We're two days from the mid-terms, but naturally pundits are thinking about what the vote will tell us about the next presidential race:
Trump’s eventual adversary confronts a daunting balancing act: He or she must be tougher than usual without being callous, mingle the right measure of pugilism with optimism, and avoid the self-examination and self-recrimination that never trap Trump.
But for starters, Trump’s Democratic opponent must emerge. And that will be tricky in a field of prospective candidates that’s about three-dozen-people large at present.
“Nobody’s ever seen anything like this,” said Jim Jordan, who initially managed John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. “The field is so big it’s duplicative. We have multiple candidates from Massachusetts. Multiple from California. Multiple Western governors. Multiple women. Multiple billionaires.” At the first debates, Jordan added, “There’s going to be a kids’ table for the kids’ table.”
Standing out will require one nonnegotiable quality: the vividness to loosen Trump’s stranglehold on the media. To that end, any serious challenger has to figure out how to tell his or her story in a riveting way.
Of course, thinking historically, all this is bunkum. Most people don't think of presidential politics as a game (though most pundits do). It really depends on how the economy looks. So, will we have an economy in two years? We'll see.