Things We Will See in the 2020 Election

Given the state of current affairs in the US, these are my predictions for what will go down in 2020. Assuming we make it that far with our democracy intact.

The Republican Candidates

The Republican candidates will range from “moderate” (meaning they manage to be diplomatic about their agenda that throws minorities, women and the poor under the bus.) to an evil lizard creature that spits acid. Each candidate will appeal to their base in the usual way: abortion, religion, paranoia over immigration and gun control. They’ll snipe at each other, calling each other’s past mistakes into question, insisting that they alone are the god-like daddy figure who can protect rural America from the tyranny of globalization and brown people. In the end, the candidate proven to be the most malleable to the Republican party will make it to the primaries. After the disaster of the Trump administration, the Republicans wont want to take any chances. They’ll want a puppet who will dance for them, and dance he will.

The Democratic Candidates

The Democrats will most likely have spent the last several years planning to back a moderate candidate, hoping to appeal to the regretful Trump voters. This will anger the young, more progressive base who will push for a more radical choice. The Democratic Socialists of America will try to appeal to these voters, who will feel disfranchised by the consistent push to be more “middle of the road”. They may try to get a Democratic Socialist candidate into the primaries, and it may gain traction for a while before running out of funding and fizzling out. This will leave young, progressive voters even more frustrated and will blame the democratic party for undermining the entire movement. By trying their best to push a candidate that appeals to everyone, they will back a milquetoast candidate that appears to lack conviction.

The Green Party

The Green party will see the divisions in the Democratic party and exploit them for their own recruitment. They may back Jill Stein again, but potentially not since that photo of her and Vladimir Putin was leaked to the public. They will most likely still be too disorganized to push their way into the mainstream, but will blame the two party system for their failures anyway.

The Memes

Social media will be flooded by new memes and propaganda against each candidate. The republican candidate will most likely have some horrific skeletons in their closet, specifically in their voting record. But most of the public will not be educated or engaged enough to see the dry, boring government jargon as anything to be alarmed about.

In response, the Republicans will flood popular outlets with alarmist, sometimes insane, accusations about the democratic candidate. If the candidate is a woman, many of the memes will pull on our tradition of misogyny, she will be painted as weak or irrational. If the candidate is gay, doubly so. If the candidate is brown, the narrative will be that they are unamerican and a threat to white culture. It would not be called “white culture” in the mainstream media. It would be called “American culture”. Only the overtly white supremacist outlets will call it “white culture”. Regardless, the story will be that this candidate is trying to “change America” in some way that is scary and vague.

The Subterfuge

In the event that nothing has come along to stem the barrage of false new and bot accounts by 2020, the Republicans will still be using this as a successful way to campaign. They will pay for bot accounts who look like violent brown/feminist/trans/liberal activists to help push the narrative that this is the irrational and scary Left that they must protect real Americans from.

They will push and report on videos of scary “Leftists” beating up white people that will later be exposed as staged, but that story will get significantly less traction. Fox News will heavily cover any and all reports of protests that get violent as just more evidence of how unhinged Liberals are.

We will see more strangely erratic and larger-than-life displays “liberals” and “democrats” being scary and/or incompetent. The word “cringe” will be very popular. The running thread throughout this coverage will be that the Left is trying to “change America” and that the Republicans are trying to save/protect/preserve American history and values. In reality, they are trying to save/protect/preserve white power in America. When people are afraid, they tend to vote for authoritarian candidates. And the republicans are all authoritarians.

The Outcome

In the end, one candidate will be victorious. Given the outrage and disgust of so many for Trump, it’s possible a Democratic candidate will be elected. But much of that depends on our ability to keep our heads in the smoke and mirrors that will be created in those hectic and emotional times. The subterfuge is real and will effect many people’s vote. If we can be questioning and skeptical of propaganda in our media, we may make it out okay. Here’s to us, America. Good luck.