The photo that convinced me Trump will win again in 2020

It's a line from a They Might Be Giants song: "Politics bore me".  And that's where I've found myself lately in life: dulled out of my skull by politics.  Or at least politics as most people buy into.  For quite awhile I've noted that I'm more interested in ideas, not "ideologies".  And one comforting consequence has been that during the past four years I've been detached and aloof from just about anything pro or con about President Donald Trump.  To love him or hate him?  I'm not playing that game.  There is more to define a life than which politician a person sides with or against.

That doesn't mean I'm an uninterested observer of realities.  And in substantial part, I do approve of President Trump's policies and actions since coming to the White House.  Some still, I do not approve of.  But he's earned my confidence so far, and much more so than any President since Reagan.  Has he earned my trust enough to cast a vote for him in 2020?  Well, he blew that in 2016.  As also noted on this blog and elsewhere, I never vote for a candidate if he or she creates even a single negative ad against an opponent.  And Trump lost that on general principles.  So I'm having to wait and see what happens during the next year and a half.

Based on what I saw last night though, he may not have to mount much of a campaign anyway.  Because I would confidently state that Donald Trump's chances of being re-elected are around 85% and maybe higher than that.

Behold the photo that has the Democrat Party losing all hope with me for the 2020 presidential election:

Columbia, South Carolina, June 22 2019:
Where Democrat presidential credibility went to die.

That pic was taken at the James Clyburn re-election campaign's big fish-fry two nights ago.  All twenty-some (so far) announced Democrat candidates for United States President in the 2020 election.  There is still time for another two or three to jump on the train, and no doubt the months between here and primary season will whittle the body down and I'm figuring that it'll be a merciless bloodbath come just after new year's.  But even so: look at that photo.

So help me, I can't find even one person among that bunch that moves me.  Not one that is projecting energy, enthusiasm, boldness, or those ideas that I most look for in considering whether a candidate deserves my vote.

People keep telling me that "Chris it's a two-party system" that I have to accept.  Okay, fine.  But you know what?  If it's a two-party system then I and every other American damn well deserve that each of those parties gives us their very best.  That Republicans and Democrats alike produce candidates possessing vigor and vibrancy and vision.  Donald Trump won in '16, I sincerely believe, because (a) he had those qualities in spades and (b) he did't run as a two-party candidate.  He ran as an independent exploiting the Republican Party.  And it worked brilliantly.  And it's still working in his favor.

The Republicans as a party in general have yet to understand that.  And their Democrat counterparts?

I see that photo and the only adjectives coming to mind are "pitiful" and pathetic".

Democrats, it's time.  You gotta step up.  You gotta raise your game.  You must do better than this.  You have to look deep and hard and examine your principles and find someone, anyone, who is going to electrify the American people come November of next year.  Because this gang?  If you run with any of them, you are looking at a worse defeat than when Ronald Regan crushed Walter Mondale in 1984.  Right now Trump is cruising his way to victory riding on strong economy alone.  And all you've aimed at him so far is "we hate Trump".  That's not nearly good enough.  If you want to convince me, a wildcard independent, that I should vote for your candidate next year, you've got your work cut out for you.

Because I look at this photo of Democrat contenders for the White House in 2020, and I don't see serious candidates at all.  What do I see?  Something like the patients getting on the bus for a social in that scene from One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest:

And there's not a Randle Patrick McMurphy anywhere among them.