Trump will be President until 2024

Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, June 21st, 2018 - 61 comments
Categories: China, Deep stuff, Donald Trump, Europe, immigration, International, Politics, us politics - Tags:

It’s time to see the strong possibility of a second term of Donald Trump as United States President. There are no other Republican or Democrat competitors who currently have a remote chance.

What Would The World Look Like?

There may be nothing New Zealand can do about it, but Donald Trump is degrading so many norms so fast it’s important to track them six years into the future. A second term under President Trump will mean quite a lot to us.

Trade

We should expect to see disruptive and extensive trade wars from the United States against the European Union and China. I’m not even daring to think about the vulnerability of a small trading nation such as ourselves at this prospect – it’s hard to imagine because we’ve never been anything except pro-trade and this degree of belligerent protectionism from the U.S. hasn’t been seen in living memory. Suffice to say that this is the highest rising sea we have seen on the horizon since the U.K. cut us adrift in the 1960s.

Defence

We may yet see the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation dissolved. Who knows maybe a specific European defence force will arise from the pieces, but that is no certainty in such a mood of E.U. distrust of cooperation. The Balkan nations, Ukraine, Finland, and Georgia would again be vulnerable to greater Russian predation. The British Defence Forces view Russia as their most serious threat.

The head of NATO views the United States belligerence as the most pressing threat to the existence of NATO.

The European Union

President Trump’s hostility to the E.U. is hardly a secret. We know he has no idea what the European project is fundamentally about. His policies leave little doubt that he wouldn’t care if it disintegrated altogether. After Britain leaves the E.U. in expected total disarray, we should expect to see a full-throated attack from the U.S. on the unity of the European Union as a whole including weaponising the U.S. dollar against the Euro. Although the United States should be careful how it operates with respect to China.

Immigration

President Trump declared in his 2017 Warsaw speech that the fundamental question of our time is “whether the West has the will to survive.” He declared that question the “most important of his presidency.” That speech contained nothing less than a redefinition of the west as a nationalist, Christian entity pitted against the barbarians.

He doesn’t often do big set-piece speeches, so it’s worth reminding ourselves of his view of western civilisation broadly through the full text.

In particular, the policy area President Trump and most European nations agree on is stopping illegal immigration. In a few years of repetition most will be inured to footage of children in cages.

President Trump and so many European leaders have for nearly a decade hit the voter-cornucopia of immigration, and no political figure on the left has yet generated any popular response.

Climate Change

The only leaders who will engage or really care about climate change will be corporations and a few NGOs. The issue is of no consequence to Trump, and he has successfully eradicated it from U.S. politics and hence from the discourse of most of the global mainstream media.

Human Rights

We should expect to see the United States mutate. It will aim to defeat tolerant and univeralist values such as those within the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. We should expect the U.S. to withdraw quickly from membership of the U.N. Human Right Council. [MS – and it has] Many other countries openly flaunt these values, and some of them are sitting members of this council, but the United States used to be more reliable. Some may say good riddance, until they remember that the U.S. was the primary country that formed the United Nations itself together with those universal declarations of human rights.

China

President Trump will try all he can to check the rise of China, and he will fail. Prime Ministers Helen Clark and John Key have situated New Zealand particularly smartly there. It is the rise of China and all who support China, that may enable New Zealand survive and prosper away from the United States era of Trump.

May.

This is a leader generating the most powerful global disruptions to politics since Gorbachev.

The remains of the left in politics – until they can form a leader or set of leaders who successfully challenge Trump – need to support the international cooperation, the institutions built on that cooperation, and the good that they have on balance achieved, against Donald Trump and all those who support him.

Because right now Donald Trump is going to be politically effective as far as the eye can see.

61 comments on “Trump will be President until 2024 ”

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  1. Sanctuary 1
    21 June 2018 at 8:12 am

    Trump will lose in 2020. Why? Because his opponents will crawl over broken glass to vote against him, and the anti-Trump vote is bigger than his base by quite a lot.

    The only way he will win re-election will be if the Democrats are completely tin eared and pick another terrible candidate like Hillary.

    • dukeofurl 1.1
      21 June 2018 at 8:44 am

      Sanders would have been a terrible candidate in a general election and Trump would have won by a big margin rather than the narrow win in the EC and big loss in the popular vote.

      • Sanctuary 1.1.1
        21 June 2018 at 9:00 am

        2016 was a change election, the Dems picked the most establishment possible candidate from a previous era. Saunders would have beaten Trump.

