- by New Deal democrat
You know the drill: it's Sunday so I get to write about whatever I feel like.
One of the things I realized over the last several months is that, assuming Hillary Clinton wins the election, not only is Trump not going to graciously concede, but the fact is, he's not going away at all.
Typically after an election, the losing candidate goes back to what he was doing before, e.g., being s Senator. Well, what was Trump before last year? First and foremost, Trump is a salesperson who trades on his personal brand. And even if he loses in November, he is going to have received somewhere near 50 million votes! Which means that there will be 50 million marks -- er, customers -- many millions of which will have given Trump their email and credit car information. And Donald Trump will be only too happy to sell them President Donald Trump branded memorabilia. If on average each voter spends $100 on Trump branded chatychkes, that a cool $5 billion for Trump.
Beyond that, the man needs media attention like the rest of us need to breathe oxygen. Others have speculated that he may launch a Trump cable television network, which certainly could happen. but whether he does or not, the media is going to keep asking him his opinion of every political event that happens in 2017 and maybe beyond, so long as he makes good copy and puts eyes on their sponsors' advertisements.
All of which means that it is certainly not out of the question that Trump will have a do-over in 2020. His base is probably still going to be there (those that haven't died, anyway).
And that brings me to the matter of the next recession. It is going to happen sometime, and while expansions don't have expiration dates, it would very much surprise me if we went another four years without having one.
Aside from the fact that only once in the last 160 years has an incumbent candidate won election in the face of a recession (Truman in 1948), Hillary starts out as a deeply unpopular candidate. She is as status-quo as could be humanly possible. In the very likely event that there is a recession between now and 2020, and like the last few times, it hits the working class harder than the wealthy and lasts much much longer, the unpopular Hillary Clinton is going to lose her re-election bid.
The reasonably decent economy of 2016 kept s lid on things, and even so Bernie Sanders gave Hillary a run for her money. If the status quo of Gilded Age inequality continues and even worsens, in the next recession the powder keg is going to blow. And that means that in 2020 it will be very hard to stop Donald Trump or someone very much like him.
Sent from my iPad
