Blame will fall upon Democrats regardless because half the country has no basis in reality. More Republican voters thought Obama was responsible for Hurricane Katrina's poor response and cleanup instead of Bush. The country is just full of idiots that cannot understand anything. It deserves to be left by the wayside as its citizens have boldly and proudly supported inhumane policies like locking up little children away from their parents. It's no longer a civilized country. I say good riddance.

Regarding those 2 economic indicators...

Every single president had the Dow at an all-time high, during their presidency. Up is the natural direction for the stock market to go...

Also; unemployment has been down yoy every single year since 2010. Between 2004 and 2008. Between 1993 and 2002. That's the direction it generally goes, when you don't currently have a crisis.

I believe that people perhaps somewhat overestimate the true impact that the president can have on the economy... You can balance social distribution / public debt / growth, but the whole that the president can work with is far too chaotic to be associated with his actions, as long as we aren't working within the extremes.

I don't think Trump can be credited for the continued growth in the first 10 months of his presidency; I don't think he can be blamed for the stalling of the market that's happened since. There's a decent chance that a crisis will hit within the next 6 years; and I think that to be quite independent of him getting reelected or not.

I keep here this narrative of people being pushed to Trump but I also continue where this is coming from.  Where are you getting your data that because people who dislike Trump is pushing people to Trump.  You either like what he doing or you do not.  Other people opinion will not change anyone opinion of him.  When Obama was in office, all the hate that the conservative media did not push anyone to vote for him who just because he was called everything under the sun so I doubt that will be the case for Trump.

So what exactly are people pissed off about and how is Trump fixing that problem that no other Republican could do.  This is what I am wondering about.  If Trump is elected for pure spite then America will get exactly what it has wanted.

They voted him in once, they can do it again.

I would laugh, but cry on the inside.

Thinking that getting the inevitable over with is stupid? Thinking that letting the people responsible for a bad thing take the blame for it is twisted? Wanting the people that can correct the bad thing in power when it happens is repugnant? Wanting the USA and Western democracies to come out on top over brutal dictatorships when the dust settles is dark? Because that's what we want to happen, and we're just trying to be practical about a bad situation precisely because we DO care about our country. We aren't cheering for the demise of our economy for shits and giggles. I'm in the lower third of incomes in America, so an economic collapse would hurt me most. But it's going to happen whether Trump was elected in 2016 or not, it's just that his policies are making it worse and turning what could have been a normal recession into something much worse, so I don't want him reelected or he'll make it worse still. Also note that as I think some sort of collapse is coming and that it will be global, I want to make sure the USA and our values of freedom and democracy come out on top, which if you'd read my whole comment you'd understand.

Don't be so quick to judge. Try to see things from our perspective. I see your perspective, I just disagree with it. I don't give him credit for North Korea, and I don't give him credit for the current good performance of the economy. I understand that you do and thus think he has "made America great again" but I think he's damaging us economically and crippling our ability to respond to future crises, and that the progress on North Korea is an illusion and America is being played for suckers. I don't call you a sick traitor just because you disagree with my assessment that Trump is leading America to permanent decline. If I'm right, and you knew he was doing so but supported him anyway, that would certainly make you a sick, twisted traitor, but I know you don't want bad things for our country, so I don't hate you for being, from my perspective, misguided. I don't hate you, I just think you're wrong. Try to extend us the same courtesy. We don't want America's demise, we just think economic ruin is coming and want what we believe are the right people to be in power to save us from complete demise and to come out on top in the end. We love this country just as much as you do, and want it to prosper just as much as you do.

Lol. I'm not saying that if there is actual corruption in the election system that it should go unnoticed just because of some kind of irony, but still, it's pretty ironic how things turned out. I remember Hillary giving many speeches, acting like one of the worst qualities of Trump was daring to doubt the election results (???? which happened with democrats in the 2000's ???) and now look where we are. 

I think I'd have to agree with Bill Maher that a big reason the Democratic party isn't winning and may not win in the 2020 election is that their contribution to culture lately has been cancerous to say the least ... yeah yeah I too get tired of hearing people complain constantly about "SJWs" or other similar topics but that's the kind of thing that turns off a lot of people. 

Very thoughtful and smart analysis! I do have one disagreement though:

Regarding your first paragraph, I don't know that a Biden victory in the nominating contest depends on division among progressives. I mean look at how 2016 turned out. Progressives were united around a single candidate in Bernie Sanders and he still couldn't come within 14 percentage points of the party leadership's preference in the overall popular vote (which was 57% for Clinton, 43% for Sanders overall nationwide). It wasn't just about superdelegates. Progressives have a very basic-level problem. We appear to be just simply outnumbered overall. I mean I'm a left wing Texan. I'm used to being outnumbered politically. I can recognize what that looks like.

I would also agree with you though that the overall balance of opinion in and around the Democratic Party may be headed in more of a left-leaning direction over time. Compared to the party's platform in 2012, the platform in 2016 had definitely made a qualitative shift leftward, and that may happen again in 2020. But we're not seeing those shifts matched in terms of which faction actually emerges victorious on a bigger scale than individual districts as yet. Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight group did an analysis of the primary contests since 2016 to date and found that party leadership-backed candidates defeated any progressive opponents they faced 89% of the time. You can even see at the chart the difference in the likelihood of candidates endorsed by say Bernie Sanders' Our Revolution group and the Justice Democrats, or even the Working Families Party, on the one hand and those endorsed by Democratic Party committees on the other (and there's rarely any overlap) winning. Emily's List has a good win rate (72%), but they don't decide endorsements factionally; they endorse "pro-choice, Democratic women", period, so that doesn't really count in terms of a factional argument. Same goes with Indivisible; they've got a pretty good win rate in terms of endorsements (65%), but they're not really a factional group per se either.

