This is just a boring update on the US political scene

[brexit in the uk has slipped a bit into the phoney war stage while the mp's are on summer leave] I'm trying to not be too partisan and as neutral as possible.
Been catching up on a few youtube vids, tucker is on holiday as is laura ingraham and their stand-ins are not so great, so mostly watched the legendary Lou Dobbs [who apparently also use to be a big star on CNN about a decade ago, making similar political points to today, so he is consistent and not just saying things because he's on fox]
Lou is not happy with what he perceives as trump pivoting away from his base on key issues, he thinks it's caused by the trump policy office being staffed by inexperienced young people. Dobbs was pointing the finger at mick mulvaney, the whitehouse chief of staff, but it makes more sense to me that it might be Ivanka and jared behind it. Also populating the campaign team with people they get along with, but not exactly steve bannon types in tune with trump's base. [ which like it or not is millions of decent patriotic americans]
The financial markets slumped yesterday and I've always thought trump going on about a soaring stock market was a mistake, claiming it was a sign of his success and policies, low interest rates and quantiative easing for years means the market is not a true barometer of economic health. Markets always go down at some point and it looks like that is now happening, so possibly a recession before the 2020 election which won't help trump one bit [I actually think the western countries have been in the same zombie economy condition since 2008, a huge crash was prevented then but all this did was delay the inevitable ]
Also when I see share prices for companies like amazon, google, apple it makes me think something is not quite right, a single share in google is over $1,000, apple $200, amazon $1700, how much tax are they paying? [last year google's net revenue was 137 billion and after all the balance sheet manipulation/avoidance the tax paid is only 4 billion

, they have operating costs but surely not over 100 billion each year? ] This also ties into the huge govt debt and deficits, tax avoidance by corporations and off shoring of huge wealth, at some point this will have to be addressed I think.
Anyhow back to Lou, he has Ed rollins on his show nearly everynight, Ed was involved in the reagan campaigns and is chairman of the 'great america PAC' which supported trump in 2016, basically a veteran of republican politics for yonks. He thinks the 2020 contest is going to be tight and definitely not a walk-in, the democrat contender will have beaten over 20 other candidates by that stage and not just been placed in the role like hillary more or less was, so they will be quite a formidable, polished opponent for trump.
If trump pivots further away from his base [possibly due to influence from ivanka and PR people etc...] they may not go out to vote in the same number as before. The border wall hasn't been built, that's a pretty big elephant in the room, 50% built would've probably been the expectation to match his rhetoric and focus on it in the 2016 campaign. At the rate of progress it would be miles off completion by the end of a 2nd term...
I guess if the dems choose a far left candidate, trump's base will be motivated to come out to vote in order to try and prevent them from winning...the dems candidates do look a bit weak compared to previous years, beto o'rouke is like a mediocre obama impressionist, even down to the rolled up shirt sleeves, which seems to be an affectation that quite a few of the male democrats do.
Elizabeth warren has acquired quite a bit of momentum, after obama being the first black president, the dems now want the first female one. If it was warren, trump will be tempted to use that native indian ancestry thing against her but that could backfire. Kamala harris looks like she has dropped down the pegging order, I've never found her that convincing as the leading candidate, a former state prosecutor being the democratic nominee doesn't quite fit to my mind, and she's not popular amongst black voters for some reason or other, but who knows she may still win out.