“It’s the economy stupid” was the mantra for the Bill Clinton campaign to get him re-elected to a second term as president, despite his many flaws.

Donald J. Trump (DJT) will modify that argument for his re-election slightly to, “Given the best economy in the history of the USA f- you are stupid not to vote for me.” Many of his strong issues such as with the wall and immigration, offend and alienate many people rather than add anyone to his base. His re-election hinges primarily on convincing just enough people to overlook all of the other insanity and fascism in his administration and focus only on the strong economy so that he can squeak out another slim electoral victory. If there is no third-party candidate and the Dems don’t turn this election into a battle of ideological extremes by nominating another loser like Hillary, it will be a tough road to hoe for Trump.

It will be about more than just losing for him. He can’t stand losers so when he loses, it is always deflected as being someone else’s fault. It would damage his brand. His campaign will pull out all the stops, crashing all moral barriers, in an act of desperation to avoid being turned out of office. More than all of that however, it is a pretty clean statement to say that he obstructed justice as evidenced in the Mueller report. The dozen other investigations that were spun off the Mueller report to the Southern District are likely to identify nefarious illegal acts committed by this president. The rule as it is followed by Mueller, is that you cannot indict a sitting president so if voters throw his rear end out of the White House in 2021 his legal nightmare begins.

Knowing this man as we do, he will be vicious, relentless, totally unscrupulous and operating above the law in order to stay in the White House another term to avoid prosecution. He needs four more years to undermine law enforcement and other institutions to bring them under his control and put a replacement in the White House (if he leaves) that will pardon him from prosecution in 2025. To him, this is for all the marbles. It is all in. There will be no limits: foreign wars, wag the dog, picking his generals, FBI directors, and top government officials that are loyal to him and willing to accept any illegal order that he gives them. Under his new Attorney General nothing a president does is illegal if he does it.

He has to crush both the legislative and judicial branches of government with executive power to be the autocrat he has to be for his self-defense. The Constitution is an impediment to his executive power. Rabobank is predicting an economic recession in the second half of 2020. If that is the case, then DJT will be crushed in the election, Republicans would be routed and he will likely be indicted soon after. So, it is all in on the economy. “It is the economy stupid” to save his political life and personal freedom. There is nothing that he will not do to make Rabobank wrong and extend the economic surge past 2020.

He understands fiscal and monetary policy and how they impact the economy. Deregulation is of some fiscal help but is still just the tail of the dog. New WOTUS rules will not prevent a recession. His tax cut, enacted near the end of a business cycle expansion, was intended to boost growth and make the economy great. The problem is in its sustainability. The first and primary objective is to hold a recession off past 2020.

DJT was alarmed that the Fed Chairman Jerome Powell was raising interest rates, stomping hard on the fiscal stimulus of his tax cuts and gave him tweet storm after tweet storm plus two nominations of Trump lackeys to the board that GOP Senators rejected before they became formal.

Trump has gotten his message across. Any slowdown in the economy is the Fed’s fault. He has no qualms of undermining the Fed independence to manage monetary policy. He would eliminate the central bankers and put political hacks in charge of the Fed. He wants no more interest rate hikes ahead of the next election that could do to him what they did the George H. Bush economy. The tax cuts that create federal deficits essentially fund his re-election campaign.

He gave farmers more money to buy votes and he is borrowing to finance trillion dollar annual deficits to maintain government spending that contributes to economic growth. Trump would love to have some more fiscal stimulus in additional tax cuts and/or a $2 trillion infrastructure investment. He is also haranguing the Fed to ‘cut’ interest rates to boost monetary stimulus, even sending his closet sycophants, Vice President Pence and Economic Advisor Larry Kudlow out to further make the case for him for the Fed to lower rates and goose the economy.

If the economy slows into 2020 his goose is cooked. He will pull every rabbit out of his “Make America Great Again” hat that he can in order to boost the economy to extend growth past the 2020 election to have a chance to win. The possibly of having his long ties replaced with an orange jump suit ride on it. Nothing would be immoral, unscrupulous or illegal enough to deter him. Will the American voters buy into DJT’s electoral strategy? Some think God put him in the White House and some think that he is God. He needs to convince just enough margin from other more rational Americans who adhere to the “It’s the economy stupid”, to buy into his narrative.

David Kruse is president of CommStock Investments Inc., author and producer of The CommStock Report, an ag commentary and market analysis available daily by radio and by subscription on DTN/FarmDayta and the Internet.