45 years ago, White House lawyer John Dean testified before Congress about the corruption he participated in for President Richard Nixon, and later went to prison for a short time for his testimony and cooperation in the Watergate Scandal investigation.
Now, Michael Cohen, the personal lawyer for Donald Trump has testified before Congress about the corruption he participated in, and will go to prison, with his testimony and continued cooperation in the vast number of Trump scandals likely to shorten his sentence, a totally justifiable action when it occurs.
After Dean started to testify in 1973, it took 14 months until Richard Nixon resigned, but this time, with rapid action by the Democratic House of Representatives on many fronts of investigation and questioning people around Trump, it should not take 14 months for Trump to resign.
The day of reckoning for Donald Trump and his family is coming rapidly, and Trump will NOT survive the term as President, and will NOT be the Republican nominee for President in 2020, and if he was so, it would insure a massive GOP defeat in Congress!
Ronald writes, “The day of reckoning for Donald Trump and his family is coming rapidly, and Trump will NOT survive the term as President, and will NOT be the Republican nominee for President in 2020, and if he was so, it would insure a massive GOP defeat in Congress!â€
Strong Republican challengers would then need to step up and primary-challenge incumbent U.S. president Donald Trump for the 2020 Republican nomination for president of the United States.
This was covered recently with my response, to Ronald’s “The Beginning of a Challenge to Donald Trump for Renomination: William Weld and Larry Hogan†(02.23.2019), at https://www.theprogressiveprofessor.com/?p=36215 .
As for a “massive GOP defeat in Congress,†with the elections of 2020, it would have to happen with the circumstances of not only the presidency flipping from Republican to Democratic but with U.S. Senate also following. The last presidential election in which both manifest—meaning, party switches (and the unseating of an incumbent U.S. president)—was in 1976, going from Democratic to Republican. If you want the last example in which both went from Republican to Democratic, look to 1932.
On February 22, 2019, Gallup published a report in which it has state-to-state poll numbers on Donald Trump. He is polling at 42 percent. Now, let us keep in mind that, in 2016, he received 45.93 percent to the 48.02 percent for losing Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the U.S. Popular Vote. They combined for 93.95 percent of the vote—with the remaining 6.05 percent combining for all candidates, who received any votes, outside the two major political parties. In most elections, not just at the presidential level, the two-party vote typically combines between 97 to 99 percent. So, the way I look at it is this: Trump, in order to get re-elected, is going to have garner 48 percent of the vote. His margin loss of –2.09, from 2016, cannot go down to become worse than –3, because the tipping point state was Wisconsin (+0.76, his 270th electoral vote) and the two which followed were Pennsylvania (+0.72, his 290th electoral vote) and Michigan (+0.22, his 306th original electoral vote). If he declines, he loses Michigan followed by Pennsylvania and, if he declines worse than –3, he loses Wisconsin—and that means getting unseated. So, I would say Trump has to have to have 48 percent so that, if he wins re-election but does not win over the U.S. Popular Vote, he can skate by with results like 48–49, 48–50, but no worse than 48–51 percent.
Here is a link to that February 22, 2019 report by Gallup:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/247004/trump-job-approval-higher-states-2018.aspx?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=o_social&utm_term=&utm_content=&utm_campaign=
With my interpretation of that Gallup report, here is a link to the apparent status of the electoral map (with the Tossups showing Trump to be down by no greater than –12 percentage points):
https://www.270towin.com/presidential_map_new/maps/XROVQ.png
Donald Trump is not a formidable candidate for re-election. In fact, he may not even end up being a candidate at all. The Mueller report has yet to drop; House Democrats have only just begun their inquiries; Michael Cohen is just the first witness to drop bombshells under oath, implicating the president in serious crimes, and none of that even touches on what other investigations will reveal from the Southern District of New York. Trump’s approval rating is already deep underwater, he currently loses head-to-head matchups with almost every major Democrat in current polling, and most indications suggest the economy is headed toward a recession. Just as most pundits wildly underestimated his chances throughout the 2016 cycle, the same reverse Cassandras are overcorrecting by wildly overestimating him in 2020.