For President Trump, the new year comes with seemingly endless possibilities. A Senate conviction and removal from office, a landslide defeat at the ballot box, reelection by a larger margin than his improbable 2016 victory — all of these options are on the table in 2020. The president is, as walking malapropism machine Little Carmine Lupertazzi tells Tony Soprano, “at the precipice of an enormous crossroad.”
“Expect the unexpected,” said John Feehery, a Republican strategist. “This guy plays by his own, completely unconventional playbook.” This has members of Trump’s party both cautiously optimistic and worried that unforced errors could allow the Democrats to finish what they started in the midterm elections.
Trump is a thoroughly unconventional politician thrust into an unusual set of circumstances. No president ever faced the prospect of impeachment at the same time he was getting ready to face the voters. The year could begin with a Senate trial and end with him winning a second term. Or, even if Trump is not removed from office, the whole process could, as leading Democrats undoubtedly hope, leave him mortally wounded in his quest for reelection.
“The fourth year of Trump’s presidency seems likely to resemble the first three, which is to say every day is unpredictable,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist and former communications adviser to Sen. Marco Rubio. “How Trump handles his Senate trial could set the tone for the year.” Trump seems poised to approach that battle the way he has handled every other conflict of his relatively young political career: with fists flying, in the belief that the best defense is a good offense.
“Crazy Nancy Pelosi should spend more time in her decaying city and less time on the Impeachment Hoax!” Trump said as he tweeted a video purporting to show crime and homelessness in San Francisco. Partisan combat with the House speaker and Democrats in an election year is one thing. The challenge will be navigating a Senate Republican Conference whose individual members are often uncomfortable with both the president personally and his underlying conduct in pressuring Ukraine to announce an investigation into the suspect business dealings of former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, even if they don’t see any impeachable offenses. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wants to work closely with the White House in Trump’s defense, but it only takes a few wavering Republicans, a Mitt Romney here, a Susan Collins or Lisa Murkowski there, to complicate the picture.
Even among Trump loyalists, there are disagreements about how to conduct the Senate trial. Some think it best to get it over with as quickly as possible, assuming House Democrats ever transmit the articles of impeachment to the upper chamber. (McConnell appears to be in this camp.) Others would like to turn the tables on the Democrats and conduct a lengthy trial that exposes the Bidens to greater scrutiny while also keeping presidential candidates such as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders off the campaign trail ahead of the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary.
There are risks in both approaches. A speedy dismissal of the articles of impeachment, which House Democrats wish to avoid, could bring charges of a Senate Republican cover-up. Liberal Harvard legal scholar Laurence Tribe, whose Washington Post op-ed appears to form the basis of Pelosi’s current impeachment strategy, warns of a “Potemkin impeachment trial.” The second type of Senate trial could appeal to Trump’s pugilistic political instincts but also has the potential to devolve into a circus. Now that public opinion seems to have settled on the Trump-Ukraine matter, with a plurality against Trump’s removal by the tiniest of margins in the RealClearPolitics polling average, there is a real danger to introducing new facts into the proceedings.
Republican voters are adamantly opposed to Trump’s impeachment, a fact that will weigh heavily on GOP senators in an election year. There is at least some reason to believe that voters in the key 2020 swing states are also less enthusiastic about it than the country as a whole. Trump can only be removed if 20 Senate Republicans vote to convict him, assuming no Democrats are for acquittal. (In fact, at least three Democratic votes are believed to be in play.) That is both a high number and a level of Republican complicity in Trump’s ouster that would be hard for the party to recover from by November.
As such, Trump remains the GOP’s best bet to stay in power past 2020. This is not only his most reliable insurance policy in a 53-47 Republican Senate but also the Democrats’ greatest source of consternation. Democrats are generally sanguine about their chances against Trump in November, but many are far less confident if their preferred candidate doesn’t win the nomination. “I just don’t think Elizabeth Warren can win,” said one Democratic insider. “This really isn’t Joe Biden’s year,” said another, offering analysis of the field that completely contradicted the first Democrat’s.
It is abundantly clear that each top-tier Democratic presidential candidate presents different challenges and opportunities for Trump. Biden’s path to the White House is the most straightforward: He holds onto Hillary Clinton’s voters and wipes away Trump’s razor-thin margins in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The former vice president is liberal, but not woke. He respects the culturally conservative blue-collar whites who swung the Electoral College to the Republicans in 2016 and can speak their language. His economic proposals are demonstrably to Trump’s left but not overtly threatening to the middle class. Biden does not want to abolish private health insurance, for example, and is running on protecting Obamacare.
