As a result of keen observations about the 2016 presidential race, I am of the firm belief that the 2020 race cannot be won by a woman, a person of color, or a progressive.
Not enough women vote for women, and three years ago many of them declared they “wouldn’t vote for someone just because she has a vagina.”
It will take white folks at least half a century to get over Barack Obama, a black man in the White House. Twenty minutes after his 2009 inauguration they called him “the worst president in history, and they spent the first four years of his presidency trying to make him a one-term president while suggesting he was a Muslim born in Kenya. They spent the second four years after his re-election obstructing anything and everything he tried to do, including the nomination of a Supreme Court justice.
The majority of the country will never sign on to Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, free college, paying off all student loans, or any of the other beautiful dreams progressive Democrats promise to deliver but can’t.
But wait, wait, there is a caveat.
A progressive can win if the autumn of 2020 replicates the autumn of 2008.
In his eight years as president George W. Bush had started two wars, one in Iraq and the other in Afghanistan. The justification for going into Baghdad was non-existent weapons of mass destruction (WMD’s) that were allegedly possessed by Saddam Hussein. The spy who sold that story to the Bush administration was nicknamed “Curveball,” which tells you everything you need to know about US intelligence. But the real killer for the Republicans was the economy. Due to the GOP’s obsession with deregulation and other inept “trickle-down” policies, America suffered a recession that was so bad it was nearly a depression.
There was no way that John McCain, himself a hapless presidential candidate, could win the national election that year. His “Hail Mary” pass of picking the zany Sarah Palin as his vice-president gave him a short bump in the polls, but it evaporated when Katie Couric interviewed her and the world found out she didn’t read anything.
As an aside, she has that in common with President Donald Trump. The biggest waste of time in the world would be for that dynamic duo to join a book club.
It was pretty obvious that the next president would be the winner of the Democratic nomination. If life was fair, Hillary Clinton would have won the nomination that year. But as JFK said, “Life isn’t fair.”
Because along came Barack Obama. People use Obama as a justification for believing anyone could win the presidency—a gay man, a socialist, a woman with a shaky Native American background—but that’s not true.
Barack Obama was a one-in-a-million, once-in-a-lifetime candidate. Highly educated, articulate, slim, handsome, athletic, and charismatic with a well-organized political campaign team, Obama was the complete package. It was easy to see why he became the nominee.
Just as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi minimized Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez’s congressional victory by saying, “A glass of water with a ‘D’ on it could have won AOC’s district,” any of the 2008 Democratic candidates would have won the presidency.
Democrats have to pray that Donald Trump completely implodes. While his most cult-like white racist supporters will forgive anything he says or does and will even vote for him after he takes away their food stamps and health care, if America declines and suffers a significant recession Trump will be a one-term president.
Remember the mantra of the Bill Clinton campaign in 1992: “It’s the economy, stupid.”
At this point in time Trump seems to be doing everything possible to drive the economy into a recession. His trade wars, in particular, will have a devastating effect on his chances for re-election if they’re blamed for the economic downturn.
If that happens, even a “glass of water with a ‘D’ on it can win the presidency, and it won’t matter if the Democratic nomination is won by a woman, a person of color, a gay mayor, a socialist, or any garden variety of progressive.
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So you’re hoping for a recession? Com’on man…