6 NEWS Controversy of the week
Tru mp: Is he likely to win in 2020?
The refrain grows louder every day among anxious liber-
als, said Thomas Friedman in The New York Times:
“Trump’s going to get re-elected, isn’t he?” And it’s
not hard to understand their concern. Though Donald
Trump is a historically unpopular president who often
behaves like a “jerk,” Democrats seem determined to
squander that advantage by insisting their nominee sup-
port “extreme ideas” from the far left such as
decriminalizing border crossing and elimi-
nating private health insurance. Not only
that, said Nate Cohn in NYTimes.com,
Trump has a built-in advantage in the
Electoral College. Current national polls
show Trump’s approval ratings under-
water by 9 percent, with 53 percent of voters saying they definitely
plan to vote against him—an indication that some of his 2016 vot-
ers “have soured on his presidency.” But to win again in the criti-
cal battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania,
Trump will portray Democrats as “open border” socialists—and
“a strategy rooted in racial polarization” just might win over
“wavering working-class voters.” Indeed, Trump could eke out a
narrow Electoral College victory even if he loses the popular vote
by “as much as 5 percentage points.”
That’s possible but not likely, said Jim Geraghty in NationalReview
.com. Trump “needs to do way better than his current poll num-
bers” to stand a chance in 2020. Even if the polls are undermea-
suring Trump’s support in the Rust Belt by as much as 8 points,
as they did in 2016, the president would still lose to Joe Biden in
these states if the election were held today. Democrats, of course,
may nominate someone other than Biden, said Philip Bump in
The Washington Post, but it won’t be the widely disliked Hillary
Clinton. Trump, in all likelihood, will have to beat a more popular
opponent than he did in 2016, and will no longer get “the
benefit of the doubt” from voters looking for a fresh face
in the Oval Office.Trump’s in a bind, said Ron Brownstein in The Atlantic.
He hopes to energize white working-class voters by stok-
ing the fires of “racial and cultural strife.” But with a
2016 margin of victory of only 77,000 votes over three
swing states, he can’t afford to alienate any of
his more moderate supporters—and new
polls show him doing just that. A growing
number of voters approve of Trump’s job
performance on the economy, but disap-
prove of his character, his rhetoric, and
his values. “Swing voters” may be an endangered species in these
polarized times, said Ed Kilgore in NYMag.com, but if fence-sitters
decide Trump has gone too far, they may either stay home or vote
for the Democrat.The media is desperately peddling the narrative that Trump is in
“dire trouble,” said Mollie Hemingway in TheFederalist.com,
but predicting 2020 is actually “not complicated.” Incumbent
presidents usually win, and that usually becomes almost always
when like Trump they’re presiding over a strong economy. The
grim reality, said Joshua Whitfield in The Dallas Morning News,
is that Trump “plays the games of politics and psychology better
than anyone else.” No matter whom Democrats nominate, Trump
will once again dominate every news cycle with the sinister but
masterful message: “They want to destroy you and they want to
destroy our country as we know it.” Like no other politician on
the scene, Trump intuitively understands America’s darkest fears
and impulses, and how to exploit them. “We elected Trump once
and we’ll elect him again.”Only in America
QThe Berkeley, Calif., City
Council has voted to remove
all references to gender from
its municipal code. The city’s
“manholes” will henceforth
be called “maintenance
holes,” “brothers” and “sis-
ters” will be “siblings,” and
the words “he” and “she” will
be replaced with “they.” The
“they” change “kind of bugs
me,” admitted councilmember
Sophie Hahn, “but that’s OK.
We all have to change.”
QA Pennsylvania school dis-
trict has warned parents that
if they don’t pay lunch bills,
their children may be taken
away. The Wyoming Valley
West district told parents
that not paying the bills is
“neglecting your child’s right
to food” and could result in
their kids being “placed in
foster care.” A district lawyer
said the warning’s goal was
to get parents’ “attention, and
it certainly did, didn’t it?”Trump looks for more
pliant intel chief
After hinting for months that
he wants to oust intelligence
chief Dan Coats, President
Trump moved closer to doing
so last week, meeting with
Rep. Devin Nunes, the top
Republican on the House Intel-
ligence Committee, to discuss
possible replacements. Coats,
who oversees the country’s
intelligence agencies, is
emphatic about the threat of
Russian election interference,
which has rankled Trump
since he appointed Coats in
early 2017. When Trump stood
alongside Russian President
Vladimir Putin last July and
said he failed to “see any
reason” why Russia would
have meddled in the 2016
election, Coats defended U.S.
assessments to the contrary.
He contradicted Trump again
this January, telling Congress
that North Korea is unlikely to
surrender its nuclear arsenal.Greased piglets,which will no longer be wrestled for entertain-
ment by children at the Sonoma County Fair in California. Fair
officials cited “raised awareness” of animal rights and a nnounced
that children will henceforth wrestle greased watermelons.
The homeless,after a federal appeals court ruled 8-7 that
Virginia’s long-standing law allowing for the jailing of “habitual
drunkards” is unconstitutional. The law is “unconstitution-
ally vague,” the majority found, and criminalizes “otherwise
legal behavior that is an involuntary manifestation of an illness.”
Providing refuge,after a tigress fleeing rising floodwaters in
India entered a local home and took “a daylong nap” in one of the
beds. The homeowner felt honored, but fled.Gizmo the miniature Chihuahua, who was carried off by a
seagull this week from his owner’s garden in England. Britain’s
Royal Society for the Protection of Birds released a statement reas-
suring pet owners that “these types of incidents are very rare.”
Representing,with the forced resignation of Iowa Human
Services Director Jerry Foxhoven, allegedly because Gov. Kim
Reynolds tired of Foxhoven’s obsession with slain rapper Tupac
Shakur. Foxhoven, 66, routinely emailed Shakur’s lyrics to his
4,300 employees, and hosted weekly “Tupac Fridays” in his office.
Last-chance power drives,after police in Greenland, N.H.,
pulled over Eric Joseph, 51, for driving 142 mph in a 65 mph
zone. Explaining his excessive speed, Joseph reportedly told offi-
cers that he was trying to get home to New Jersey.Good week for:
Bad week for:
APAn Electoral College strategy