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Comment by fullshark | Hacker News Reader

His favorability ratings are comparable to Obama's, Clinton's and Reagan's at this point in their presidency. He could easily get re-elected if the economy is still going strong.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/...

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I agree with the point that he has a very significant chance, wouldn't even disagree that he's the favorite (wouldn't agree either, just because I don't know all the indicators precisely enough).

However, it's worth noting that his ratings have never been above 50%, whereas all three of those presidents had honeymoon periods above 50% right after being elected, and returned to above 50% approval before being re-elected. Saying his approval ratings are comparable is technically true, but a little misleading. It would be accurate to say "some presidents had similarly bad approval numbers, but recovered and were re-elected. If his approval numbers rise, like theirs did, that would suggest he'll win."

The biggest difference between 2020 and past elections is: who even stands a chance of beating Trump? His opposition party is in shambles and I can't think of a single solid candidate who would do well running against him. Sanders was the closest thing to a viable opponent for him and the Democrats nipped his then-rapidly-rising support in the bud by going with HRC instead.

The Democrats have become "The F Trump Party," obstructionist in their own words... but support for Trump is basically at an all-time high, so this isn't a very effective strategy.

Theoretically the right candidate could come along, powerful, charismatic, and well-versed in Trump's style of politics, and "put him in his place" ...but somehow I have a hard time seeing that happen, looking around at the potential Democrat 2020 candidates today. In fact I think there's a nontrivial chance of a third party viral literal meme candidate becoming more popular than the Democrat candidate in 2020.

If anyone can name some potential candidates they see as viable I'd be interested in looking into them if I haven't already, but like I said, for the time being 2020 looks like a completely one-sided fight.

Boaty McBoatface has a better chance than the current slate of potential democratic candidates.

And it’s not just unemployment that’s down. Latest numbers are showing an uptick in actual wages. Combine that with people taking a look at their pay stubs and you’ve got a recipe for succcess in 2020.

Can you provide evidence that real inflation adjusted wages are going up? It's my understanding that wages for the bottom 60% of the country have fallen or stagnated since the 70's and have only gone up in terms of non-inflation adjusted, or have actually gone down.

The wealthy/elite classes are doing absolutely fantastic under Trump though, and are getting tax cuts and wage increases. Those don't represent America, though.

Edit: Simple Google search shows my thoughts to be true [1]. Wages aren't rising quicker than inflation/cost of living, so saying wages are increasing or are "up" is a bit inaccurate.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickwwatson/2018/09/25/real-...

Well there is this report from yesterday: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/31/wages-and-salaries-jump-by-3...

A 3.1% jump in wages should beat inflation at least for this year.

Less than 0.5% increase then. Not too great!

Does this also take into account wage increases of the top 10%? If so, that article would be wildly misleading.

They're up a fraction of a percent after adjusting for inflation. Here's where I get that figure: https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/10/q3-ends-with-...

Plus boosting the standard deduction is giving middle class people a few extra thousand a year, many will simply endure the rhetoric for the payout.

> Plus boosting the standard deduction is giving middle class people a few extra thousand a year

No, it isn't, if you use the common sense of “middle class” to mean “middle income”, rather than the classical “petit bourgeoisie”. The change is less than $6000 in the standard deduction, so even if “a few” means only 2, you'd need over a 33% federal marginal tax rate to get a few thousand from it, which requires an income after the standard deduction of $200,000+.

He did it by exploding the deficit (bunker busting tax cuts). Basically taking money from America's children to give to America's adults, who are too miseducated to realise.

The deficit is far lower than 2009-2012.[1]

I love American politics where if your own party does something, you praise it, but if the other part does the same thing, you demonize it.

[1]https://www.thebalance.com/us-deficit-by-year-3306306

You're comparing it to the middle of an enormous economic crash, and even then relying on an estimate of 4% which is high outside of an economic crisis/recession. Let's wait until the tax cuts have kicked in for a couple of years and then count it, but even by the estimates on the link you provided it's spending as if you're in an economic meltdown when you're not, and high by historical standards.

If debt is bad, then it doesn’t really matter how it came about, were still “screwed”.

None of those were as deeply involved in criminal activity and none of them had Robert Mueller on their tail.

> His favorability ratings are comparable to Obama's, Clinton's and Reagan's at this point in their presidency

They are comparable to Reagan’s, if you look at bare approval, but, as a 2.5+ percentage point difference is pretty significant in approval, less so to Clinton or Obama.

But bare approval is not really a good guide (net approval and bare disapproval are better.) While 538 posts Trump approval/disapproval/net, the default comparators is bare approval. But if you click over to compare disapproval or net approval, Trump is clearly in a significantly worse position than any of the past Presidents listed (including Reagan, despite bare approval being nearly identical.) Majority disapproval at a comparable point is unprecedented, as is greater than 10 points net disapproval.

I can't believe how lucky Trump is.

Inheriting the country when things are looking down right amazing economically.

I do strongly believe that the US would have been doing great irrespective of the person in power. (I strongly dislike Trump as a person, and do have strong bias here. I also do kind-of believe that he is not very bright)

But, should there be reason to believe that America's economic prosperity is due to the Trump admin, I would love to be enlightened on the matter.

I think that faith in the United State's economy has gone up as our administration, for better or for worse, has taken a hardline stance on "America First".

Economies are all about skepticism and when the strongest economy in the world decides to make policy in strengthening its position - well, it certainly doesn't hurt. It's especially helpful that he had a decent starting point to begin with.

I am genuinely interested in this.

I can't help it myself. Even if I didn't know Donald Trump existed, he is the poster boy of the kind person I would utterly dislike. So, it is very difficult for me to evaluate his presidency through an objective lens. I am human after all.

It doesn't help that polarization in media means, he is portrayed either as a do-no-wrong messiah or Satan himself.

Do you know of any relatively objective report that talks about his policies and bills he has passed (that would have been opposed by a democratic president), and their effects ?

I know a few good (what I believe to be) objective and research driven sources, but all of them are very critical of Trump.

I would really appreciate being directed towards a piece that talks about his achievements as well (without putting him on a pedestal)

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