I disagree with this, like I generally do with most of what 538 publishes. If Trump wins reelection, he will do it by recreating the 2016 map and coalition. For the most part, the 2018 and 2020 elections will see a continuation of 2016 trends IMO.
Well 2020 is probably a given if Trump is running since an incumbent's reelection map usually looks quite similar to their first map.
But I don't see this playing down-ballot at all when you look at the results of the recent special elections. You had GA-06 as lean D then Handel won by 3 points*. Enough upscale republicans are gonna give the middle finger every time to the Democrats no matter how much the DCCC tries to target them. They have no economic self interest in voting for Democratic representatives to go to D.C. and represent the agenda of Nancy Pelosi.
Midterm elections have shown two contradictory tendencies: first they are tough on the Party of the incumbent President and they are tough on Democrats who generally do badly in low-turnout elections. Which tendency will prevail, or will they offset enough to make things meaningless? That's the best prediction that anyone can give for 2018 until the electoral news
takes shape.
As for 2020 -- the 2014 GOP wave gets tested in 2020. Should the pattern of 2016 hold, then Republicans lose a little but not enough to lose power. They will further gerrymander districts, and they will use state legislatures to disqualify voters -- perhaps finding more people to strike from voter rolls, as for getting government aid, being college students with two official residences, having misdemeanor convictions or unpaid tickets. The tendency of the merger between economic power and political power intensifies, and America has the political reality of Mussolini's
stato corporativo if without the violence.
But that is one nightmare.
Ordinarily one expects the re-election campaign of an incumbent President to work with conditions similar to those with which he got elected. Most Presidents satisfy their supporters without solving all the problems of their supporters and are able to exploit much the same themes. Thus Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama won with similar maps between their initial elections and their re-election bids. It may be mere coincidence that the last three Presidents succeeded at that. Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, and Dwight Eisenhower did so, too, winning landslides because their opposition Party ran a weak challenger in the re-election bid. So what can go wrong?
First, a President can solve all the problems while showing that they have no idea of a sequel. George H W Bush, not a truly bad President, got into that trap. Second, the incumbent President could disappoint his supporters in the first election. Even without the hostage situation in Iran, Jimmy Carter was in trouble because he disappointed his essential support in the South. He ran on the cultural values of southern white people but didn't reshape America in the way that his personality suggested. Ronald Reagan would appeal to such voters. To win in 1980, Carter would have had to pick off a raft of States outside the South, which Democrats would do -- but not until 1992.
Donald Trump has shown a willingness to appeal to the unspoken, unvarnished concerns of white people who have had a hard time in an economy casting them off much as it used to cast off most blacks. He then showed himself to be a supporter of class privilege above all else. He ran as Williams Jennings Bryan and then has governed like William McKinley.
So far the approval and disapproval ratings suggest that he is in trouble. Were the pattern that got Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama re-elected to be appearing again, one would expect the same swing states to seem on the margin. If Trump were losing ground in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin (his three barest wins), then he would be picking up support in Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Virginia. His three barest wins are turning sharply against him... and three of his five barest wins are turning sharply against him. The pattern of 1996, 2004, and 2012 is not shaping up. He stands for economic policies that fit the dreams of the economic elite after running against their alleged elitism (even though nobody could be more of an expression of the economic elite than could be Donald Trump) while standing for policies that hurt many who voted for him.
OK, Obama picked up nothing from 2008 to 2012 -- but he faced an unusually-strong opponent. (Had Romney been the Republican nominee he would have defeated Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders in a landslide at least comparable to Obama in 2008).
President Trump (or should he resign or die, Mike Pence) has little room for error. People who rejected him in 2016 are not coming toward him in significant numbers. Many who voted for him are recognizing him as a wolf wearing a well-made sheep-suit. That conservatives are getting cold feet about his erratic behavior and verbal incoherence should be a warning about a possible third-party challenge from someone on the Right; losing five percent of the vote to a Constitution, Reform, or Libertarian alternative who draws little support from the center-Left moves him in that way alone from getting about 46% of the vote to getting about 40% of the vote. 40% of the vote? That's about what Carter got in 1980.
...This is all before an economic meltdown or some diplomatic or military catastrophe. He is going to need a miracle with which to win the election of 2020 -- or chicanery by his political allies.
