Lionel Shriver Lionel Shriver

Where is the Democrat who can take on Trump?

I have plenty of shamefaced company in having rashly predicted, as pundits are warned never to do, that Donald Trump wouldn’t win the White House in 2016. I don’t plan on repeating that mistake. Liberals are especially prone to confuse the words ‘should’ and ‘will’. Just because Trump shouldn’t win in 2020 doesn’t mean he won’t.

Nevertheless, American Democrats are approaching an election that ought to be a slam dunk. In Gallup polls, Trump is the only president in modern history never to exceed a 50 per cent approval rating (having sunk as low as 36, he’s currently at 42, with a disapproval rating of 53). Within days of his inauguration, more Americans disapproved than approved of the guy, and the same rough ratio has prevailed ever since. He can’t talk. He has dumb hair. He doesn’t read. The continual exodus from his administration has looked like a wildebeest migration, and swathes of government positions remain unfilled. What more beatable an opponent could the Democrats possibly want?

As the party’s field of candidates now resembles the Boston Marathon, you’d also think that by sheer accident, given the numerical odds, one of them could win. Yet while resisting that trap of making firm predictions, particularly this early on, I still came away from the first two Democratic primary debates fearing that — however impossible it might seem — not one of these candidates is likely to whoop that bastard.

Only 26 per cent of Americans classify themselves as liberal. On national television, nearly all of the 20 candidates who were admitted to the debates were fighting to win over the very most liberal of liberals — i.e., less than 26 per cent of Americans. These Dems are not good at math.

Further bear in mind that the US Border Patrol now apprehends 4,200 migrants at the southern border per day, with total apprehensions this fiscal year of 610,000 — and that’s only the visitors they catch.

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