Kremer’s Corner: A Trump landslide not in the cards

Jerry Kremer

I have a friend named Joe who is a pro-Trump person who would jump off a cliff for the president. Joe maintains that “Donald Trump will be elected by a landslide next year” and you dare not disagree with him. Among the reasons for his bold prediction is that the economy is great and unemployment is low. He is right on both scores, except my political instincts tell me that those two factors will not matter come November 2020.

If at the present time we were only discussing the economy, the stock market and low unemployment, then any president, even Mickey Mouse, would have a strong chance of winning another term in office. But there are too many issues out there that the current president must confront, including his own conduct, and none of them are disappearing.

Candidate Trump was able to squeak out a victory by a margin of 55,000 votes(the total of his victories in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania). He pulled off his election on campaign promises that won over a small handful of voters in key states. Let’s take a look at how many promises he kept and how many were failures.

Mr. Trump promised to “drain the swamp” by making government clean and workable again. Over the past 2 1/2 years he has been faced with scandal after scandal, 17 resignations and a number of criminal cases against former campaign officials. Many of the changes that have been made by executive order are undermining our streams, rivers, lakes and air quality of the air we breathe. On top of these happenings, his efforts to promote his personal businesses are shameful.

It is not uncommon for actions by a president to be challenged in the courts, but no president in the past 50 years has lost so many cases in the federal courts, due to his having overstepped his role as chief executive. Our Constitution provides for separation of powers and periodically Mr. Trump has been reminded that there is a Senate and a House and they, too, are granted constitutional powers.

No one who has supported President Trump in the past ever expected him to be a passive soul, but his conduct has succeeded in tearing the country apart and given aid and comfort to some of the worst elements of society. I know of no president in my lifetime who has made it a habit to attack people of color and ethnic groups. I am sure that being called a “racist” is a very unpleasant charge, but some of the latest Trump tweets get the backing of racist groups.

One of the 2015 campaign promises dealt with our trade policy and how Donald Trump was going to get China to do his bidding. He also pledged to do away with NAFTA and force Canada and Mexico to give into America on key economic issues. The new version of NAFTA sits stalled in the Congress and the China negotiations are going nowhere. American businesses are losing millions and there are thousands of farm bankruptcies taking place in farm states.

Can any reader name a recent president who fought with our allies such as England, France, and Canada and interfered with their internal political affairs? Neither Clinton, Obama, Bush nor any other leader has ever encouraged England to leave the European Union or tried to dictate how foreign governments should operate. President Trump has caused our country to lose face in countless places and it will take years to heal the breach of faith.

It may be that with all his warts, Donald Trump could wind up with another four years in office and my friend Joe is right. But absent the Democrats nominating a loser, I don’t think that there will be any type of landslide next year and if every fair-minded voter goes to the polls next year, our national nightmare will be over.

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