from Conrad Black: Why Donald Trump will win big in 2020

Canadians liked Obama because he was non-white, fluent and suave, leftish and undemanding of “allies.” But GDP growth per capita in the U.S. declined from 4.5 per cent under Reagan to 3.9 per cent under Clinton, to two per cent under George W. Bush, to one per cent under Obama, and the Americans were not going to stand for what they feared (instinctively) would happen next under the Democrats. They were right. With Trump, working and lower-middle class earnings have risen 3.4 per cent annually, average income for female-led, single-parent homes rose 7.6 per cent, defined poverty in such households among African-American and Hispanics fell by 3.5 per cent, and the number of defined poor people declined by over five million. Illegal immigration has been reduced by 60 per cent; oil imports, which were five million barrels a day four years ago, are zero (on a net basis), and in absolute terms, China has ceased to gain in GDP on the United States, and the concept of nuclear non-proliferation has been revived in respect of Iran and North Korea (who swindled Trump’s predecessors). The United States worships success, and practices it, rather than being envious of it. The United States, by the standards of most other advanced countries, is garish and corrupt; it’s not what many Americans and most Canadians want, but it is a democracy and Americans can run their country as they please. There has never in human history been anything like the rise of America from three million colonists to overwhelming pre-eminence in the whole world in two long lifetimes (1783-1945).

Successful American presidents are never Mr. Nice Guy, though it’s a bonus when, like Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, they act the part. This Ukraine nonsense is a fraudulent desperation shot by the Democrats and will blow up in their faces. Donald Trump is probably the most successful and powerful person in the world and he will steamroller this rag-tag of kooks and retreads desultorily arrayed against him. The U.S. system periodically crushes one of its parties like a waffle. FDR in 1936, Lyndon Johnson in 1964, Richard Nixon in 1972, Ronald Reagan in 1984, all won by over 20 points. The Globe and Mail can dream on like Johnny Cash’s Teenage Queen, but Trump will gain a victory on that scale next year, and like the presidents just mentioned, he will have earned it. Those who resurrect the fortunes of great nations are not groomed and sent out by casting studios, or subject to confirmation by foreign newspapers.

HKO

Even supporters have trouble reconciling Trumps flaws with his success.  Half of Trump supporters like him as he is, and half just like him more than the Jacobins running for the Democratic slots.  They prefer Trump’s character flaws to the terrible ideas of the Democrats which pour forth uncontrollably.  The mobocracy of the Kavanaugh hearing scares them more.

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