“Cities across the country are turning down the opportunity to host the 2020 Republican National Convention, where President Trump is expected to be nominated for a second term,” The Hill reports.
“The cities that have rejected hosting duties insist Trump and today’s divisive politics are not factors in their decisions. They instead cite high security costs and disruptions in the normal flow of business and traffic. But Trump is almost certainly a factor in some cities’ decisions to opt out.”
“Eight cities are in consideration to host the 2020 Democratic National Convention as the party prepares for a presidential contest that is expected to include an unusually large number of candidates,” NBC News reports.
“The cities are: Atlanta; Denver; Houston; New York; San Francisco; Milwaukee; Miami Beach; and Birmingham.”
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) “recently became the latest potential presidential candidate to pledge to no longer accept money from corporate political action committees — a move adopted by an increasing number of progressive Democrats who calculate that they have more to gain than lose by forgoing corporate PAC money,” Politico reports.
“But Harris’ decision also reflected a broader — potentially more significant — effort to fortify her small-donor fundraising strategy ahead of the 2020 election.”
“She’s spending aggressively to bolster her digital campaign infrastructure and cultivate supporters online, creating a template that resembles the one that served Sanders so well against Hillary Clinton.”
“U.S. registered voters solidly believe that President Trump does not deserve to be re-elected, by 59% to 37%,” according to a Gallup survey.
“The percentage of voters who say Trump deserves re-election is essentially identical to that of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama at the time of the 1994 and 2010 midterm elections, respectively. More voters said George W. Bush deserved re-election at the time of the midterm elections in his first term, in 2002.”
New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu (D) “leaves office next month in a political spotlight unprecedented for New Orleans — one that suggests the city’s chief executive could step out of City Hall and into a run for president of the United States,” the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports.
“That’s according to political speculation over the 2020 presidential race, pinning Landrieu as a potential anti-Trump contender after the tearing down of Confederate monuments followed by his book on the experience.”
Said Landrieu: “It would be disingenuous to say that I don’t hear the chatter. I really have not given any strategic thought to moving towards that goal. I’ve been around long enough to know that you never say never. I think it’s highly unlikely that I would try it. And I also can’t actually see the strategic pathway to it, even if I did. Who knows what the heck is going to happen.”
“I’ll tell you something, I don’t think it’s necessary. Donald is going to be 74, 73 and maybe he should just go and play golf and enjoy his fortune… Besides, I think he probably misses a little bit of freedom, I don’t think he probably knew how much is involved of being the president. It’s so much information — you have to know the whole world.”
— Ivana Trump, quoted by the New York Post, on whether President Trump should run for re-election.
Politico: “The first presidential contests of 2020 are nearly two years away, but for one Democrat the campaign is already in full swing. John Delaney — a wealthy, little-known congressman from Maryland — has spent more than $1 million on TV in Iowa, hired staffers and opened a campaign office in Des Moines.”
“Since announcing his bid last July, he’s made 110 campaign stops in 48 of Iowa’s 99 counties. He has visited New Hampshire six times, and on Friday made his second trek to South Carolina.”
NBC News: “Barack Obama didn’t pull off one of the greatest political upsets of the century alone. He beat Hillary Clinton in 2008 with a little help from friends he made on the campaign trail two years earlier when he was a senator stumping for Democrats around the country in the midterms.”
“Today, with a potential midterm wave building, the 2020 presidential race is off to a rolling start as a host of potential Democratic candidates look to help themselves by helping others, quietly stepping up their political work to curry favor with key party members ahead of what could be a presidential primary contest with a double digit number of hopefuls competing.”
Harry Enten: “The five presidents — George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Lyndon Johnson and Harry Truman — who faced strong headwinds in the New Hampshire primary all had approval ratings among their own party members of less than 75%. The four presidents — Carter, Ford, Johnson and Truman — for whom the nomination was in doubt or dropped out of the race completely had approval ratings of less than 70%. The two presidents — Johnson and Truman — who dropped out completely had approval ratings of less than 55%.”
