It doesn’t matter who Trump runs with: he’ll still win in 2020

At this point, we can relegate the admonitions and advisories to the small print reserved for the disclaimers about possible side effects on bottles of medicine and past-performance-is-no-guarantee-of-returns notices on mutual-fund prospectuses. Sure, it is possible that Donald Trump will lose the presidential election in 2020. It is also possible that he will choose not to run. Many things are possible. But as I have explained in these virtual pages — taking care to post those cautionary bulletins — it is likely that Donald Trump will run again for the presidency in 2020 and it is very likely that he will win and win by a much larger margin than his victory in 2016.

I set forth my thoughts on the subject at the end of March. Now we are at the end of April and I would say that the odds are even stronger in Trump’s favor. Why? Well, there is that delicious number 3.2, for example. That would be the ‘impossible’ rate of growth the US economy achieved in the first quarter of 2019. If you’re looking for eggs, you are going to have to wait until the hens get around to pushing out a new batch. The current crop is smeared over the faces of ‘experts’ like Michael Hiltzik, who joined the anti-Trump chorus in a rendition of ‘Trump’s-a-moron-and-will-never-get-3-percent-growth.’ He and Paul Krugman can take turns licking the egg off each others faces. The wretched Krugman warned that a Trump victory would bring a ‘global recession’ and then, on November 9, 2016, when his worst nightmare was realized and Trump was elected, said that ‘If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never,’ The markets closed Friday at yet another historic high.

The existence of Paul Krugman at The New York Times reminds us that that former newspaper now functions largely as a large-scale fantasy game in which certain people, like Krugman, pretend to be journalists while others — the paper’s dwindling audience — pretend to be informed.

In any event, now that we’re into the pre-game warm-ups for the 2020 election, there is all sorts of static to cut through. Anyone interested in Robert Francis ‘Beto’ O’Rourke, the DUI survivor and former politician, should act soon. That hissing sound you hear is the air going out of his campaign balloon.

Over the last couple of days, both Trump and Beto held rallies. Beto’s, in Las Vegas, drew 35 people. Trump’s, in Green Bay, drew more than 10,000: every seat was filled and there were throngs outside the auditorium. A collateral benefit of Trump’s rally, as Glenn Reynolds pointed out, is that it drained the life out of one of the most irritating Washington social events, the nauseating White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Many people don’t even realize it took place last night. That is good. Thank Trump.