        The biggest “problem” for the Democrats is internal division, with a vigorous “Progressive Democrat” insurgency happening against the establishment Democrats.It is not so much that American punish internal dissent – the two main US political parties are nowhere like as disciplined as Westminister ones (although the GOP is now basically extrmist, captured by a disciplined insurgency minority of a minority) – but how the Dems handle the inner conflict. If the establishment stomp to hard on the progressive, they’ll disillusion them and that would confound my turnout prediction…

        • Ad 1.1.1.1
          21 June 2018 at 9:10 am

          What evidence do you have of any current Democrat doing better against Trump in a Presidential Head to Head?

          That’s where to look.

          If the election were held today, Joe Biden would crush President Trump. Few others would come within a bulls roar.

          • Sanctuary 1.1.1.1.1
            21 June 2018 at 9:48 am

            It is a bit far out to pick, but my money would be on either a Bernie Saunders & Elizabeth Warren or a Cory Booker and Kamala D. Harris, with the latter being most likely as the first two are just too old and the Democrat insiders have a bad case of ABBA (Anyone But Bernie Anytime).

            The Booker/Harris team in particular would smash Trump.

            • dukeofurl 1.1.1.1.1.1
              21 June 2018 at 5:12 pm

              “Democrat insiders have a bad case of ABBA – ( Bernie)

              The primary popular vote for Sanders was well behind Clinton. The
              ordinary registered Democrats didnt like him as much either.

              And ignoring the reality , it was democratic elites/activists at caucuses who most supported Sanders.

              Its only been 2 years or so and yet there is a farrago of nonsense about what happened in the democratic primaries.- Look it up.

          • mauī 1.1.1.1.2
            21 June 2018 at 11:23 am

            Um, Bernie had rallies with 5,000 or 10,000 people attending while Hillary was struggling to pack out a room.

            Nationwide polls were showing he was massively popular and the most trusted politician even while getting minimal lamestream media coverage.

            • Ad 1.1.1.1.2.1
              21 June 2018 at 11:26 am

              The nostalgia is strong in you.

              What evidence do you have that Bernie Sanders would win against Trump in the 2020 Presidential head to head?

              • adam …
                21 June 2018 at 11:35 am

                Sanders still has at last count, a 68% approval rating as a senator.

                https://morningconsult.com/2018/01/23/senator-rankings-jan-2018/

                • Bill …
                  21 June 2018 at 12:09 pm

                  Chis Hedges has a piece over on “Truthdig” entitled “Et tu, Bernie?” that suggests Sanders has shifted to accommodate the Democratic Party establishment.

                  I don’t know whether Hedges is doing an unfortunate re-dux of his anarchist number from a few years back, or if he’s fairly on the money.

                  Besides that, the intercept has a series of posts on grassroots challenges to establishment Democratic nominees for the upcoming elections that are worth the read.

                  And I’d like to see Tulsi run in 2020 🙂

                • dukeofurl …
                  21 June 2018 at 5:21 pm

                  Vermont voters who elected Sanders in 2013?

                  207,848. Vermont being one of the smallest states

                  Pleeeeeeze.
                  Just taking approval ratings in their own state doesnt mean much on national stage.

              • mauī …
                21 June 2018 at 11:43 am

                Intuition, data, polling, policy, trustworthiness, a feeling maybe. Certainly evidence from a range of areas.

              • RedLogix …
                21 June 2018 at 12:56 pm

                Ad,

                Your OP pivots on this assertion There are no other Republican or Democrat competitors who currently have a remote chance.. On the face of it this seems reasonably plausible; if nothing else Trump is sucking the oxygen from the room, leaving little room for moderate voices to be heard.

                Until both the Republicans and Democrats take full ownership for the role they BOTH played in the Trump disaster, nothing much can change. Twenty years earlier an extreme and flawed candidate such as Trump would not have gotten past the first primary rounds; but the ground has shifted and it stranded the two major parties, both increasingly frozen into polarised, ideological stances the mass of American voters have come to distrust.

                1: Washington gridlock; political point scoring plays and the decline of bi-partisan negotiation has terminally undermined the credibility and prestige of their Senate, tipping the balance of power and effective action toward the Presidency.

                2. Both major parties succumb to increasingly radical activist voices, articulating ideologies that exclude the interests of most voters, generating distrust and alienation from the political process.

                3. The power of lobbying and campaign funding finally overwhelms any rational democratic accountability and becomes undeniably obvious to everyone.

                4. In the aftermath of the 2008 GFC no-one serious is held accountable; only the little people are hurt, the workers who lose jobs, home and more. More than anything else this fatally wounds the core American ideal of personal responsibility. Plainly it has become one rule for the rich, and other rules for the rest of us.

