There are many reasons President Donald Trump might lose reelection in 2020. He is deeply unpopular. Most Americans abhor his bigotry. His administration has been plagued by all manner of scandals. He has failed to live up to his many grandiloquent promises. The country may be sliding into a recession… But he could still win in 2020.
Current immigration law bars entry for people likely “to become a public charge,” although that term is not well-defined. The new rule specifies “public charge” as any immigrant who is personally enriched by a public benefit over the course of twelve months, as part of a thirty-six-month period. Receiving two public benefits over the course of a month will be equated with two months. Examples of benefits include food stamps and subsidized housing.
Anxiety surrounding the dwindling prestige and power of white Americans permeates U.S. politics. Demographic trends combined with unforgiving inequality, ceaseless immigration and ubiquitous technology are helping create a narrative of disrepair, of anomie, in segments of society. Disdain on the Left for “deplorables” and the like has only further helped fuel a sense of resentment and alienation.
President Donald Trump had hoped to head into the 2020 campaign season as the world’s consummate deal-maker. He may instead enter his reelection campaign not just empty-handed, but vulnerable to the charge that his policies have helped sow chaos across the globe.
Slowing US economic growth poses a problem for President Donald Trump, who promised repeatedly that growth would accelerate under his administration and always remain above 3% per year. But will the Democrats prove capable of coalescing around the kind of policies that would really make a difference?
The Trump administration’s degradation of diplomacy has appeared in multiple ways, including vacancies at the State Department, setting new records for nominating grievously unqualified people for important ambassadorial posts, and the disavowing of agreements carefully negotiated under previous administrations.
As China transformed, many Western scholars and policymakers predicted that economic reform and integration into the world economy would force the country to liberalize politically and become a “responsible stakeholder” in the international system. The idea, sometimes called “convergence theory,” was that as China grew wealthier, it would become more like the United States. The theory was comforting, but it did not pan out.
In the early 1980s, the chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Paul Volcker, was able to choke off runaway inflation because he was afforded the autonomy necessary to implement steep interest-rate hikes. Today, the Fed is clearly under unprecedented political pressure, and it is starting to show.
Photo/ White House Flickr
Independence Day events on America’s front lawn, the National Mall, have traditionally been innocently nonpartisan and welcome respites from the divisiveness that has come to constitute everyday business in Washington. Recent presidents have played little or no role in the celebrations.
Trump’s foreign policy has been full of twists and turns, but it has also followed a clear narrative arc. The 10-day period from June 20—when Trump reversed himself on Iran strikes—to the DMZ visit was among the most significant of his presidency, as he was forced to come to terms with the consequences and contradictions of his own decisions. Over the course of three decades, Trump has carefully nurtured two images of himself—as a dealmaker, and as a militarist.
