With the New Year (and inaugural) approaching, let’s look into your crystal ball.
Donald Trump promised to “drain the swamp” as new president. He is already making waves as President-elect by breaking diplomatic protocol by calling Taiwan against 40 years of the One China policy, he is disputing that Russia influenced the US election, he has nominated white supremacists for cabinet positions (Steve Bannon and Jeff Sessions), is nominating millionaires and billionaires for cabinet positions, among other controversial picks. It seems that Trump has been able to unite Democrats and Republicans who, despite his objections, want to look into Russian hacking of the election. For someone who proposed ethics reforms, it seems he is already having ethical problems.
Wheat & Tares 
My prognosticating record is not good when it comes to Trump, but here’s what I see happening. Paul Ryan is playing the long game. He is making nice with Trump so he can get as much of his agenda passed and signed as possible in the short term. But there are things that Ryan wants that Trump doesn’t want. For that, Ryan will wait until public opinion turns against Trump, then impeach him, replace him with Mike Pence, and enact the rest of his agenda (which Pence is fully on board with). On what grounds will Trump be impeached? Take your pick. Congress will have grounds to impeach him for various financial improprieties as soon as he takes office. How long before the public turns against Trump? That’s the biggest unknown. But he’s starting from a low base of support and it always goes down over the first two years. I’ll give Trump 18 months.
I’m second @lastlemming’s analysis. I was kinda hoping that Trump’s instability would cause him to self-destruct before the inauguration, but it looks like his team is reigning him in a bit.
Impeachment and removal is the top choice??? Has everyone started smoking weed? I think that Trump’s first cabinet pick was to stop all of that right off. Elaine Chow’s husband will not look kindly on a major effort to remove Trump unless new crimes are committed. To me the top 3 are winning a close election, losing a close election, or just not running again.
It is far more likely that Ryan and other Republicans will try to get him to not run than to impeach on personal financial issues that are known to those who just elected him.
Elaine Chao’ will not lose her job if Trump is removed. In fact, it will get easier. When the public abandons Trump, McConnell will follow the public.
I think these poll results reflect a perception that impeachment is more likely than usual. Only two Presidents have been impeached (Johnson and Clinton) while Nixon resigned before impeachment. Neither Johnson nor Clinton were removed from office. Clinton and Nixon both faced a House controlled by the opposing party. Johnson’s party affiliation seems complicated…. Wikipedia says he was a democrat that ran on the National Union Ticket with Lincoln, which was a temporary name for the Republican party at the time. So I don’t know how partisanship impacted him.
So I think its extremely unlikely Trump will be impeached, much less removed from office. But I do think that relative to other presidents, impeachment may be a more likely outcome than we have seen in a long time were it not for the fact that the Republicans control the house pretty firmly.
I’m not a Trump fan, but I would prefer that he not do anything so egregious that he turns his own party against him.
I have a nagging suspicion (fear) that Trump’s (currently intended) moves to deregulate and reduce taxes on corporations and the rich in general, among other actions, will create a faster growing economy in the short run (2-3 yrs). But this seeming benefit will come at the expense of the environment, safety in the workplace, healthcare for the lower-class, and other societal benefits. The extremely narrow-minded (and vacuous) and largely incompetent Tea Party types in Congress will rubber-stamp most of his legislative and executive order actions. But, as his term nears its end, enough of his ill-informed, or selfish, or outright bigoted base will join with the rest of us to vote him and his ilk OUT.
I think the poll must have been shared with Trump supporters now with a massive change in results. Landslide win? I think not.
Typical attitude of the Liberal Left regarding Republicans: Wish for the Worst. With Obama, at least I hoped for the Best but expected the Worst (and got it).
@mh
“Landslide win? I think not.”
Somebody monkeyed with the poll data for sure. A landslide win for Trump is next to impossible. From today’s news: “Clinton actually won the popular vote by about 3 million — making Trump the worst-performing winner in the popular vote since 1876. Trump’s victory is not, as he has described it, a landslide. He is expected to garner just 56.9% of the electoral vote, assuming all electors vote according to their states’ results. That will give Trump the 44th-largest share of the electoral vote out of 54 presidential elections since the modern system started in 1804.”
Once the people who voted him into office realize they’ve been played, he’ll lose what little support he has now. More likely he’ll either resign or be impeached and leave office. Every other day he says or does something stupid, and he hasn’t even been confirmed yet. My favorite over the weekend was calling China’s drone heist “unpresidented”.
Friends in other countries are always shocked at what qualifies as a landslide in US politics. They assume it means 90% of the vote like it does in other countries. When the main political party lost 6 seats in Singapore, they were gravely soul-searching to see where they went wrong. When I would explain that a candidate got just over 50% of the vote to win, they are flabbergasted that anyone could call it a landslide.
Trump supporters exist, and they vote. If the average IQ is 100, that means that 50% of people have a lower IQ than 100. They also get a vote. I for one am not going to overestimate my fellow Americans in the future. People are idiots.
Hear! Hear! The one friend I have that voted for Trump did so because he bought into all the hype about Clinton being “corrupt” (not that she isn’t, to some extent). Therefore, he “reasoned,” Trump was the better choice–regardless of everything we know about Trump over the past 30-40 years showing that to be a foolish choice.
Trump is not even a good choice for a hotel and golf resort developer.
@fbisti
“Trump is not even a good choice for a hotel and golf resort developer.”
Not to mention, he lost close to a billion dollars in the casino business, a business where people basically walk in the door and hand you hundreds or even thousands of dollars for nothing.
I voted for him and probably others close to him getting killed in office.I think America is imploding already and I doubt the rest of the world really cares.In my ward we already got what is called “a Trump Family” this family from Utah moved here, so hey we’ll take whoever can escape!
I voted that he’ll die in office. I figure that at some point, he’ll declare himself exempt from the two-term limit in the 22nd Amendment, and the Republicans, having swallowed all of his other bad behavior, will just go along, happy to have someone with their brand in office. Then when he loses an election or two, he’ll just declare the results null because of some vague concern about illegal immigrants voting. After that, he’ll be effectively installed as dictator-for-life like his hero Putin. So it’s just a question of how long he lives. And then we’ll probably get to have his kids take over. What fun it will be!
Ziff – actually die or just fake his death for ratings? I was thinking that about 3 years in, we’ll all wake up next to Bob Newhart and realize it was just a horrible dream.