Wall Street has seemed resolute in believing that President Donald Trump can win re-election in 2020 – but Greg Valliere, chief U.S. political strategist for AGF Perspectives, said that the results of Tuesday’s state and local elections should call their faith into question.
“It looks a little ominous for Republicans and Donald Trump,” said Valliere on Wednesday to an audience of financial advisors at the 2019 Schwab IMPACT conference in San Diego.
In Virginia, both houses of the state legislature went Democratic, and in Kentucky, conservative governor Matt Bevin lost his re-election bid to a Democratic challenger even after a last-minute campaign rally with Trump where the president declared the gubernatorial election “a referendum on impeachment.”
“Until last night, the prevailing view on Wall Street was that (Trump) was the clear favorite, but I think people are going to waver today,” said Valliere.
Valliere also pointed to negative trajectory in the polls for the president, with leading Democratic challengers Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders all polling ahead of Trump by double-digits in the most recent national head-to-head polling by the Washington Post.
The 2020 election could come down to three key states that Trump narrowly won in 2016: Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. If a Democratic challenger can win in those states, Trump’s path to re-election becomes nearly impossible.
But, working to Trump’s advantage, the Democrats are mounting a “pretty weak” primary field, said Valliere, with clear problems with the two primary front runners, Biden and Warren.
Biden “seems to have lost a step,” said Valliere. “Sometimes, the words don’t come out right… everyone will be looking really carefully at the next two debates to see how sharp Biden is.”
Warren, on the other hand, had a very good summer as she ascended in national polls as well as those in the early primary states, but “may be too polarizing,” said Valliere, and a lot of her policy proposals and plans are “not credible.”
“A lot of the Democrats I talk to say ‘is there anybody else,’” said Valliere, who added that he thinks it’s unlikely that a last-minute candidate like Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama or Michael Bloomberg jumps in.