#Pence2108 for Republicans

In Trump’s state of the union address, he offered no concrete plans for dealing with any of the nation’s problems except his plan to reduce immigration. How that is supposed to help with infrastructure, healthcare costs, the opiate epidemic, North Korea, or the other challenges that we are facing that Trump is incapable of acting upon. The man is all bluster and no policies to do anything. Even on his signature issue, immigration, he isn’t able to communicate clear policy goals. At his immigration summit that he televised live to demonstrate his command of his faculties in the wake of the release of Fire and Fury, Trump got confused and endorsed the Democratic proposal that he had earlier rejected before being steered back to the Republican position by Republican colleagues and at the end he just said to send him a bill and he would sign whatever they send. “I’m not saying I want this or I want that. I will sign it,” he said.

This map explains why Republicans should get on board with Pence for President in 2018. If there were an election today, Trump would only win an astounding 13% of the Electoral College votes:

Could any other Republican conceivably do worse? Probably not. No president has ever been as unpopular as Trump. He is dragging down the entire Republican party. Of course this also gives Democratic politicians a reason to be in favor of keeping Trump for now. They don’t want Pence2018 because

1. Professional Democrats don’t want to support a Republican even if that person is better than Trump.
2. Professional Democrats would rather wait until they have control over one of the houses of congress to be able to fully investigate the full range of corruption and maximize Republican fallout that a vigorous investigation can bring. For example, the Republican leadership has had no interest in looking into Trump’s taxes which must be damaging or Trump would not have broken his campaign promise to reveal them after the election. They expect to capture one of the houses of congress in 2018 and are looking forward to investigating more thoroughly. A Republican-led effort to put Pence in charge would be much less damaging.
3. Professional Democrats know that Trump is great for the Democratic party machine. He boosts their donations, turnout, activism, and the entire next generation of voters who tend to find Trump anathema.

This is a risky strategy. They also held their fire against Trump during the primaries because they thought he would be the weakest candidate (and he probably was), but there is always a considerable possibility that any major candidate could win, especially with the fundamentals pointing at a win and Trump obviously did. How much damage will Trump do while we wait for a more honorable president? Pence2018.