                5. Globalisation and seemingly out of control immigration diminishes the US middle class, increasingly it is plain the game is rigged; no-one in their political game effectively represents their interests.

                A more astute observer could easily extend this list; 2016 was the election where US voters were of a mood to pull the rug out from under an establishment that they perceived, had done the same to them, at so many different levels. Once Sanders was knocked out, Trump was the man left standing and the result is history.

                Can this ongoing process of ideological polarisation and corrosive failure of democratic accountability be reversed? Or will the USA Republic slide on into an age of Emperors? Will the three largest states, the USA, Russia and China descend into their own competing brands of totalitarianism?

                On the numbers Trump should lose the mid-term election, but for this to happen there should be at least several plausible Democrats in the public eye by this time. Sanctuary has put up four names who might run well, but even as a staunch Sanders supporter I suspect his time may have passed by 2020. The others I know less about; but all seem under-mined by one core problem … the Democrat party itself.

                After her loss Clinton should have done a crystal clear mea culpa, fallen on her sword and passed responsibility back to the party to both reject a failed campaign and re-invent themselves. Instead we’ve had endless meandering justifications and far too much energy mis-directed onto attempts to impeach Trump. Instead of taking responsibility for losing to such a flawed and dangerous man as Trump, they’ve effectively indulged in a massive display of victim-hood mentality; and the American public don’t find it the least bit attractive.

                Which still leaves the door open for Trump in 2020. When will we stop underestimating him? He has already done a dozen ‘impossible’ things. Not liking them is not a reason to assume he is incapable of repeating the same feats in future. Nor can the Republicans reasonably run a candidate with the serious intention of defeating their own President. The onus lies on the Democrats to understand, and openly accept what happened in 2016, reject the creeping polarisation and demonisation rampant in the current political landscape, and go back to middle America with a candidate and campaign that wins back their trust.

                Not easy.

                • Richard McGrath …
                  21 June 2018 at 3:33 pm

                  You are right RL, in that the Democratic Party (and the media for that matter) needs to rid itself of the poisonous Clinton influence if there is to be a serious challenge to Trump Keeping America Great in 2020.

            • dukeofurl 1.1.1.1.2.2
              21 June 2018 at 5:15 pm

              17 million votes for Clinton

              13.2 mill votes for Sanders

              Why rely on ‘polls’ to chose candidate, when they have primaries.

              Sanders lost there and would have lost massively to Trump

          • Bill 1.1.1.1.3
            21 June 2018 at 12:17 pm

            Ad, Biden is just another recognised establishment figure who would drag along all the same type of debilitating baggage that Clinton dragged to the contest last time.

            If Trump was pitted against someone with the calibre of a Corbyn, he’d be toast. (So maybe Sanders, maybe Warren, maybe Tulsi…)

            But against any figure associated with the very establishment that was rejected in lieu of Trump (yes, it was wrongheaded on the part of US voters and blah, blah) he’s, at worst, got a punt.

      • Siobhan 1.1.2
        21 June 2018 at 2:29 pm

        https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_sanders-5565.html

        Bernie had a better chance against Trump than Clinton.

        However The DNC would rather see America burn in a flaming heap than have a President with a Progressive agenda

      • Tricledrown 1.1.3
        22 June 2018 at 11:27 am

        Dukeoferl
        Sanders didn’t have baggage pizzagate
        The Russians weren’t targeting sanders

        • Dukeofurl 1.1.3.1
          22 June 2018 at 2:27 pm

          Trump didn’t have baggage?
          Russians really wanted Trump so would have done same ops against Sanders

  2. roy cartland 2
    21 June 2018 at 8:30 am

    Why stop at 2024?

  3. dukeofurl 3
    21 June 2018 at 8:41 am

    I knew Advantage would be writing something like this when I saw the headline.

    Reality, he doesnt have the approval numbers to be a second term president. having your base love him isnt enough as the electorate is democrats, republicans, independents.

    • dukeofurl 3.1
      21 June 2018 at 9:04 am

      CNN POLL
      Presidential Approval Rating
      Dec of First Year

      Bush, 2001 86%
      Kennedy, 1961 77%
      Bush, 1989 71%
      Eisenhower, 1953 69%
      Nixon, 1969 59%
      Carter, 1977 57%
      Obama, 2009 54%
      Clinton, 1993 54%
      Reagan, 1981 49%
      Trump, now 35%

      Trump may be up a bit since then ( low 40s), its steep climb.
      Looking at details of headlines maybe ok for policy freaks, but headlines pass and voters think what about me.
      Trumps strongest point is economy, what happens if there is a downturn , as eventually must happen. Will he double down on his trade war ?