But Biden is also the most vulnerable to the playbook that Trump used to defeat Clinton. Trump can employ a horseshoe strategy, hitting Barack Obama’s second-in-command from the populist left and right. Biden has decades of experience as a Washington insider that can be used against him. He actually helped pass the 1994 crime bill, in contrast with Trump signing criminal justice reform into law. Biden voted for the Iraq War and, in fact, played a far bigger role in ensuring an authorization of the use of force passed on George W. Bush’s terms than anything that can be attributed to Clinton. He also championed all the trade deals that Trump campaigned against four years ago. He is famously handsy with women and given to verbal hiccups, both characteristics Trump will be eager to exploit.
Similar to the campaign against Clinton, the goal would be to demoralize minorities and the left wing of the Democratic Party while holding on to working-class whites. It would also be to drive up Biden’s negatives to the point where Trump’s own anemic poll numbers become a push. It is no accident that exposing Hunter Biden’s politically connected money-making was important enough to Trump to be worth triggering impeachment proceedings over. Burisma could be the Clinton Foundation of 2020. If Biden was 50 rather than approaching 80 and wasn’t dealing with credible accusations of familial corruption, he would be a more formidable candidate.
There are key differences between Biden and Clinton, of course. Hillary had been bitterly opposed by conservatives for a quarter-century before winning the Democratic presidential nomination. Despite his lengthy Beltway career, there is no comparable reservoir of ill will against Biden. The former vice president is far more personable and could overperform with voting blocs that cost Democrats the presidency last time around. Finally, Trump has a record of his own to defend, and the need to beat him in the Rust Belt would come as no surprise.
Yet Clinton’s favorability ratings have fluctuated wildly over the years. “Few politicians have had such a long and widely varying polling record,” writes Marquette Law School polling director Charles Franklin. Trump’s campaign played a role in making her negatives almost as bad as his, and it could theoretically do the same to Biden. Conservative opposition to Obama coalesced quickly. Biden has been around much longer. There is no guarantee that Trump could replicate the conditions that allowed him to win with a 60% unfavorable rating on Election Day 2016, but there are reasons to think it is at least worth trying.
Warren and Sanders represent a different kind of threat. Both would energize left-wing and younger Democrats. Both are trying to craft a policy agenda responsive to the economic, if not cultural, anxieties of swing voters who went for Trump last time. And both would force Trump into a more conventional Left-Right campaign, ground on which the incumbent president has never really fought.
But the two candidates also have unique political liabilities. They would take Democrats out of the realm of arguing with Republicans over the top marginal tax rate, where they have been since President Bill Clinton won twice in the 1990s, to plans that would impose recognizable costs on the middle class. Government-run “Medicare for all,” which would ultimately get rid of most private health insurance, has increasingly encountered resistance among Democrats. The failure to deliver on promises to let people keep their preferred doctors and insurance plans doomed Obamacare to years of unpopularity. Warren and Sanders have proposals that would be even more disruptive and would be easy enough to target in a billion-dollar campaign. In addition to higher middle-class taxes and radical insurance changes, both are consciously running against the rich. This could dampen Democratic growth among high-income earners in the suburbs and cause Wall Street to either sit out the election or fund Republican candidates.
Warren has embraced a thoroughgoing social liberalism that could alienate the working-class voters who Democrats need to win back. She has backed away from talk of the “two-income trap” ensnaring married parents. Sanders has similarly abandoned his criticism of open borders, moving left on immigration. Neither candidate is particularly animated by the culture war (though Warren is to a greater degree than Sanders), but they and their appointees would gladly wage it once in power.
There are differences between the top two liberal Democrats as well that would be important in a general election campaign. Warren’s core voters look a lot like people who are already against Trump: women, white suburbanites, and people with postgraduate degrees. Sanders backers are more similar to Trump voters: men and people who are less educated and more blue-collar. The one significant exception is that Warren appeals to seniors, while Sanders is popular with younger voters. Sanders could potentially be stronger than Warren in the Rust Belt, but he is also an open socialist. Neither Democratic candidate is doing especially well with minority voters, though Sanders has improved since 2016.
Rounding out the top tier of Democratic candidates is former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a centrist, but one who is less old-school than Biden. Buttigieg is young (he turns 38 this month), gay, a military veteran with private sector experience, and a fresh face. He offers a millennial contrast with Trump and, like Biden, is more cautious on healthcare, favoring a “public option” over the replacement of private health insurance with “Medicare for all” full stop. Buttigieg’s black support is negligible, however, and the campaign against Trump could end up being waged entirely on social issues, which might not be to the Democrat’s advantage if Pennsylvania and Wisconsin remain the most important battleground states. Then again, Buttigieg could also force Trump to defend ground on gay and transgender issues he would prefer to cede.
