Alt-Right
The media is suddenly obsessed with 'Alt-Right, as FoxNews reporter Howard Kurtz says in the article below. The term "has been wildly popular for the last 10 minutes". The Washington Post said it this way; A whole lot has been written lately about the alt-right, that insurgent, Internet-born identity movement that seems dead-set on swallowing the Republican party whole. Brietbart defines the alt-right this way. The alternative right, more commonly known as the alt-right, is an amorphous movement. Some — mostly Establishment types — insist it’s little more than a vehicle for the worst dregs of human society: anti-Semites, white supremacists, and other members of the Stormfront set. They’re wrong. Previously an obscure subculture, the alt-right burst onto the national political scene in 2015. Although initially small in number, the alt-right has a youthful energy and jarring, taboo-defying rhetoric that have boosted its membership and made it impossible to ignore. It has already triggered a string of fearful op-eds and hit pieces from both Left and Right: Lefties dismiss it as racist, while the conservative press, always desperate to avoid charges of bigotry from the Left, has thrown these young readers and voters to the wolves as well. This shows the impact of the mainstream media in picking up on negative images and then turning them into something to be used against conservative candidate and now president -elect Trump. Are right wing fringe groups worse than left -wing fringe groups which get little or no reporting?
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Everyone is underestimating Trump. It could hurt Democrats and Republicans alike.

3/10/19
from The Washington Post,
3/8/19:

We live in an era of horribly misinformed political decision-making. In 2015, the Trump-skeptical Republican elite believed that Trump would naturally fade over the course of the primary, so they remained split between mostly implausible presidential candidates (looking at you, Jeb), and Trump won. That same year, major Democrats cleared the field for Hillary Clinton, who turned out to be the second most disliked presidential candidate ever and one of the few Democrats capable of losing an open race to Donald Trump.

Most of these mistakes were based on bad political calculations. People overestimated Clinton’s strength, the demographic resiliency of the Democratic coalition ..., and their plans fell apart. And both Republicans and Democrats are in danger of making new mistakes by underestimating Trump’s strength in 2020.

The conventional wisdom on Trump’s reelection odds are much too bearish. Trump has a better chance of winning again than many pundits seem to think. And both Democrats and Republicans need to take Trump seriously and recalibrate their decision process or risk facing serious consequences.

If Trump is in [the mid-to-high 40 percent satisfaction range], he has a solid chance — he was able to win over some voters who disliked him in 2016, and a Democratic nominee who runs on a far-left platform might drive some softer, Trump-disapproving Republicans back into the fold.

Approval ratings change — historically speaking, a president’s approval rating roughly 770 days from inauguration (which is where we were about a week ago) doesn’t have a strong relationship with their eventual reelection vote percentage.

To me, this situation adds up to Trump having roughly 50-50 odds of winning reelection. There are a lot of ways that things could go very wrong for Trump, but there are also a lot of ways things could improve enough to put him over the top. Other people might come with somewhat different math, but, regardless, it’s a risk to assume that Trump is a one-termer walking.

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