I mean my preference would be Kirsten Gillibrand, whom I feel has reformed well in recent years and embodies my own worldview and priorities somewhat more than the rest of the prospective competition, but I think we both know she hasn't got a snowball's chance in hell. I'm just curious as to whether any progressive candidate does, and I don't think so.

...I hope he won't, and I like to think there is a good chance that he will not for several reasons.

1: In several of the states he swung his approval rating has dropped. If the Blue Wall is repaired that makes his job harder

2: It's rare for presidents these days to fully retain the states they won previously. H.W Bush lost a number of states he (and Reagan) had won, Clinton lost Montana and Georgia, Bush lost New Hampshire even as he gained Iowa and New Mexico, and Obama lost North Carolina, Indiana, and 1 Nebraska vote.

3: Voter apathy on the D side will decrease so fewer people should have a tantrum and not vote in protest.

Now let's ask ourselves this: why couldn't Biden win?

Hillary, in case you aren't aware, and Sanders too, have had a long history of being bashed, smacked, and mud swung by the Republicans. Their names had baggage even before 2016.

Joe Biden on the other hand, doesn't have nearly as much issue on his end. He's competent, he's a known name, and he has the potential to balance the Democratic party's two ends.

The Democrats are a big tent with three distinct wings to it: the Blue Dogs like Manchin, the for lack of a better term 'moderate/normal/etc' Democrats like Biden, and the Berniecrats like Warren. While this is required to balance out things as Democrats are not a homologous hive mind like 97% of Republicans, that means a Democrat leader needs to be left enough to be acceptable to most Berniecrats yet not so far left the Blue Dogs aren't up for him. While I personally don't like the Blue Dogs, I am aware that they are needed in an Electoral College system.

In my eye, Joe Biden could in fact be such a candidate.

Now to the talk about Democrats and moving farther left: I am personally in favor of it, but what I am not is the insistence people have against other Democrats, especially the leaders.

Cuomo, I mean what is wrong with the guy from a Left perspective? He isn't against Weed, he's pro LGBT, helped prisoners get voting rights back, and passed gun control laws. The recent NRA financial concerns are fairly tied to his legislation. He's hardly lacking.

Then there is Pelosi, who people seem to think is some sort of enemy of leftism. Do people think she's a Blue Dog? She's not....at all. I mean I wouldn't call her a Berniecrat, but she's fairly left.

I swear, there are people who want everyone on their side to be either Warren, or Tom Cotton. Look, do I particularly like Blue Dog Democrats?

No, but I know they are necessary.

Do I think Republicans are good people?

Not really, and that includes my own mother and her parents.

Would I prefer a permanent Democrat supermajority in the national government who would push the faces of Republican state congressmen in whenever they do something stupid like Religious Liberty laws, protecting statues of traitorous Confederates, or support refuge takeovers? Yes, I would love to see them disciplined like dogs that pee in the house, shoving their faces into it and telling them 'bad', on public television if possible.

"No supporting terrorists. No supporting traitors who were greater enemies than Al-Queda (I live near New York City and have a Southern mother so let me repeat myself: Confederate Troops were far worse threats to America than any terrorist that flies a single plane into a building. ). Behave like a good human being.'

However I am aware that isn't how things work, and that compromise is needed. I am not someone who would be utterly unhappy to see laws passed where people go 'Okay this bill will give tax cuts to renewable energy and freeze new regulations on Coal and Oil for a year', and both sides can get something. Compromise is nearly extinct these days because Republicans have replaced a number of moderates on both sides with Tea Party maniacs who've hijacked their party.

Republicans see compromise as a dirty word, and Democrats aren't given room to argue. The GOP is a party that wouldn't even consider a quite moderate judge Obama offered up, even as people got on Obama's case for 'nominating a Republican'.

Both sides have damages, I will not pretend that the DNC behaved rosily. However compared to the G.O.P, the Democrats are functional as something other than a mindless mob of deplorables.

Are "blue dogs" still a thing? I mean really? The argument you're making here really feels dated. In the past, it was possible for conservative Democrats like Joe Lieberman to run viable presidential campaigns. Is that still true today though? Look at the 2016 primaries. Jim Webb was considered to be the candidate of conservative Democrats in that contest. The best I ever saw him do in any poll of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents was 1% support. 1%. That is the actual base of the so-called blue dogs today.

Most of the people who supported Joe Lieberman for the Democratic nomination in the past are Republicans today, including Lieberman himself. (The shift to Obama's consensus-based centrism was just too radical for them. I mean talk about your nut job hippie pacifism and totalitarian anti-capitalist crusading!) Senators like Joe Manchin are favored by Democrats in conservative states these days not because they like them but because they objectively need lots of Republican votes in states like West Virginia where, today for example, Donald Trump's job approval rating still stands at 63%. In a state like that, you can't win a Senate seat without bringing lots of Trump supporters on board, so you HAVE to field conservative Democrats. That doesn't mean that conservative Democrats constitute a statistically significant share of the total nationwide.

My point here is that there's not going to be a "blue dog" candidate in 2020 who's campaign gets anywhere and I think we both know it. Why then is it strategically important that the Democrats favor a centrist candidate for president who can unite progressives and "blue dogs" alike when the latter group scarcely even exists anymore?