Will Donald Trump be a one term President?

Theoretically, it shouldn’t be difficult for the future Democratic nominee to beat Trump in November 2020, assuming he isn’t impeached, convicted in the Senate, and removed from office before then (in which case they’ll be up against hardline conservative Mike Pence). Even though the President’s harshest critics have to grudgingly admit that Trump has scored some significant achievements since his inauguration – the US economy, for example has been consistently strong and the leader of ISIS has just been killed – the myriad of scandals throughout his time in office, as well as his generally abhorrent behaviour, has led to an overwhelmingly negative personal image for Trump, with many arguing that he is racist, sexist, and xenophobic. Support for his impeachment is now at an all-time high after a string of successive scandals this year, most recently involving his plans to host the 2020 G-7 summit at one of his own properties and the alleged attempts to coerce Ukraine into investigating Joe Biden by withholding a $400 million military aid package to extract quid pro quo cooperation from President Zelensky of Ukraine. Despite this, the Democrats seem determined to ruin what should be a fairly straightforward fight.

It should be simple for the Democrats to make themselves more appealing to the American public than Trump – especially when the President seems to be more focused on starting Twitter fights than actually governing. However, they are sliding ever further towards the far-left of the political spectrum, seemingly to satisfy an angry but relatively small band of ‘woke’ progressives.

Throughout the debates so far, some candidates have proposed the complete abolishment of private health insurance (despite roughly 70% of Americans being satisfied with their personal healthcare). Pete Buttigieg has made comments that imply that abortion up to the moment of birth should be legal, despite only 9% of Americans viewing this as being morally acceptable. This is in addition to the absolute clown show that was the LGBTQ town hall event this month, where, among other things, flustered CNN host Chris Cuomo – who identifies as a male - told a live audience that his pronouns were ‘she/her/hers’. Predictably, he was attacked by blue-tick Twitter en masse, despite his obvious commitment to LGBTQ equality.

America will inevitably end up with either four more years of a corrupt, prejudiced man-child, or a new president who will only appeal to the fringes of their party and whose only real virtue and selling point is that they aren’t Donald Trump.

Frankly, it is too early to tell whether the Democrats or Republicans will win the election, but it is hard to look at the 2020 field without feeling pessimistic. In a polarized environment where both sides try to convince voters to hate their opponents rather than appealing to the electorate, America will inevitably end up with either four more years of a corrupt, prejudiced man-child, or a new president who will only appeal to the fringes of their party and whose only real virtue and selling point is that they aren’t Donald Trump. Principled liberals, centrists, and conservatives with a brain are largely unrepresented, and so it isn’t surprising that almost 70% of Americans – the ‘exhausted majority’ - feel ideologically isolated.