SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- The night Donald Trump won the 2016 election, his 2020 re-election campaign began.
His 2.8 million vote loss in the popular vote overshadowed his razor thin electoral win. He beat his opponent in Michigan by 10,704 votes, Wisconsin, by 22,748 votes, and Pennsylvania by 44,292 votes. With those 77.744 votes, he secured victory.
He knows his margin of error in 2020 could also be precariously thin.
On election night 2016, Donald Trump was prepared for defeat. The pollsters and media had lowered his expectations. But to lose re-election, that would be a humiliation. Almost as humbling as the multi-billion dollar losses from his three Atlantic City casino projects.
The dread of that experience foreshadows his fear of losing in 2020. Trump has acknowledged that massive debt sank his casino projects. Massive debt may be the price to carry out his most ambitious projects.
The Race Begins
In the first 100 hours in office, through executive orders, he has taken the first steps on every major promise he made during the 2016 campaign, including withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal; authorizing the building of a U.S.-Mexico border wall; disallowing federal grant money to sanctuary cities; hiring 5,000 more Border Patrol agents; reviving the Keystone XL pipeline and Dakota Access pipelines; banning federal funds to international groups that perform abortions or lobby to legalize or promote abortion; imposing a hiring freeze for some federal government workers; and easing the regulatory burdens of ObamaCare.
The results have been positive for the president after a week of executive orders. The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll shows that 59% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump's job performance. Forty-one percent (41%) disapprove.
But, it's been only a week since he was inaugurated.
While he has issued executive orders, the heavy lifting for these initiatives will take months, likely years. Trump knows there will be economic disruption. Dozens of major trade agreements need to be re-negotiated. Unemployment may actually rise as more workers re-enter the work force. Exports may initially decline. Obamacare's replacement could leave millions without healthcare, especially with a weakened insurance coverage mandate.
Which raises Trump's obsession with voter fraud.
The 2020 Campaign
In the 2020 campaign, Trump again will face an adversarial media, which will attempt to discredit any accomplishments over the next four years. The left will be mobilized. The same swing states will likely decide the election - namely, the 46 electoral votes of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Billionaire George Soros and other liberal donors, as in 2016, will likely fund PACs to mobilize Latinos and other immigrants. Inducing an additional 77,744 voters to vote Democrat in the three key states is not as formidable as preventing undocumented entrants from voting.
In California, for example, an estimated 800,000 undocumented residents have received driver's licenses, according to California Department of Motor Vehicles. Starting this year, the state will automatically register most licensed California drivers to vote.
Trump's voter fraud rants targeted the 2016 popular vote, but are intended to neutralize the impact of voting irregularities in 2020.
And this leads to a prediction.
Trump may surprise everyone by pivoting to the left on immigration. Once the wall is essentially complete, and illegal entry along the Southern Border has declined noticeably, Trump will initiate limited immigration reform - most likely starting with children born of parents in America illegally.
This frontal attack will defuse efforts to mobilize the immigrant vote.
Trump peeled away the Democrats' union and non-union worker base in 2016. In 2020, Trump hopes to erode the Democrats' advantage among newly arrived Americans. And that would be the most effective and reliable defense against voter fraud in 2020.