A 2020 Presidential Election Prediction

This paragraph from yesterday's Water Cooler by Lambert Strether caught my eye:

Trump (R)(1): “An Anti-Trump Landslide?” [The American Conservative]. “Anything could happen between now and November 2020, but this new Fox News poll is not good news for the president. If the vote were held today, Joe Biden would clobber him, which is no surprise. But also, a geriatric New England socialist would beat the stuffing out of Trump. So would a preachy Harvard professor and a militantly progressive black woman from the San Francisco Bay Area.* An anti-Trump landslide at the top of the ticket could wash the GOP Senate majority away. We would then have a Democratic president and Congress — and they would be in a score-settling mood. One more time: anything could happen between now and Election Day 2020. But a recession, which is growing more likely by the day, would be something extremely hard for Trump to overcome.” • “Anti-Trump landslide” is Bitecofer’s theory of the case for 2018 and 2020. NOTE * Harris, lol.

With a year and a couple months to go until the 2020 general election, this is how it looks to me: Trump is going to lose, and he is going to lose big.

For the Democrats, Biden will not win the primary. Biden is the candidate of choice for all those who don't want to think about voting. Many of these Democrats will either not vote or change their mind when it comes time to actually cast their ballot. Polling is not voting. Trump 2016 should forever remind us of that fact. Exit polls on election day showed Hillary winning.

If not Biden then who? It's not going to be Buttigieg, and it's not going to be Harris. Both are warmed-over Obama clones. There is no great yearning for a return of Barack.

That leaves either Sanders, Warren or a sudden groundswell for a complete dark horse. Bernie grates on the average voter. He is too intense. Most people interact with politics on the level of entertainment. So at this point I doubt Bernie wins the nomination. A dark horse could emerge, but none of the candidates who fit the bill -- Julian Castro, Andrew Yang, Jay Inslee -- have either the gravitas or the charisma.

This leaves Elizabeth Warren. Warren will stick to a Hubert Humphreyesque "Happy Warrior" schtick, and she'll clean Trump's clock, winning in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Maybe even Ohio too.