Tag: 2020 election

Historian Who Predicted Trump 2016 Victory Says Impeachment Could Defeat Him

Allan Lichtman, a political historian who won plaudits for predicting President Donald Trump’s 2016 victory when most commentators disagreed, has a new warning for Democrats: Don’t write off impeachment.

Lichtman has developed a system for predicting the presidential winner of elections that disregards polls or the country’s demographics.  Instead, he makes a prediction based on 13 true/false questions about the party that holds the presidency, which he calls the “Keys to the White House.”

“[T]he keys are phrased to reflect the basic theory that elections are primarily judgments on the performance of the party holding the White House,” he told the Washington Post in September 2016, while predicting a Trump win. “And if six or more of the 13 keys are false — that is, they go against the party in power — they lose. If fewer than six are false, the party in power gets four more years.”

View the complete May 28 article by Cody Fenwick from AlterNet on the National Memo website here.

GOP faces new challenge in 2020 abortion fight

Republicans hoping to paint Democrats as extreme on abortion in the lead-up to the 2020 elections are facing a major obstacle in the wake of Alabama’s restrictive new law.

Democratic presidential candidates are seizing on the state’s ban, which has no exemptions for rape and incest, arguing that it shows President Trump and Republicans are the ones who are out of step with average Americans, and that they want to make abortion illegal at all costs.

And while Trump and GOP leaders have distanced themselves from the Alabama law, Democrats say the president’s policies and judicial nominations have essentially encouraged states to pass such bans.

View the complete May 22 article by Jessie Hellmann on The Hill website here.

Pro-Trump group plans to spend $250M in six battleground states

An outside group supporting President Trump intends to spend $250 million in six battleground states as part of a major effort to boost his chances of being reelected in 2020, according to officials with knowledge of the plans.

America First Action super PAC is preparing to pour resources into states with expensive media markets and high numbers of electoral votes. By doing so, it hopes to clear space for Trump’s reelection campaign to spend its money in other key states with cheaper markets.

The states identified by America First are Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina and Georgia, none of which has fewer than 15 electoral votes. The group’s leaders believe a Trump victory is virtually guaranteed in 2020 if he wins all six.

View the complete May 9 article by Jordan Fabian on The Hill website here.

Here’s how Trump could lose the 2020 election – and still remain president

At the end of his congressional testimony in February, Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former fixer, floated a nightmarish possibility.

“Given my experience working for Mr. Trump,” Cohen said, “I fear that if he loses in 2020, that there will never be a peaceful transition of power.”

Cohen’s comments may seem hyperbolic, but they are worth taking seriously. In the aftermath of 2018, Trump told reporters, “Republicans don’t win, and that’s because of potentially illegal votes.” In a 2016 presidential debate, Trump refused to say whether he would accept defeat. “I’ll keep you in suspense,” he declared. Since that election, Trump has routinely said that his popular vote defeat was the product of “millions and millions” of illegal ballots. Now, facing potential legal jeopardy from ongoing investigations into hush-money payments and any number of apparent financial crimes, he might reasonably conclude that staying in office is the only way to avoid being indicted.

View the complete April 13 article by Daniel block on The Washington Monthly on the AlterNet website here.

Mitch McConnell says Senate Republicans are ‘determined not to lose women’ in 2020

Senate majority leader talks about having GOP senators run their own campaigns

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says Republican senators on the ballot in 2020 can attract support from suburban voters, especially women, by portraying themselves as a firewall against Democratic policies.

“We all know why it happened,” the Kentucky Republican said of the electoral shifts that enabled Democrats to win control of the House in 2018. “We got crushed in the suburbs. We lost college graduates and women in the suburbs, which led in the House to losses in suburban Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Charleston, South Carolina, Philadelphia.”

“We’re determined not to lose women, certainly not by 19 points, and college graduates, in our Senate races, and I don’t think we will,” McConnell said, speaking with a small group of print reporters in the Senate’s Strom Thurmond Room after the last floor votes before a two-week recess.

View the complete April 11 article by Niels Lesniewski on The Roll Call website here.

Pivot to center? Not Trump

President Trump is showing virtually no interest in taking steps toward the political center after winning what he called a “clean bill of health” from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

Trump has doubled down on his hard-line positions on immigration and is sticking to his base-first strategy despite the thumping House Republicans took in last November’s midterm elections.

Midterm losses have historically led past presidents to shift course: Former Presidents Clinton and Obama both sought to work with GOP-controlled Congresses after losing Democratic majorities midway through their first terms.

View the complete April 2 article by Jordan Fabian on The Hill website here.

Medicare-for-all v. Medicare-for-less: Trump’s proposed cuts put health care at center of 2020 race

A new proposal by President Trump to slash Medicare spending puts Republicans in a political bind ahead of the 2020 election as Democrats are pitching an expansion of the popular health-care program for all Americans.

Trump’s 10-year budget unveiled Monday calls for more than $845 billion in reductions for Medicare, aiming to cut “waste, fraud and abuse” in the federal program that gives insurance to older Americans. It’s part of a broader proposed belt-tightening effort after deficits soared during the president’s first two years in office in part due to massive tax cuts for the wealthy.

The move immediately tees up a potential messaging battle between Democratic proposals for Medicare-for-all — castigated by Republicans as a socialist boondoggle — and a kind of Medicare-for-less approach focused on cutting back on spending, from the GOP.

View the complete March 12 article by Toluse Olorunnip and Sean Sullivan on The Washington Post website here.

Former House Speaker Paul Ryan focuses on policy, gridlock in Vero Beach lecture

Former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan reflected on his tenure in Congress, from health care to political debates, during a lecture Monday in Vero Beach.

Ryan, who served as Speaker of the House from 2015 until January and was the 2012 Republican nominee for vice president, was the final speaker of Riverside Theatre’s Distinguished Lecturer Series.

Ryan focused heavily on policy during the hour-long lecture and question-and-answer session, talking about the successes and failures of Congress during his tenure as Speaker.

View the complete March 11 article by Ali Schmitz for the Treasure Coast Newspapers on the TCPalm.com website here.

Dems won’t let Fox News host primary debate

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) said Wednesday it would not permit Fox News to host a presidential primary debate, citing an explosive story this week alleging deep ties between the conservative network and President Trump’s inner circle.

In a statement, DNC Chairman Tom Perez said he had held conversations with Fox News about potentially allowing the network to host a primary debate. But he said the story, published in The New Yorker, caused him to end conversations with the network.

“Recent reporting in The New Yorker on the inappropriate relationship between President Trump, his administration and FOX News has led me to conclude that the network is not in a position to host a fair and neutral debate for our candidates. Therefore, FOX News will not serve as a media partner for the 2020 Democratic primary debates,” Perez said in the statement.

View the complete March 6 article by Reid Wilson on The Hill website here.

Bloomberg says he will not run for president in 2020

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Tuesday that he will not seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, saying that he believes he would better serve the country as a private citizen.

In an op-ed published in Bloomberg News, Bloomberg acknowledged that his path to the Democratic nomination would be narrow, stating that mounting a long-shot campaign for the White House would detract from his work on other issues, such as climate change and gun violence.

“I know there’s much more we can accomplish over the next two years, but only if we stay focused on the work and expand upon it,” he wrote. “And the fact is: A national presidential campaign would limit my ability to do that.”

View the complete March 5 article by Max Greenwood on The Hill website here.