Donald Trump was NOT supposed to beat Hillary Clinton…
He actually lost the popular vote….
But?
He won the election…
How?
By WHERE the vote came from…
THAT isn’t the way things are going right now….
Joe Biden leads the large group of Democrats running for the Presidential nomination…
If he continues on to the nomination ?
He’s gonna be able to take away states that Trump was able to steal from Clinton…
(Biden beats Trump right now in the critical states Trump needs for a second term…)
Also?
Donald Trump will have a history to defend come next year’s election…
And there is the continual revelations about his personal and financial life and 2016 campaign…
Trump has NOT been able increase his base, and seems unable to change his tune, to move to the middle which past President’s have done to get a second term…His poll numbers confirm all of this…
President Trump faces a steep uphill climb to a second term, even if it’s far too early to count him out.
Trump campaign aides have talked up the president’s chances of doing even better than he did in 2016. They note the economy is strong and that he has scored some of the highest poll ratings of his tenure since the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.
But the headwinds for Trump are severe.
One of the largest: His polarizing approach looks to be more hindrance than help.
In four separate polls over the past month, more than 50 percent of respondents said they would not vote for him again or were unlikely to do so. The percentage who said they would vote for him never rose higher than 38.
The most recent of those polls, from Fox News, found 54 percent of respondents saying they would probably not or definitely not vote for Trump.
In a Quinnipiac University Poll, 52 percent of respondents said they would definitely not vote for the president, while 33 percent said they definitely would. Only 13 percent were in the middle ground, saying they would “consider” backing Trump.
It will be hard to overcome negative perceptions of the president that look to have become fixed. Some of the voters who backed Trump as an anti-establishment disruptor in 2016 appear to have peeled away.
Trump’s overall approval ratings remain mediocre at best. In the RealClearPolitics polling average Monday afternoon, Trump’s job performance gained the approval of 43 percent of voters and the disapproval of 53.6 percent.
But Trump’s salvation could lie in the idiosyncrasies of the Electoral College.
Trump lost the popular vote to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by 2.1 percentage points in 2016, even as he triumphed in the electoral college 306-232.
Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, has insisted that the president could win states that eluded him last time around.
During an appearance on CBS News’s “Face the Nation” last month, Parscale asserted that Colorado, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico and Nevada — all of which backed Clinton — could go for Trump in 2020.
“In every single metric, we’re looking at being bigger, better and badder than we were in 2016,” Parscale insisted.
Even if that turns out to be the case, the most likely pathway to victory for Trump has familiar contours.
He emerged victorious in 2016 largely because he won Florida — the biggest of the traditional swing states — and demolished the so-called blue wall.
The term refers to three large states — Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — that had not backed a Republican for president since the 1980s.
Pennsylvania is the largest of the three, bestowing 20 electoral votes on the victor.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, the early Democratic front-runner, officially launched his campaign in Philadelphia on Saturday. Trump was in Montoursville, Pa., for a campaign-style rally on Monday…
Note…
Is the general election campaign ALREADY in gear with Trump vs Biden ALREADY in Pennsylvania ?
image…pittstburgh.cbslocal.com