If the economy stays strong, The Donald will spend another four years in the White House.
That report from Politico, based on “multiple economic models,” is good news and better news.
The good news is that another Trump victory would save the country from any number of Democratic candidates:
• Beto O’Rourke, the failed Senate candidate who skated on drunk-driving conviction and fantasized about mowing down innocent children in his car;
• Bernie Sanders, the socialist who still has yet to answer for being a communist apologist and his open sympathy for America’s enemies; and
• Former Vice President Joe Biden, a confessed plagiarist known as “creepy” not for his outrightly untoward comments for which he suffers no penalty, but because he can’t keep his hands off the fairer sex.
The better news? The leftist reaction to a Trump victory in 2020 — Politico predicts a landslide — will make the hurricane of hysteria after the 2016’s Trumpocalypse seem like a soft, cooling summer rain.
The Models
The economic models forecasting a Trumpslide have “strong track records of picking presidential winners and losses,” Politico reported. “Credit a strong U.S. economy featuring low unemployment, rising wages and low gas prices — along with the historic advantage held by incumbent presidents.”
Granted, Politico observed, the president must survive “legal bombshells,” and Trump lost the House despite a strong economy. And, of course, he could go down with the economy if it nosedives.
“Despite all these caveats,” however, “Trump looks surprisingly good if the old James Carville maxim coined in 1992 — ‘the economy, stupid’ — holds true in 2020.”
“The economy is just so damn strong right now and by all historic precedent the incumbent should run away with it,” said Donald Luskin, chief investment officer of TrendMacrolytics, a research firm whose model correctly predicted Trump’s 2016 win when most opinion polls did not. “I just don’t see how the blue wall could resist all that.”
Models maintained by economists and market strategists like Luskin tend to ignore election polls and personal characteristics of candidates. Instead, they begin with historical trends and then build in key economic data including growth rates, wages, unemployment, inflation and gas prices to predict voting behavior and election outcomes.
Luskin told Politico that the economy is so strong that even a big slowdown might not be so bad for Trump. “It would have to slow a lot to still be not pretty good,” he said.
Luskin’s bet? Trump gets 294 of 531 electoral votes. He beat Hillary Clinton 304-227.
Politico also sought the opinion of Ray Fair, the economist at Yale, who “pioneered” such forecasting. “Even if you have a mediocre but not great economy — and that’s more or less consensus for between now and the election, that has a Trump victory and by a not-trivial margin,” Fair told the webzine.
Fair’s tally: Trump, 54, the Democrat, 46. “Fair’s model also predicted a Trump win in 2016.” though it missed on Trump’s share of the popular vote.
A third economist and “regular Trump critic,” Politico reported, Mark Zandi, also predicts victory for The Donald. Zandi “has been road-testing a dozen different economic models for the 2020 race. At this point, Trump wins in all 12 — and quite comfortably in most of them. The Moody’s models look at economic trends at the state level.”
The prognosticator told Politico that “if the election were held today, Trump would win according to the models and pretty handily.”
Realistic Democrats
In keeping with those analyses, a top Obama legman, Dan Pfeiffer, advised Orange Man Bad Democrats not to think defeating Bad Orange Man is a fait accompli.
“Despite the fact that Trump is a largely incompetent clown, Democrats should not be overly confident or sanguine that they can beat him,” Pfeiffer told Politico. “He is a slight favorite to win. But he barely won last time and it took a Black Swan series of events to make that happen. All Democrats have to do is flip 100,000 or so votes in three states to win and that’s a very doable thing.”
That depends. If the Democrats nominate a standard bearer such as O’Rourke, supposedly the next Obama, Sanders, selling who knows what, or Biden, for his experience, flipping those 100,000 votes might not be so easy.
Choosing any one of those three — the man with a mugshot, the apologist for mass murderers, or the handsy plagiarist — might flip one million votes toward Trump. Especially given the economy.
That’s doable, too.
Photo: AP Images
