Trump 2020 is Bush-Cheney '04 on steroids

George W. Bush won re-election with 4 strategic plays. Donald Trump is revamping all of them.

President Trump and George W. Bush.
(Image credit: Illustrated |Mario Tama/Getty Images, Ethan Miller/Getty Images, Vagengeym_Elena/iStock)

The 2020 presidential race is officially underway, and President Trump's re-election plan is increasingly clear — and strikingly familiar: It's a re-run of former President George W. Bush's campaign from 2004.

The similarity is ironic given Trump's long antagonistic history with the Bush family, and it's not all Trump has in common with W in their respective first terms. Both enacted tax cuts that skewed heavily toward the rich, and both were plagued by scandal and crony corruption. But these connections pale in comparison to their re-election strategy overlap, as Trump 2020 appears to be a near carbon copy of Bush-Cheney '04.

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Joel Dodge

Joel Dodge writes about politics, law, and domestic policy for The Week and at his blog. He is a member of the Boston University School of Law's class of 2014.