These are the electoral maps that I wish that President Trump contemplate. Red suggests the failure of Al Smith in the 1928 election. Red and white suggest the failure of Herbert Hoover to get re-elected in 1932:
red -- Smith 1928, FDR 1932
white -- Hoover 1928, FDR 1932
blue -- Hoover both years
(Ignore shades)
From the landslide that President Trump to which he thought he was entitled because he is so brilliant and wonderful (winning everything but 'unpatriotic' parts of America like DeeCee, Greater Hollywood, some pathetic islands in the Pacific Ocean that the Kenyan fraudulently claimed to be born in, and maybe Ethan Allen's treacherous state and the one that first betrayed George III) ... no, I am not showing that fantasy map to the consequences of gross failure of economic stewardship. The landslide of Hoover in 1928 to the landslide of FDR in 1932 will likely show the biggest shift in popular shift from one President to another and it is likely to stick for a very long time as the largest such shift.
This could be more relevant if one thinks that the official map is valid. Trump won with a margin of electoral votes more like that of Jimmy Carter. But Carter would end up with problems that he could not solve, and for which Ronald Reagan offered solutions; also, the states were shifting in their partisan allegiance, but to the detriment of Jimmy Carter. Maybe not the solutions that many Americans would not have liked at the time, but the 1984 election suggested that Reagan did a lot of things right, like lowering many Americans' expectations. Oh, you have a college degree and you hate your job in retail or fast food, but your low pay even worse? There is a solution -- take another such job to supplement your meager earnings, and always remember to show that moronic "Delighted to serve you!" smile! People taking second jobs that they hated as much as their ill-paid first jobs solved lots of economic problems.
red -- Carter in 1976 and 1980
white -- Carter 1976, Reagan 1980
blue -- Ford in 1976, Reagan in 1980
(Ignore shades).
Just a reminder: it's the next election that matters. It's not that I expect President Trump to be caught with an economic meltdown as bad as that of 1929-1932 or with a diplomatic disaster as severe as the Iranian hostage crisis. I'm not saying that the President will lose fifteen states that he won in 2016, and for obvious reasons he can't lose 33 that he won in 2016. But two will be enough if one of them is Florida and one of them is Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin and three will be enough if one of them is Pennsylvania and the other two are any pair of Michigan, North Carolina, and Wisconsin.
It will be more than three years before
les jeux sont faits. Until the election of 2020 is over, that will be a long time. After the election of 2020 that will seem a blip in history.
