Getting voters to vote against an incumbent is essentially getting them to fire an employee and hire you to replace them. Not only must you make the argument as to why you should be hired, but you have to simultaneously make the argument as to why they should be fired, without alienating too many of the people who still think they're doing a good job.
That is the poorest way to get a job. It's even less effective than mailing resumes and cover letters to potential employers. It is easier to get a job by looking for places with a high turnover, as in retail and fast food. You will find out why the turnover is so high -- despotic management, low pay, and practically no chance of improvement in life by staying there.
......
You might consider the Lichtman test.
Here are the 13 keys to the White House. They are stated as conditions that favor reelection of the incumbent party. When five or fewer statements are false, the incumbent party wins. When six or more are false, the incumbent party loses.
http://marylandreporter.com/2012/11/08/presidential-champion-lichtmans-13-keys-are-still-the-winning-election-formula/1. Incumbent-party mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than it did after the previous midterm elections.
2. Nomination contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.
3. Incumbency: The incumbent-party candidate is the sitting president.
4. Third party: There is no significant third-party or independent campaign.
5. Short-term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
6. Long-term economy: Real annual per-capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the two previous terms.
7. Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.
8. Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
9. Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
10. Foreign or military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
11. Foreign or military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.
12. Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
13. Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.
These criteria would have told us that Eisenhower would beat Stevenson (twice), Kennedy would defeat Nixon, LBJ would defeat Goldwater, Nixon would defeat Humphrey and McGovern, Ford would lose to Carter, Reagan would defeat Carter and Mondale, the elder Bush would defeat Dukakis but lose to Clinton, Clinton would defeat the elder Bush and then Dole, the younger Bush would defeat Kerry, and that Obama would win twice. It is ambiguous about 2000 and 2016, and in both elections the winner of the popular vote would lose in the Electoral College.
At this point, the only sure losing sign for Republicans in 2020 is (9) -- scandal. (8 ) is close if it continues, and (10) is a matter of interpretation.
(1) will be decided definitively in about a year. I see no reason to expect the Republicans to not lose some House seats on the net.
(2) this shows either that someone has ambition to rush the succession to the Presidency (like Ronald Reagan in 1976 or Ted Kennedy in 1980) if the President is having trouble. Just look at 1968 or 2016 for Democrats.
(3) So far this looks like a positive for the Republicans. It's tough to unseat an incumbent within one's own Party, so it is safe to assume that Donald Trump or (should the Devil take his soul) Mike Pence will be the incumbent President in November 2016 and will have the nomination.
(4) We will not know until the weather warms up in 2020.
(5) We really have no idea until 2020.
(6) It is more likely that we will have an economic meltdown in 2020 than a boom. The Obama economy is what we still have. It is hard to see how the Republicans can keep it up while disparaging everything about Obama.
(7) One would expect such already. The Republicans certainly have an agenda, but they have yet to enact it so far. This is in part legislative failure.
(8 )
We are beginning to see it in the form of mass marches and protests. So to speak, we are already getting the oily rags together in a heap. (9)
This is already a huge negative for the Trump Administration. (10 -- amended) The rest of the world seems to be trying to isolate his worst tendencies... but I can easily see him getting a war that mauls America. What Dubya got away with in 2004, Trump might not get away with.
The President has badly mishandled the deaths of four American Special Forces soldiers in Niger. That is a 'small' failure on the surface, but it is a failure. It bodes ill. (11) Do you see anything of the sort now? The big international news is the juvenile feud between the President and the King-in-all-but-name of North Korea, in which "double-dog-dare-you" has nuclear weapons as possible consequences. This bodes ill.
(12) See how President Trump holds up in 2020. The charisma that he had in 2016 might wear thin by then. He will not miraculously become a war hero by leading troops at the front line.
(13) With perhaps twenty potential Democratic nominees for President so far, this is now impossible to predict until the Democratic nominee of 2020 sews things up.
(9) is undeniably false by now; the 8th and 10th keys are almost completely false now. Three answers are already false, in effect within nine months of this President's inauguration. The social unrest may largely be non-violent so far, but it is over many issues. The anti-Trump rallies are larger in scale than the Tea Party rallies of eight years ago, and they are even more civilized than the Tea Party rallies. But there has been violence from the Alt Right, and President Trump
has bungled his response to them.
He is 3/5 of the way to being defeated in a re-election bid in nine months. The polls so far seem to show that.