The other Democrats are longer shots. Amy Klobuchar, a senator from Minnesota, could ride a stronger-than-expected showing in Iowa to a viable national campaign. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg will surely get under Trump’s skin as an even wealthier, self-funded candidate. Bloomberg is a more plausible nominee than fellow billionaire self-funder Tom Steyer, but it remains to be seen how large a constituency exists in the Democratic Party of 2020 for an aging, super-wealthy nanny-stater who originally won office as a Rudy Giuliani-backed Republican. Bloomberg is also aping Giuliani’s failed 2008 strategy of writing off the early primary states.
Either way, Trump’s options seem to be running against centrists who appear safe but do not excite the Democratic base or more liberal challengers who might whip up liberal enthusiasm but are, and are easily portrayed as, far-Left. Candidates who would avoid either frame, such as entrepreneur Andrew Yang or congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, have little chance. Only Biden is running explicitly on Trump fatigue, bipartisan displeasure with the tweeting, rancor, and drama associated with this president, but Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and others could do the same.
Whichever path the Democrats choose is largely beyond Trump’s control. It’s not yet clear whether the president makes Biden’s rivals for the nomination more or less likely to attack him on corrupt Washington insider grounds. So far, they have largely steered clear. But what Trump must do is ensure that the election is as much about the Democrats as it is an assessment of his presidency. If the election is a referendum on Trump, he will struggle. He can win if it is a binary choice between the Democrats and himself.
Consider the New York Times Upshot/Siena College polls a year out from the election. Trump is competitive among both registered and likely voters against Biden, Sanders, and Warren in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, Arizona, and North Carolina. He performs worst against Biden, best against Warren, and somewhere in the middle with Sanders. Still, Trump does no worse than the margin of error against any of the leading Democrats. “The Times/Siena results and other data suggest that the president’s advantage in the Electoral College relative to the nation as a whole remains intact or has even grown since 2016, raising the possibility that the Republicans could, for the third time in the past six elections, win the presidency while losing the popular vote,” writes election prognosticator Nate Cohn.
Nearly two-thirds of 2016 Trump voters who cast their ballots for Democratic congressional candidates in the midterm elections said they would again back the president against Biden, Sanders, or Warren. “The poll offers little evidence that any Democrat, including Mr. Biden, has made substantial progress toward winning back the white working-class voters who defected to the president in 2016, at least so far,” Cohn continues. “All the leading Democratic candidates trail in the precincts or counties that voted for Barack Obama and then flipped to Mr. Trump.”
If Trump survives the Senate impeachment trial, he will run on low unemployment, better-than-expected economic growth, wage gains for workers at the lower end of the spectrum, and new manufacturing jobs. There will be countervailing numbers, such as Federal Reserve data that suggests Trump’s tariffs have been a net negative for the manufacturing sector, as well as the risk that working-class voters think Trump is overstating the country’s prosperity or that the economy will slow considerably by the fall. But economics, plus conservative success stories on taxes, regulations, and judges will feature prominently.
Is there anything else Trump can do to fulfill additional campaign promises and make his record stronger ahead of the election? It will be tough with impeachment-minded Democrats in control of the House, though they have already handed him a victory on his NAFTA replacement trade deal, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. They are unlikely to cede additional ground on the border wall or immigration more generally.
“One prediction,” offered Feehery, the Republican strategist: “House Democrats and President Trump will get closer than anybody thinks on a comprehensive infrastructure package post-impeachment. Deficits don’t matter, and Pelosi needs a solid victory for those Democrats who represent solid Trump districts.”
Foreign policy is an area where Trump can act with little congressional input. If he can make material progress with North Korea, continue to draw down in Afghanistan, or otherwise claim to end an “endless war” or two, it will add to his list of touted accomplishments. But even if that doesn’t require much cooperation in Washington, he’ll need foreign leaders to work with him abroad. The situation in North Korea can easily deteriorate further, as could his trade talks with China. Trump already launched new airstrikes in Iraq and Syria over the holidays. His contacts with Russia and Ukraine have led to investigations and impeachment.
For Trump in 2020, there are no guarantees. There is also little margin for error and less of an element of surprise. His political survival skills will be tested once again. In that sense, at least, the new year will be more of the same.
W. James Antle III is the editor of the American Conservative.
