By Glynn Wilson –

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Nearly four years since he officially announced his unlikely run for president in the basement of Trump Tower in New York in 2015, the controversial President Donald J. Trump kicked off his 2020 reelection campaign in Orlando, Florida on Tuesday in one of his signature football stadium rallies with mammoth TV screens and food trucks.

He was cheered on by a largely white male crowd of supporters in red Make America Great Again caps, who may constitute a minority of Americans but they have proven to be a vocal constituency, who seem unshakeable even in the wake of Trump’s proven lies, his damaging trade, science and environmental policies, and his inability to unite the country or the world behind him in any endeavor other than cutting taxes on the rich.

The New York Times described the event as a cross between “a playoff game and a music festival,” and quoted a number of attendees who somehow think Trump’s presidency has made their lives “better.”

Mark Sglarata, who reportedly works in an RV repair shop in Florida, said he came to support Mr. Trump because he lost jobs twice under President Barack Obama. “I haven’t lost my job once” under Mr. Trump, he said.

Could it be that the RV business is booming because more people are living in trailers and can’t afford to buy homes, working two jobs with no health insurance or retirement plan?

Trump has yet to establish any new vision for his 2020 campaign.

And according to the American public, the latest public opinion poll in Florida, which was released by Quinnipiac on the day of the rally, shows that just about any Democrat might take Florida’s 29 electoral votes away from him next year. Trump trails Democrat Joe Biden 41 percent to 50 percent in the key battleground state. Biden is the only candidate to hit the significant number of 50 percent.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders leads Trump in Florida by a margin of 48-42 percent, according to Quinnipiac. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren leads 47 percent to 43 percent. California Senator Kamala Harris leads 45 percent to 44 percent. Former Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke leads him 45 percent to 44 percent. Even South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg tops Trump 44 percent to 43 percent.

Of course the survey shows deep gender and racial divisions in the front runner Biden-Trump matchup: Biden leads 58-34 percent among women, but Trump still leads with 49 percent of men and 42 percent for Biden. Trump also leads 52-42 percent among white voters, while Biden leads 79-9 percent among black voters and 57-32 percent among Hispanic voters.

Republicans back Trump 90-7 percent. Biden leads 91-3 percent among Democrats and 54-32 percent among key, swing independent voters, who will likely decide the outcome.

The stakes may be higher for Trump this time, since he could very well be charged with crimes resulting from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation if he fails to win reelection and run the clock out on the statute of limitations. Only his position as president and the Department of Justice policy of not indicting a sitting president has saved him from an indictment so far, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is still dragging her feet on impeachment.

The survey research shows that Trump is the first incumbent president in the history of polling whose average approval rating has never cracked 50 percent, not even for one day. He is what experts call a minority president, who barely won in 2016 due to the electoral college results in a few key swing districts where African American voters refused to turnout to vote for Clinton.

His position going into 2020 is much the same, in spite of many favorable economic indicators and in spite of his performance, which has many mainstream Americans concerned about the future of the republic, not just the left. Activists on the political left are nearly up in arms at Trump’s dictatorial performance, bordering on outright tyranny, something they see as anathema to what the founders envisioned for democratic government.

Of course Trump’s announcement on Tuesday was just a performance in the first reality television presidency, since Trump began running for reelection the day he was inaugurated. He literally filed the necessary papers to run in 2020 with the Federal Election Commission on January 20, 2017.

“I mean, who does that?” asked one commenter on Facebook.

Clearly Trump’s campaign strategy to hold on to his core base is more of the same, which the Times described kindly as his “preternatural ability to shock and entertain.”

The only Republican strategists they found to quote said contrasting himself in stadium rallies and on Twitter with progressive candidates like Sanders and Warren is his best bet for re-election, and that’s exactly what Trump has been doing, making false claims about the U.S. ending up like Venezuela if Sanders were to win.

One conservative radio host in Iowa said all Trump needs is for suburban voters to ask themselves when going to the polls, “What am I more annoyed by, Trump’s or the Democrats’ beliefs?”

The calculus is different with Biden, who may well take some white male voters and union workers votes from Trump, although some women may not be as enthusiastic about Biden’s candidacy. Turnout will once again be the key to victory.

Trump tells advisers that running against Biden would be a repeat of the 2016 race against Hillary Clinton, another mainstream, centrist Democrat with a long track record who was “anathema” to the progressive wing of the party.

“Trump begins the race in a perilous place,” said David Axelrod, a former top political adviser to Mr. Obama. “He is viewed unfavorably in the very Midwestern states that delivered him the White House, and it isn’t obvious where he would pick up states to replace them.”

Trump’s dismal polling comes in spite of what appears to be a strong economy, yet the cracks are still there in some segments of the population. This is unusual for an incumbent president. Even the president’s advisers say voters do not credit Trump for the numbers, even as he often brags about the low unemployment rate, the tax cuts, deregulation and the appointment of conservative judges.

Yet his campaign aides, in a much more organized and adept campaign than the team of miscreants who ran his 2016 campaign out of the 26th floor of Trump Tower, at least publicly say they feel confident of his re-election chances, mostly because of their dim view of the Democratic field, according to the Times.

This campaign has invested millions in a digital strategy to harvest emails and phone numbers from potential supporters, and to advertise on sites like Facebook and YouTube. The president has even said he would take the foreign help from Russia again, although his campaign had to backtrack on that potentially illegal and treasonous front after a recent gotcha interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News.

As usual, Trump will be his own best asset, and worst liability.

He was recently caught ordering campaign and White House aides to deny that there were any numbers showing him trailing Biden. Such numbers “don’t exist,” Trump told ABC News last week. Within days, the network obtained those numbers, and proved him wrong.

There could be surprises ahead that could jimmy the numbers, say if John Bolton’s dream of a war with Iran were to come about for real. In any event Democrats would do well not to count Trump out just yet. There are many months to go and anything can happen, and probably will.