      • Ad 3.1.1
        21 June 2018 at 9:09 am

        Definitely a long way to go, but check the polling trend line and don’t be too sure:

        https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/?ex_cid=rrpromo

        • Andre 3.1.1.1
          21 June 2018 at 9:36 am

          What sort of polling reaction do you think you would have got in mid 2006 about a black dude named Barack Hussein Obama for the next presidential election?

          • Ad 3.1.1.1.1
            21 June 2018 at 9:43 am

            Do you see anything resembling President Obama in the entire Democrat field right now?

            Maybe only Biden could stand up to Trump, and gain the necessary independent voters. Can’t see anyone else.

            • dukeofurl 3.1.1.1.1.1
              21 June 2018 at 11:50 am

              Big mistake to stoke the fire of presidential ambition too early. Not until after mid term elections will those come forward.
              While the rest of the world sees a 2 year election grind as absurd, it does mean otherwise no bodys can get public recognition.
              Im thinking Dems will pick a State governor, choosing someone from the ‘swamp’ has big disadvantages

        • dukeofurl 3.1.1.2
          21 June 2018 at 12:10 pm

          “check the polling trend line and don’t be too sure:”

          I did , and checked down the page for the polling trend for Trump and previous presidents, its still looks dire for Trump.

          Trumps numbers most look like …..Gerald Ford !!

      • Tricledrown 3.1.2
        22 June 2018 at 11:38 am

        The Midterms will be his last stand
        This backdown at the border.
        His own wife criticising him initially now with the T shirt directly castigating him.
        Trump lack of loyalty to Melania has
        Come home to roost a woman scorned!
        Trumps health is not as good as he makes out.
        It’s a very demanding job for a sane healthy person?

  4. Pat 4
    21 June 2018 at 8:51 am

    Theres every chance Trump will longer be with us come 2020…..Melania has probably already picked out a nice little number in black.

  5. Puckish Rogue 5
    21 June 2018 at 9:56 am

    Most people are generally turned off by Hollywood elites preaching especially when the unemployment rate is falling

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/05/black-unemployment-rate-falls-to-record-low.html

    The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports 6.8 percent unemployment rate for black workers in December, the lowest in the 45 years the data has been tracked.

    https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/unemployment-rate

    The US unemployment rate fell to 3.8 percent in May 2018 from 3.9 percent in the previous month, and below market expectations of 3.9 percent. It was the lowest rate since April 2000, as the number of unemployed decreased by 281 thousand to 6.07 million and employment rose by 293 thousand to 155.47 million. Unemployment Rate in the United States averaged 5.78 percent from 1948 until 2018, reaching an all time high of 10.80 percent in November of 1982 and a record low of 2.50 percent in May of 1953.

  6. Chris T 6
    21 June 2018 at 10:17 am

    Wouldn’t be surprised to see him win again

    Especially if he flashes his Nobel peace prize around

  7. Draco T Bastard 7
    21 June 2018 at 11:10 am

    We should expect to see disruptive and extensive trade wars from the United States against the European Union and China. I’m not even daring to think about the vulnerability of a small trading nation such as ourselves at this prospect – it’s hard to imagine because we’ve never been anything except pro-trade and this degree of belligerent protectionism from the U.S. hasn’t been seen in living memory.

    For us we pretty much only have one choice and that is to stop being trade dependent.

    We should expect to see the United States mutate. It will aim to defeat tolerant and univeralist values such as those within the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights.

    That’s not a mutation – that’s been US policy since forever.

    Noam Chomsky: First, it is important to remember that the US does not accept the Universal Declaration of Human Rights — though in fact the UDHR was largely the initiative of Eleanor Roosevelt, who chaired the commission that drafted its articles, with quite broad international participation.

    The UDHR has three components, which are of equal status: civil-political, socioeconomic and cultural rights. The US formally accepts the first of the three, though it has often violated its provisions. The US pretty much disregards the third. And to the point here, the US has officially and strongly condemned the second component, socioeconomic rights, including Article 25.

    The rich do not believe in human rights – just the rights of property holders and the US is run by the rich.

    The remains of the left in politics – until they can form a leader or set of leaders who successfully challenge Trump – need to support the international cooperation, the institutions built on that cooperation, and the good that they have on balance achieved, against Donald Trump and all those who support him.

    Those institutions have failed. It’s doubtful that they ever truly worked – as the actions of the US since WWII show. We still had an effective empire in the way that the US rode roughshod over any and all international law at will and usually with the backing of other powerful countries.

