Carl,

Negative political ads, vilifying your opponent often works well.  Whoever run against Trump  in 2020, has been getting free, negative political programming against Trump. 

In the case of CNN, its 24 hours a day and their mission is to destroy Trump, while presenting a sort of soap opera/tabloid version of a new world that dwells on sensationalizing Donald Trumps flaws and blunders which captures ratings. 

They present some verifiable facts, then twist everything with speculation to show justification to impeach Trump or discredit him. Problem is that they present facts and wild speculation with equal weighting intentionally to mislead.

They are very one sided..........and freedom of the press allows them to be this way.

The point here is that they are generating block buster ratings.........which is what tv is all about, so alot of people are watching and WANT to see the news about Trump portrayed like this. 

I was in television news for 11 years(as a meteorologist). TV stations do research and use focus groups all the time.  One thing that is pretty well understood. You can sway people to your side if they are on the fence or weakly on the other side of the fence but when they greatly dislike you or your program............you will NEVER win them over.

CNN and other networks are building a huge NEVER Trump base that did not feel so strongly in 2016. They will have been at it for 4+ years ahead of the next election. 

I was wrong about Trump in 2016 but one thing for sure in 2020, whoever he runs against, will not be hated by nearly as many people that greatly despise Trump.  Clinton(the worst candidate in my life time-except for McCain/Palin) had a negative, maybe greater than Trumps and it cost her the election.

Even if you are a Trump supporter, you have to know that nobody the dems run will be hated as much as Trump.

Mike, my motivation in researching the topic was to see if Trump could be the first to not win another term.

The sad part to the story is that three of the events occured during my life time. Actually, four, if you count Hoover, when I was two years old! 

How many incumbents lost during an expanding economy?   Good or bad,  people tend to vote based on their wallets. 

Trump brings dynamics to the equation we've never seen before. If he could just shut up most of the time,  his chances would be greatly improved..   But that seems extremely unlikely.  

I see your point of view Mike, but disagree completely.  Trump is trying to undo policies put in place by the previous 3+ administrations.  We will never bring all the jobs back, but half is attainable if he holds firm.  Even the playing field on working conditions and environmental degradations, China will have to grow at a slower rate, so what?  The communist hold on political power may be over turned. Again, so what?  The political agenda of the last decade is being challenged around the world.  They are just one of the many issues starting to be addressed.  Thank God for Trump, and I am not a religious person.  Think religion, all religion, is the cancer on this planet.

Lacey, last thing I would do is get preachy to someone. But if you are alone, desperate, hungery, cold sitting in a foxhole with bullets flying all round and sometimes in everyday life you need faith to go on

I agree that most previous presidents that had positive economic and other results got elected for a 2nd term but in every single one of those cases, the media reported those economic results and most of the good,  along with the bad news. 

It actually doesn't matter as much, what the real facts are but instead what people "think" are the facts. Perception is everything. 

All that dislike Trump greatly, will believe everything the media states when they bash him. 

We are in uncharted territory, so I will admit that there could be a path to a 2020 Trump victory................let's say the economy continues to roar, the China tariff war ends with another Trump win and there ends up  being no collusion with Russia and all of CNN's claims that this is much worse than Watergate result in "The boy that cried wolf" for 4 years stories............even though they have been doing it for 2 years with great success. 

It's possible that the dems end up having a Sanders/socialist vs Clinton/tradional party type  battle that fractures the support of their party in 2020. They don't have a strong message right now, that is independent of Donald Trump. 

It seems like the positions on  issues like immigration or foreign policy of the dems are all defined in terms of being the opposite of Trumps vs standing alone. Stop or block Trump is the message that I get. If you want to know where the dems stand, just know what Trump stands for and you can bet its the opposite. 

But that can actually work if 35% of the people will vote for whoever runs against Trump and that person running against him is likeable.........with good charisma and no skeletons in their closet.  

The massively negative coverage of everything Trump "could" backfire if some people, finally figure it out............that it isn't objective news coverage..........but Trumps negative rating is really negative. This is what I'm saying. Whoever he runs against will not have a negative rating as great.

However, he has the powerful media, which is very influencial solidly against him and already pre existing extreme negative(which burned H.Clinton last time, along with Fox costing her some votes).

Fox is not as influencial now as they were in 2016. They lost well followed somewhat objective and respected ratings king Bill O'Reilly. 

Shawn Hannity attracts all the extreme Trump supporters. 

 I think Joe Biden would have a better chance than Hillary to win the Presidency as he has a reputation of being somewhat moderate (I'll call it left of center) totally unlike the far left Bernie, he's got the rep. of being both a patriot and being honest/sincere/trustworthy/fair, and he's much more likeable than Hillary. I always thought he went out of his way to be fair to the GOP members as opposed to being overly biased (or openly acting on biases) when he was the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee way back when. I think he has several good GOP senator friends if I'm not mistaken. Also, I doubt his plagiarism incidents from long ago would be treated as being that big of a deal today.

Agree with Biden being a potentially good choice Larry. 

Also agree with Carl that Hillary is pretty toxic. I think that she really did do all those corrupt things that she is accused of but has been protected.  However, it would be incredibly interesting if they ran her again. The rematch being touted as being fair this time...........without Russian interference(that most know did not have an effect) and touting the fact that she won the popular vote in 2016 but got robbed.

What if she picked Joe Biden as her VP?

I don't think that would happen as the dems probably want to start over and not have such a massive "never Clinton" base working against them that would vote Trump to avoid Clinton as president............which is how he won last time.

with no new developments, Biden is the best chance the dems have. 

well at least until they discover he has dementia and claims no knowledge of the plagerism thing or the recommending of women to use shotguns for defense

His shotgun advice was the funniest thing I ever saw...   So totally inept and clueless...

This next presidential election will not be about who the dems are running but instead, who they are running against. 

In fact, they already have a 2 year head start on it.