Trump Will Win Bigly in 2020

I have bad news for the mainstream media and the Democrats.  Time to stock up on absinthe or hightail it down to the medical marijuana store — Donald Trump is going to be president for eight years.  Not only that, he will win reelection much more comfortably, easily winning the popular vote as well as the electoral college.

I’m not saying this because I am in the slightest bit psychic. I always lose in Vegas — and don’t even ask about the track. I’m also not saying it because Trump just had a good week, getting his Supreme Court pick through and taking it to Assad and ISIS, earning him a slight bump in the polls. (They don’t mean anything now anyway.)

 I am saying it for same reason I predicted Trump would win his first term back in August 2015 — simple observation of the scene. I should add observation from afar because I have the advantage of watching from Los Angeles. The view is too distorted in the nation’s capital where, at least it seems from here, no one can stand each other. (That’s okay. People in Hollywood are exactly the same.)

Yes, you can say I’m being stupid and rash to make such an early prediction, but that’s just what I was accused of in 2015.  So go ahead and call me anything you want.  Make my day — November 3, 2020.

Okay, but why?

To begin with, the media (his main opposition party) has completely blown it in less than the allotted one hundred days. By attacking Trump every which way at once, calling him a racist, sexist, homophobe, Islamophobe, isolationist and warmonger — yes, the last two are completely contradictory, but that doesn’t stop the geniuses in our Fourth Estate — they have literally turned into the journalistic version of the boy who cried wolf.  No one believes them anymore, assuming they ever did in the first place.

Meanwhile, Trump holds the cards.  He’s a pragmatic center-right businessman in what is still an essentially pragmatic center-right nation.  For all his fits and starts, he’s making many Americans feel good about their country again.  We’re not leading from behind anymore.  We’re back in front. We’re the superpower and we’re acting for good.  China  — the second power in the world — is already acknowledging that.

People say Trump flip-flops, but who doesn’t except rigid ideologues? Flip-flopping can be construed as a good thing, an adaptability to ever-changing situations.  Most of us do that, whether we admit it or not.

Nevertheless, Trump has a core.  He moves forward with his basics even as he revises them. He’s already done a substantial amount of deregulating with more to come.  He may not ever build a complete border wall, but illegal immigration is already down substantially just because existing laws are being enforced for once. Oil pipelines are opening.  Trade deals are being renegotiated. People are going back to work and consumer confidence is up.  And does anyone doubt he’ll get some form of tax reform done eventually?  I don’t.

Healthcare will remain difficult, because it has no good solution. All systems are imperfect. But there is an area in which I predict he will make tremendous inroads that will change our political landscape — our minority communities. Trump has promised to help African-Americans and he will do it.  (No wonder Maxine Waters is apoplectic.) No one else has done this from either party for decades, but Trump will.  And he will doubtless bring in the private sector that will make his work all the more successful. It won’t just be the same failed government programs we have seen for the last fifty years.

If this makes even ten percent more of the black community swing his way, that’s the end of identity politics and the end of the Democratic Party as we know it.  It’s not just Maxine who should be worried and calling for Trump’s impeachment.  With identity politics even partially vanquished,  2020 will be the proverbial walk in the park for Republicans.

Here’s my last optimistic prediction: Trump’s recent foreign policy successes will generate domestic opportunities. Success breeds success. Look for the Republican log jams on healthcare and taxes to break soon.  No, my eyesight isn’t 2020, but I can see that year from here without my glasses.

Roger L. Simon is an award-winning novelist, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and co-founder of PJ Media.  His latest book is I Know Best:  How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic, If  It Hasn’t Already.  Follow him on Twitter @rogerlsimon.