No, Trump Isn't Going to Drop Out
By: Rich Lowry (POLITICO)
Why would Trump supporters participate in polls? According to the conventional wisdom narrative touted by media, Trump supporters distrust institutional politics. And considering how Trump supporters have been treated it's unlikely that they will simply volunteer for more public abuse. Common sense suggests the race is much closer than polling and the talking-head media indicates.
Enthusiasm has been replaced by a grim determination. Joe Biden represents an establishment that Trump supporters repudiated. Biden hasn't been defending that establishment status quo, either. Joe Biden has been taking voters for granted by trotting out the same old pablum, pandering, and political double speak that has been the hallmark of establishment politics over the last several decades. Joe Biden hasn't been promising change or offering anything new. Biden has only offered pandering promises that he cannot keep.
Joe Biden attacking Trump is just more of the same. Attacking Trump has become a de rigueur political expectation by fanatical factions on the left. Biden has adopted a campaign style that appeals to the liberal fringe of the Democratic Party while promising to return to moderate establishment policy making. Joe Biden isn't promising to change anything.
After everything that has been thrown at Donald Trump over the last 3 1/2 years, why would Trump quit now? Trump has survived the conventional wisdom of establishment politics. The establishment has been wrong all along and now Trump supporters are supposed to believe what that establishment is saying?
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
After he's repeatedly survived the unsurvivable, we are supposed to believe that President Donald Trump might quit the presidential race before it truly begins after a spate of negative polling.
This is the latest chatter among (unnamed) Republicans, according to a widely circulated Fox News report and to cable-news talking heads.
Trump is a volatile figure and things could get weird if he's far behind in the final weeks of the campaign. But the idea that he is going to fall on his sword because the conventional wisdom has turned sharply against his chances runs starkly counter to his predilections and past actions.
Good luck convincing Trump he's going to lose after he survived the "Access Hollywood" tape that had GOP officeholders deserting him in droves and after he prevailed on an election night when many people closest to him and most invested in his victory thought he was sure to go down to defeat.
There's nothing any political consultant, pollster or adviser can tell him about his dire political condition that he hasn't heard, and dismissed, before.
If the polling looks bad for him now, Hillary Clinton had sizable leads in 2016, too.
Plus, there's no reason for Trump to trust the polls, especially the state polls, when many of them were wrong in 2016 and the methodological issues—the over-sampling of college-educated voters—haven't been resolved.
The assumption behind the Trump-might-drop-out chatter is that the president would want to avoid the psychological sting of a loss, but he's already signaled how he'll handle a defeat—by saying he was robbed.
With this rationalization in his back pocket, there's no reason for Trump to forgo any chance whatever of remaining the most talked-about man on the planet for the next four years by dropping out based on early summer polling.
The anonymous Republicans chattering about this scenario surely are wish-casting and assume some other—any other—GOP presidential candidate would be better for the party's chances. This, too, is doubtful.
How would the great drop-and-switch even work? The party would be implicitly conceding that the incumbent Republican president was such a disaster that he couldn't even run for a second term—and then turn around and ask voters for four more years of yet another Republican president.
One of the points of this exercise would be to repudiate Trump, but how could the party plausibly do that after loyally and enthusiastically backing him for four years? Who would be a turn-the-page candidate? The natural successor would be Vice President Mike Pence, but he's obviously more associated with Trump than any other figure in the party besides the president's direct relatives.
How about a Trump critic, say, Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse? But such a choice would be whiplash-inducing change of direction for a party led the moment before by Trump.
The president's base wouldn't go away even if Trump said he wasn't running again, and its feelings would have to be taken into account—not to mention that Trump loyalists would make up a disproportionate share of Republican convention delegates, who would presumably make the choice of a new candidate.
At a time of great populist passion in the GOP, deciding on a presidential candidate without the direct say of any voters would be fraught with peril, to say the least—and more likely to produce a civil war than comity.
Then, there's the question of Trump himself. Unless the Trump-stepping-aside scenario becomes even more implausible and involves him resigning the presidency and getting dropped off by Marine One at a monastery to begin a four-month silent retreat, he's not going to quietly abide some other Republican soaking up all the public attention that comes with being one of two people who will be the next president of the United States.
Perhaps Joe Biden indeed has a durable 10-point lead, in which case there's nothing the GOP can do to avoid a terrible drubbing. If Biden is that strong, some emergency replacement Republican candidate—hastily chosen amid a political panic—isn't going to win, either.
It's more likely, though, that the race will naturally tighten and Trump will be behind, but within range and have a puncher's chance.
The past three months have been dreadful for the president and nothing he's used against Biden has worked, but campaigning is an iterative process—if one tack doesn't work, it's on to the next one, until something gets traction.
Everything we know about Trump says he'll keep at this with relish, and that there's no way he quits without even trying to win the ultimate vindication for any president, and the ultimate repudiation of his critics.
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How many people are excited about the 2020 election? This election is more about grim determination than enthusiasm.
The first thing I noticed was that this op-ed was written a month ago. Things have been steadily going downhill for Trump since this piece was written.
That's only true according to conventional wisdom. But 2020 will be an unconventional election. Enthusiasm doesn't appear to be a reliable indicator this time.
Our pathetic partisan politics yielded two candidates for the highest office in the land —ostensibly the most powerful office on the planet— and neither should be holding any office of significance at this point in time.
Hey we agree on something! I said the same thing in 2016. In my opinion anybody that actually wants the job of POTUS is not sane enough to qualify for the job.
I have no idea who the Democratic Party would put in Biden's place, but the Republicans do have possibilities - Pompeo made a speech at the Nixon library that signaled his ambition, and Nikki Haley is more qualified than Trump ever was.
It would be quite a major surprise if this is not Trump vs. Biden on November 3rd.
I personally think that Trump WANTS to go down in glory...like this: