I have never known James Carville to get it wrong.
He agrees with me. Trump will resign before the election.
Otherwise, James and I agree, Trump is headed for a landslide loss and, no, it is not too early to say that. It is already in the bag, in the clubhouse, in the ballot box.
Joe Biden need do nothing, which is nearly what he has been doing carefully and judiciously, and he will be elected decisively.
Trump is running against himself and the Coronavirus and he is losing decisively to both.
If Trump sees it through to Nov. 3, he will be at the losing end of a 58-41 election (with 1% for whatever kooks run otherwise).
If he resigned then, whoever Republicans cobble a presidential campaign around will be defeated even more decisively as will that entire political party outside the reddest states.
How would/will does that translate in the Senate? At least 54 seats, probably 55, potentially even 56.
In the House? Bolstering Nancy Pelosi’s 30-seat majority by 10 to 12 seats.
And, in State Houses? Democratic gains of three or four governors and a half-dozen more legislative chambers, setting up even deeper Republican losses in the 2022 mid-terms, like in Georgia and Florida and pushing redistricting decisively in Democratic Party direction.
Historically it will be the beginning of decades of a Republican Party in near-permanent minority, comparable to the Democratic Party’s situation after the Civil War with occasional wins of the White House – but never the Congress.
For all those years the Democratic Party in its deal with its devil, Dixie, almost never had a majority in the Congress until the 1932 election upended the seemingly permanent Republican majorities in the House and Senate.
Republicans in the past 50 years made an identical deal, with Republicrats in Dixie — the generational and political descendants and heirs of those Dixiecrats.
When you stand with and for Dixie, you are in the wrong and you will be in a permanent perverse minority. That is history’s lessons and now at long last, the piper must be paid and the payment looms as the future of the party of Lincoln (who, greatest man we ever saw in this nation, would not recognize it).
Trump has accelerated this inevitable and increasing shift in American political alignment from a nation slightly right of center to one left of center and in doing that pushed it farther left than it might ever have located itself.
Without him, it would have taken 12 to 15 years more. With him it began in 2018 and will continue this year, accelerated by the most consequentially eventful year since 1968.
Yes, nothing is certain in politics. Yes, things can change. No, they won’t. They will get worse and worse and worse for Republicans, reduced as they are to a constituency of left-behind white people in a now very much more complicated diverse nation.
Republicans made Hillary Clinton testify for 11 straight hours about Benghazi (historically a matter of little effect or consequence). Who will testify about Russian-Afghani contracts on American soldiers’ lives? About who knew what about it and when? About who did what or did nothing about it? And for 11 hours? Or for two or three or four or five times 11 hours, which it deserves?
No, in all ways Trump is done, finished, kaput, and taking the most of the Republican Party with him. When they met Sarah Palin, Republicans made a deal with the devil. Their devil turned out to be named Trump and, now, the deal is being called and Republicans are being called to pay the devil’s price.
Translating victory into effective government? That’s another story we’ll talk about.
As noted, I have never, ever known James Carville to get it wrong. His political radar is clear, precise, and dead-on in dead reckoning where our elections are headed.
James never ever gets it wrong.
Peeling the Onion 