Escalation against Iran good for Trump, stock market

War or not, there is going to be more defense build-up as a consequence of Soleimani’s assassination, which is good for defense stocks. From a 2020 strategic standpoint, assassinating Soleimani works in Trump’s favor because it boosts patriotism and nationalism among his boomer/gen-x base. On dissent-right and chan sites, gen-z and millennial supporters may be less enthusiastic, but their opinions don’t matter as much. They are not a core voting consistency and will still vote for Trump anyway. Their opinions don’t factor highly in Trump’s decision making processes, compared to Pompeo.

Yesterday RamZPaul put out a video in which he said that if Trump invades Iran he will lose, in which I thought to myself “lose…as in lose your vote, not the election.” Look how high Bush’s approval rating was after 911 and the start of war in Iraq. Bush saw a 10 point bump after invading Iraq, from 60% to 70% approval, so a similar sized bump for Trump should be enough for him to carry Florida and thus the election. Even though Iran is a more formidable target than Iraq, there is no reason Trump shouldn’t see a bump should he escalate the situation. All of this defense spending and the surge in the stock market for 2020 will help Trump win, and I put his odds of being reelected at 60% now. As evidence of how Trump’s support is higher now than ever as a consequence of Iran, a recent tweet praising the strength of the U.S. military got 650k ‘likes’ as of posting this now, which is about 12x the average of a typical Trump tweet:

For 2020, there is not going to be a recession or anything like that either. I remember in 2017-2019 the narrative by the left was that there would be a recession, conveniently in 2020, that would cause Trump to lose.