    The solutions that we’re looking for don’t exist in the past. If they did they’d already exist and we wouldn’t need to be clinging on to the failed system of the past as you suggest we need to do.

    We need to find better solutions and, IMO, we need to start by being independent nations again rather than the inter-dependent nations that globalisation of the last century has brought about.

  8. marty mars 8
    21 June 2018 at 12:29 pm

    He could do it – for Ivanka’s bid after him, thus dynasty creating, 4 horsemen trotting etc

    • Bill 8.1
      21 June 2018 at 1:21 pm

      4 horsemen trotting etc

      Why?

      Have they lost their horses or something? And are they really trotting, or is that sound just the “clip clop” of coconut shells?

      • marty mars 8.1.1
        21 June 2018 at 2:49 pm

        If you don’t know the reference look it up.

        • Bill 8.1.1.1
          21 June 2018 at 4:21 pm

          Horses, not horsemen, trot. Apologies for attempting some light humour there Marty.

          • marty mars 8.1.1.1.1
            21 June 2018 at 4:26 pm

            I’m feeling a little sensitive – i’m sorry for taking the/my worse interpretation of what you wrote. It was good humour and I watched that scene the other day – very enjoyable that silly lot.

  9. Richard McGrath 9
    21 June 2018 at 3:05 pm

    The Democrats will have a chance if they can pick someone without links to The Swamp and the Clinton/Kennedy crime families, who isn’t a Sanders-type LWNJ, is under 80 years old, is not a career trougher and has some business experience.

    • Wayne 9.1
      21 June 2018 at 5:02 pm

      Joe Biden.
      It is now only 2 years to the selection of the next Democratic nominee. I would have expected two or three obvious front runners to emerge by now. They haven’t.
      Maybe a complete surprise, someone like Bill Clinton in 1991/92.

      • Richard McGrath 9.1.1
        21 June 2018 at 5:28 pm

        Biden may yet stage a run, but he’ll be 78 in 2020. Elizabeth ‘Pocahantas’ Warren may also run, but will be relentlessly mocked by Trump over her claim to have American Indian ancestry and her refusal to undergo DNA testing to see whether she’s lying. Then there’s Nancy Pelosi, who sneered at the “crumbs” being thrown to American workers in the form of tax cuts – I’d love to see her run, but I suspect she’ll be dead by 2020.

      • Tricledrown 9.1.2
        22 June 2018 at 11:41 am

        Oprah Wayne.
        Trump continues to self destruct.

  10. Stuart Munro 10
    21 June 2018 at 9:42 pm

    Michael Moore reckons Trump is doubling down on the baby snatching:

    “Flight from Houston that was scheduled to land at LaGuardia did not land and we were told was “rerouted” to Newark Airport. Online it says “rerouted.” Hundreds of protesters had shown up at LaGuardia. One final flight from Houston supposed to land at LGA in 15 minutes, Terminal C. People are here standing by. We learned a few hours ago that over 300 of these Trump-kidnapped children have already arrived in NYC and have been placed in foster homes, with some being held at an ICE-contracted facility in Harlem. The mayor also just found this out and is furious that they’ve been sent nearly 2,000 miles away from their parents. Don’t be fooled by Trump’s executive order on Wednesday. He has no intention of halting his master plan. The bill he’s going to try to get passed in the next few days has been called “the worst immigration bill in a century.” Of the children he’s already snatched, the White House said today they will NOT be reunited with their parents. Everyone— please do NOT halt the protests. We are fighting a sociopath and a liar.”

  12. Cemetery Jones 12
    22 June 2018 at 11:56 am

    Well, I can certainly say that when Peter Fonda made the hastily deleted tweet yesterday about wanting to respond to the scenes from the border by ripping Barron Trump from Melania’s arms and putting him in a cage full of pedos, I only wished I had twitter so I could have replied, “Oh yeah, got a few Hollywood mates who’d be keen for it, have you?”

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44555828

    And I’m not even a full-fledged shitlord, let alone any kind of conservative. The increasingly shrill, deranged, and out of touch personal attacks on his family (Ivanka being called a ‘feckless cunt’ by a not-fired or even particularly widely criticised comedienne, etc.) from the people who are about to be going around trying to convince the electorate that nice people vote Democrat are an extreme exemplification of self-sabotage.

    DeNiro’s on-stage meltdown the other week suggests that the increasingly fervent petulance they are exhibiting will only get worse as the mid-terms approach, and will go into overdrive if, like the Mueller investigation, they don’t deliver what they hoped for. The American people might not re-elect Trump. But at this rate, Hollywood will.