It's the Democrats' election to lose
I was firmly convinced back in 2016 that Mr. Trump's idiosyncratic and badly-informed beliefs in the efficacy of protectionism and trade wars, combined with his outmoded, inward-looking foreign policy and his erratic personality, would guarantee an unsuccessful, chaotic, and possibly disastrous four years for America, a spell so bad that his re-election prospects would be doomed even if he won (I was also convinced that Hillary Clinton's abrasive personality and the Democratic party's accelerating drift to the left would have also made her a one-term president). He's done plenty of damage to our relationships with most of our allies through his false claims about their supposed failure to bear their share of the load in supporting NATO and his alliance with marginal elements in their internal politics (it should be remembered that Boris Johnson, described by some as "the British Trump," ascended to 10 Downing Street through the UK's chaotic and divisive Brexit misadventure and the internal machinations of the Conservative Party and has yet to face a national election, in which he seems likely to accomplish the almost incredible feat of making a victory for the radical, bizarre, anti-American and generally surreal Jeremy Corbin's hapless Labour party a strong possibility). His fondness for dictators and authoritarian leaders has undermined America's moral standing in the world and his somewhat stormy bromance with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin has in some ways undermined our national security. His hostility to the American intelligence community (in fairness, to some extent a reaction to its prior hostility to him based on their realistic assessment of the degree to which his presidency would endanger our national security due to his erratic personality and lack of filters) and open willingness to side with Putin in defending the FSB against accountability for its proven interference in American elections has done very little to enhance America's posture in the world. But frankly, I'd expected him to do far greater damage to our international posture than he has.
His bizarre economic policies, though, seem to be in the process of doing exactly what I feared: undermining the prosperity which the policies of his predecessor brought out of the chaos of the Great Recession and the continued upward trend of the American economy ever since relatively early days of the Obama administration. Whether or not, as many economists fear, his trade war with China is about to put us back into recession, segments of the American population whose support was crucial to electing him in 2016 are hurting badly precisely because of the protectionist policies he insisted would help them and have undermined their support from him to a degree which, as Gyory points out, makes it difficult to construct a realistic scenario in which he can be re-elected. My own state of Iowa, and the farm belt, in particular, has been devastated by Chinese retaliation for the Trump tariffs; it's hard to see how the generally Republican farm vote will help Mr. Trump in 2020. And just as bad, the blue-collar workers in manufacturing states he improbably carried in 2016- Wisconsin, for example, and Michigan and Pennsylvania and Ohio- have been impacted so badly by his ill-conceived trade war that it seems likely that they will return to their traditional home in the Democratic party next year.
It continues to amaze and dishearten me that so many Americans even now remain unable to see the manifest incompetence and personal instability of the man who is likely the least-fit American to occupy the presidency in the history of the Republic. If men like Millard Fillmore and James Buchanan were alive, they would have reason to be grateful to Donald Trump, next to whom they look like statesmen of the first rank. And despite evidence of intense dissatisfaction by the American people in general with the increasingly combative and polarized character of the American political stream, his deflection of a Republican party already lurching into the extreme conservatism of the Tea-Party movement and its allies has inspired a corresponding spasm of extremism in a Democratic party which itself has known only sporadic spells of relative sanity since the days of George McGovern. Our institutions have failed to reflect the increasing recognition of the American people that some pretty basic things are broken in our democracy. I had expected, especially after the emergence of Unite America and other such wholesome movements in 2014, that a centrist political movement aimed at bridging the political gap and restoring our sense of each other as countrymen with common interests, values, and objectives would emerge, perhaps coalesced around John Kasich or Jon Huntsman or John Hickenlooper or some other unitive, sane, and healing personality would emerge. But it hasn't happened.
It still might. Even though now would be the time for the initial moves to be made for a third party or at least a temporary centrist coalition with an actual chance to accomplish something in 2020, it doesn't seem to be happening. True, as we discovered in 2016 when Evan McMullin's tardy, slapdash, ad hoc Center Right candidacy emerged after Bill Kristol's multiple, unsuccessful attempts to recruit other, better known and better situated traditional Republicans to offer Americans a responsible alternative to Trump and Clinton, such movements tend to be marked by timidity and procrastination so severe as to be crippling. Something may yet happen in the center. But thus far, there seems little sign of it. If anything, there seems to be a fear among Never Trumpers such as myself that a responsible centrist alternative to Donald Trump and whomever the Democrats nominate might actually have the effect of taking votes away from Trump's opponent and end up re-electing him despite everything. And the presence of Joe Biden as a relatively moderate if somewhat politically spineless front-runner holding the extremism of the dominant Sanders and Warren and Harris wing of the Democratic party at bay has probably lessened the sense of urgency or even desirability of a third candidacy by a principled moderate. And to his credit, despite his capitulation to the left on various ideological litmus tests, the former vice-president remains the only candidate in either party who even gives lip service to being a uniter rather than a divider, and of seeing the other party as something other than a satanic cult.
Gyory is correct: Trump cannot win the 2020 election. But the Democrats can lose it. There was a time when the instinct for self-preservation was strong enough in both of our national political parties that the kind of political blood this administration is virtually pumping into the water would have caused Democrats to instinctively pull together around whoever was seen as likely to lead the party to victory in 2020. But more than twenty Democrats remain in the race, and they all seem focused on emerging as the nominee of an ideologically rigid party rather than on defeating a sitting duck of an incumbent they all agree has to go. True moderates like John Hickenlooper are marginalized and forced out of the race as the contenders scrap and fight not over the largely abandoned center which will determine the outcome of the 2020 election, but of the activist left which will decide who will end up as the party's nominee.
After 2016, only the foolhardy will claim that much of anything is impossible these days in presidential politics. But when all is said and done, all the Democrats have to do to end the Trump presidency is to avoid destroying themselves. Yet the percentage of Democrats in the House supporting the utterly futile gesture of impeaching a president the partisan Senate despite the likelihood that a failed attempt at removal would strengthen the president's chances of re-election continues to grow, and ideological orthodoxy continues to trump pragmatism in the party generally.
Will Rodgers once quipped that he was not a member of any organized political party because he was a Democrat. That observation was funny back in FDR's day when strong leadership was able to impose some sort of vague discipline on its corporate behavior. But it's even apter in this age of ideological excess, identity politics, and wokeness. And at a time when not only his personal immaturity and erratic personality combined with the clear and increasingly disastrous failure of his policies, the capacity of the Democratic party for self-destruction is Donald Trump's one great hope.
It's probably the only hope he has of winning a second term. But nobody ever went broke betting against the capacity of Democrats for cannibalism and self-destruction.
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