“Now, it’s not a perfectly linear relationship between approval ratings and primary difficulty for an incumbent president. The dividing line seems to be a 70% to 75% approval rating within your own party. Those above it do significantly better in primaries than those below it. It seems that when a president has an approval rating above the 70% to 75% line, prominent challengers are more likely to pass on the race.”
“Trump, of course, is well above the line right now. He actually has a higher approval rating among Republicans than Barack Obama did among Democrats just before the 2012 New Hampshire primary.”
“Close allies of John Kasich have reached out to prominent GOP donors to gauge their interest in backing the Republican Ohio governor against President Donald Trump in a possible 2020 showdown,” CNBC reports.
“Kasich has not decided whether he will run for president in 2020, but Republican megadonors have indicated to his top political lieutenants that they are willing to back him over Trump under certain circumstances.”
“A Democratic wave this fall could indicate to donors that a change is needed at the top of the party.”
“A wide array of House and Senate Republicans are not yet ready to endorse President Trump’s bid for a second term, a reflection of the deep uncertainty on Capitol Hill over his political standing amid growing problems at home and abroad,” CNN reports.
“In interviews with a cross-section of more than two dozen GOP lawmakers, ranging from rank-and-file members, conservatives and party leaders, many refused to say they’d back Trump’s re-election bid — a surprise declaration given that members of Congress are typically quick to endorse sitting presidents of their own party without hesitation. Hardly any would offer a categorical endorsement of the President.”
Paul Brandus: History suggests double trouble for incumbent Trump.
Kyle Kondik: Underestimate Trump’s re-election odds at your own peril.
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) “is quietly making clear to liberal advocacy groups that he’s available for a 2020 bid, even as the Democratic field of potential White House hopefuls fills with better-known progressives,” The Hill reports.
President Trump’s campaign “paid more than $66,000 to the law firm that represents Keith Schiller, his former longtime bodyguard,” NBC News reports.
“Schiller, who left a White House job in September, testified to the House Intelligence Committee in November that someone made an offer to send five women to Trump’s hotel room in Moscow in the lead-up to the 2013 Miss Universe pageant…. Schiller painted the incident in a light favorable to Trump, saying he turned down the offer on Trump’s behalf, treated it as a joke and no women ever came, as far as he was aware.”
Schiller is also paid $15,000 a month by the Republican National Committee.
“Mayor Eric Garcetti, fresh off a trip to Iowa to test the waters for a presidential run, delivered a State of the City address Monday that billed Los Angeles as a thriving, progressive metropolis that has hiked the minimum wage, snagged the Olympics, invested in its subway system and is tackling big issues such as climate change and gun violence,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
Said Garcetti: “‘I want to say to anyone who wants to understand who Americans are: Don’t look to D.C. — come to L.A.”
“President Trump’s re-election campaign has ramped up its fund-raising this year, bringing in $20.2 million, while investing heavily in cultivating a wide base of small donors,” the New York Times reports.
“Mr. Trump’s campaign apparatus spent nearly $8.2 million through the end of last month, with more than 60 percent of that going toward low-dollar fund-raising tools such as solicitations delivered via social media, email, direct mail and telemarketing, the reports show.”
“President Trump’s reelection campaign spent more than $1 out of every $5 on attorney fees this year as the president contended with the ongoing special counsel investigation and a new legal challenge from an adult-film star,” the Washington Post reports.
“Of the $3.9 million that Trump’s committee spent in the first quarter of 2018, more than $834,000 went to eight law firms and the Trump Corp. for legal fees.”
“The latest figures bring the Trump campaign’s total spending on legal fees to nearly $4 million since the president took office, records show.”
Dan Balz: “The authors ran a series of simulations for elections between 2020 and 2036, using different assumptions about the shape of the electorate, while also trying to estimate how tweaks or shifts in levels of support for Republican or Democratic candidates would affect the popular vote in the states and, therefore, the electoral college and the national totals.”
“One conclusion is that the country should be braced for repeats of what has happened twice in the past five presidential campaigns — a popular-vote outcome different from the electoral college result. ‘This report finds quite a few future scenarios could mimic the result of the 2016 election — a Democratic in the popular vote with a Republican win in the electoral college,’ the authors write.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.