all about at this time. BOO on that nonsense. The best candidate should be the best candidate, regardless of gender, race, or orientation. But what O’Rourke gets a lot of flack for is his support of the Thin Blue Line law, which would have made killing a cop a Capital crime. GASP! What’s wrong with that? Well other Dems voted against it, and some Black Lives Matter advocates feel that the bill was anti-ABM. I call that very weak. It implies ABM supports killing cops. Didn’t they go very far to say they don’t?
So, we are doing pretty good about tearing apart candidates that would be better than Donald Trump or Mike Pence on any given day. Will the potential infighting (and I have not even mentioned the Bernie word) derail Democrat unity again?
Good News Ahead?
Well some good news came this week in the form of a Monmouth University poll. What it found, besides the fact that less than 4 in 10 of the electorate wants the re-election of Trump for President in 2020, is that Democrats prefer electability in 2020. Meaning, people care more about someone who can actually beat Trump than they are about someone who agrees with them on every last issue. To quote, “A majority of 56% prefer someone who would be a strong candidate against Trump even if they disagree with that candidate on most issues. Just 33% say they would prefer a nominee who they are aligned with on the issues even if that person would have a hard time beating Trump. Democratic women (61%) are more likely than men (45%) to say they would put their policy positions aside in order to get a nominee who could beat Trump.”
That is where my mind is — I don’t think there is anyone who has been the perfect Democrat and always on the correct side of the issues for their entire career. It boils down to, what is their authenticity as far as what they stand for now, and do they have what it takes to win the Presidency in this new era of elections. Things changed permanently with the 2016 election. The electorate is engaged, and I would like to see people listen to the candidates and see who they feel would fare best against Trump in the General Election. That person, whomever he or she is will naturally ascend. And remember, we only need to win all the states Hillary won + MI, WI, and PA. It is very doable if we don’t give Trump what he is counting on — our implosion.
