Phillip - I don't believe that City is being defeatist. I think they're being realistic.
Trump came to power because he was able to rally millions of lowest common denominator voters , both fanatic followers and traditional Republicans, by appealing to their baser and basest instincts. Hillary lost because in key states other millions of Democratic voters sat on their hands either because they underestimated the threat that Crazy Donald posed to America and/or because they got the little feelings hurt after she trounced Bernie in the primaries.
Now, despite Trump's record low poll numbers, there's no reason to believe that things will be different in 2020 (if you're waiting for the moral cowards in the GOP to impeach and convict Trump before then you're wasting your time) given that the Democarts have no obvious presidential candidate and Trump will still have his hard core of millions of brown shirts.
The best that we can hope for, and the best that media such as City can do, is to beat the drum for Democratic voter registration and attendence at the polls in 2018 to give us either a Democratic House or Senate to block the agenda of Trump and the Republican Party. But even then I wouldn't be sanguine about our chances of taking back either house. I suspect it'll be 2022 or 2024, before enough voters wake up to the danger posed by Trumpism.
Re: “The state of the union in the age of Trump”
Phillip - I don't believe that City is being defeatist. I think they're being realistic.
Trump came to power because he was able to rally millions of lowest common denominator voters , both fanatic followers and traditional Republicans, by appealing to their baser and basest instincts. Hillary lost because in key states other millions of Democratic voters sat on their hands either because they underestimated the threat that Crazy Donald posed to America and/or because they got the little feelings hurt after she trounced Bernie in the primaries.
Now, despite Trump's record low poll numbers, there's no reason to believe that things will be different in 2020 (if you're waiting for the moral cowards in the GOP to impeach and convict Trump before then you're wasting your time) given that the Democarts have no obvious presidential candidate and Trump will still have his hard core of millions of brown shirts.
The best that we can hope for, and the best that media such as City can do, is to beat the drum for Democratic voter registration and attendence at the polls in 2018 to give us either a Democratic House or Senate to block the agenda of Trump and the Republican Party. But even then I wouldn't be sanguine about our chances of taking back either house. I suspect it'll be 2022 or 2024, before enough voters wake up to the danger posed by Trumpism.