Trump’s Re-Election Hurdles Becoming Greater, According To Leaders In Both Parties
According to influential members of both the Democratic and Republican parties, President Trump is facing growing and more numerous challenges to his potential re-election.
Michael Starr Hopkins, a Democratic challenger for a United States Senate seat from New Jersey and National Press Secretary, and Republican strategist Ed Goeas, who was a senior advisor on Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign in 2012 as well as for the presidential campaign of former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, appeared on Fox’s Mornings With Maria show to discuss the effects of the government shutdown on the Trump administration, according to Fox Business.
Starr said that voters would likely blame Republicans for the shutdown, which he said has created a “chaotic, unnecessary situation,” and that would likely translate to trouble in President Trump’s bid for re-election in 2020.
“If you look at the volatility in the marketplace, if you look at the fact that almost 80 percent of Americans don’t have savings of more than $500 and now in the holiday season people are going to struggle to make mortgage payments or pay their rent, people are going to absolutely feel this,” Hopkins said. “Someone’s going to pay, and my bet is going to be that Republicans and the president are going to pay.”
If Trump is going to enter the 2020 campaign in the embarrassing position of not having fulfilled his pledge to build a border wall, he’s going to have to show that he fought for it tooth and nail, says @philipaklein https://t.co/cJGffKqkEM
— New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) December 22, 2018
Goeas agreed with Starr’s assessment and also suggested that the political battle over the border wall would cost President Trump a lot of political capital with Republicans outside of Trump’s base.
“If you look at the Trump base, not the Republican base but the Trump base, the 32, 33, 34 percent that have been with him from the very beginning, it is very important to them,” said Goeas. “The issue is the approximately 20 percent of Americans beyond that base that like his policies, in a broad sense, that there are some kinks in the armor, one of them being what is going on with trade and the impact that may be having on the economy.”
“And the other is this fight specifically on a border wall, which is a nuance to that second group of 20 percent and not specific,” Goeas continued. “And I think if it becomes specific and the wall and only the wall and dig in, I think he runs some risk of losing some support from that group of voters who like his policies but don’t particularly like the way he operates sometimes.”
The Washington Post published a similar story last week, suggesting that President Trump himself feared that market volatility and a potential economic slowdown in 2019 would cost him his chance for re-election.
