Trump will win again. It keeps getting more and more obvious.
The only chance you have of beating him is by matching the level of hysteria he generates, by creating a movement of your own. That's what Obama did in 2008. I have yet to see anything from the serious contenders that suggests they're even remotely capable of that, they're just more of the same. Personality is key in election season and yet this group look like the sort of people you'd cast as generic American politicians in a Netflix drama.
I know it's tempting to resort to this kind of pessimism, but it's way too simplistic to just assume he'll win again just because he seems to keep getting away with stuff. He actually has to get enough votes, in enough states, to win. And he only just scraped that last time, even with so many things in his favour.
Every election is different. No-one would've thought in 2004 after Bush got re-elected, that four years later America would elect their first black President. It took a long time for the public to finally get fed up of the incompetence, corruption and lies of the Bush administration - Trump has got there already. A lot of people are just fed up with the whole thing. He's going to use the same hysterical, angry schtick that he did in 2016, but it's already old. He's so dumb he's just literally going to repeat the same stuff, assuming it'll work. Most people don't want to hear about Hillary's emails anymore, they want to know what he's actually going to do. His whole act is just not a novelty anymore, and the idea of electing an 'outsider' is simply not as exciting as it was three years ago. People have seen where it leads.
Despite the limitations of Hillary as a candidate, despite the novelty factor he had back then, despite the anti-establishment trend that was still new at the time, and back when people thought he would be more serious once in office, he still couldn't manage to get as many votes as his opponent. Now that he has demonstrated his utter incompetence and has failed to deliver on any of the promises he made to working class voters in the swing states, I just don't see how the votes will be there for him. Independents who voted for him as something different are not going to have the same enthusiasm, Democrat-leaning voters who didn't turn out because they assumed Hillary would win, or were unhappy that Bernie didn't get the nomination, will not be sitting this one out. The demographic trend is towards the Democrats, and they're making a big push to get people registered to vote, especially young people. He's not going to be winning any new states, and I don't see how he can maintain the same support he had in the swing states - you have to remember he won several of them by very small margins. His base makes a lot of noise, but they are not big enough on their own to get him re-elected.
I don't believe the Democrats need a movement as big or as historic as the one for Obama, but I do agree they need a strong candidate with a clear identity to offer a real alternative to Trump. Of the older candidates I'd go for Warren, but if they go younger I think it'd have to be Harris or Buttigieg. I know people say they don't want a 'career politician', but if you have someone who has clear, practical plans to address their problems, and can deliver them in a convincing way, they will get votes. Obama was not an 'outsider', but people believed in him and voted for him. Yes there was a lot of hype around his race, but it wasn't hysteria that got him elected - he seemed like a decent, honest person with actual ideas. Trump's act is all hysteria and anger and mockery, but it's already blown itself out. People are getting bored of it.
