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NOVEMBER 3, 2020

By some measures, the economy is doing quite well. At this writing, the stock market is still booming, although it’s not certain how far this resounds with many voters. Donald Trump’s most frequent assertion is that the workforce is about as close to full employment is as it can be, and has reached its current high under his administration. Anyone who wants a job can find one. If all this is true, why would people want a different president?

Vladimir O. Key, the past century’s most distinguished political scientist, once opined, “Voters are not fools.”1 They may not be up on developments in Taiwan and Syria—or, for that matter, the fine print in trade agreements. But they are very much aware of their own situations. And here’s what they know about those new jobs.

To start, they know that many jobs don’t offer more than subsistence pay. There are plenty of openings at Lyft and Uber, where you’re only paid when you’re transporting passengers. McDonald’s and Taco Bell are also hiring, but they are not offering patently higher pay. If Amazon is a top employer, most of its positions are in warehouses, snatching products off shelves and packing them in boxes. Facebook and Google may be cutting-edge companies, but most of their new hires are contract workers, often on short-term assignments and with limited benefits. In higher education, a field I know well, just about the only openings are for impecunious adjuncts. Many teach classes at several colleges in an attempt to pay their bills. This is the current economy for millions of Americans.

There’s also a real shortage of affordable housing that middling households can manage, with some people devoting at least half their income to that basic need. For those who are repaying student loans, even the amount on their checks are illusory. These difficulties are part of the reason why people aren’t having children, or are stopping at one. True, families with two incomes, now the norm, aren’t “poor.” But at least some linger at uncongenial jobs, because they’d be bereft without the health insurance. A frequent pitch by incumbents is “You’re doing better than ever!” It’s not clear that this resounds with a plurality of the voting public.

An ace sitting presidents have is the “October surprise,” contrived to impel voters to think that it is best not to change. One problem for Donald Trump is his penchant for devising crises, whether over Iran or Venezuela or North Korea. By this time Americans have become so jaded that a furtive October shock won’t stick. Indeed, he made such a foray in October 2018, when he mounted a last-minute effort to retain his Republican majority in the House. His story was that a full-scale invasion was on its way via Mexico, so menacing that several thousand troops had to be rapidly dispatched. Voters not only didn’t tremble; they changed the composition of the House.

To win again, Donald Trump will have to add to the 62,692,411 total he attained in 2016. The reason is that this time, any Democrat will finish with considerably more than Hillary Clinton’s 65,667,168. Up toward 70 million is not implausible. That add-on will obviate an Electoral College debacle. The president’s difficulty is his combined unwillingness and incapacity to appeal to citizens outside his immediate orbit. Much is made of his raucous rallies. And it’s true that none of his competitors have been to assemble so fervid a core. Think Cruz, Rubio, Kasich, Clinton. (So far, he hasn’t gone head to head with Sanders.)

Gauged by Republican votes in 2018’s House races, his following was down to 50,467,181. Earlier chapters, on midterms and special elections, showed that large numbers of his 2016 supporters were staying at home. In 2020, he will need to bring out at least every single one of the 12,225,230 who skipped 2018.

That said, his challenge will be finding additional supporters. It strains the mind to wonder where they might come from. Unlike other presidents, Trump has not sought to construe his constituency as nationwide. He has avoided public meetings, seldom delivers addresses over television, and holds hardly any press conferences. By his measures, he may be doing fine with those who are already converted. Indeed, he fires them up—not least through Twitter—by casting his opponents in the grossest of terms. The other party is always the “Dems,” its leader is “Crazy Nancy,” his erstwhile opponent is still “Crooked Hillary.” Is that how to lure in the undecideds he would need for another term?

All campaigns conjure visions of independent voters, who might be enticed to join their side. That worked with Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan, as well as in Bill Clinton’s second bid and Barack Obama’s first. It didn’t in 2016, when Hillary Clinton fantasized that suburban Republicans might switch to her. But Trump’s current campaign has yet to identify individuals who are still equivocal or ambivalent. There’s no way he can win unless he does.

And then there are dirty tricks. It’s not whether one or another of these deceptions swings an election. As in much of life, we don’t know which of many grains will ultimately tip a scale. Given the welter of advertisements and other messages on television and the Internet, it’s doubtful that some interference from Russia would grab more than a modicum of attention. And even given Russia’s technological savvy, an amateur grasp of the American vernacular makes the foreign source apparent.

Interestingly, the same holds for new internet strategies Republicans claim to be contriving. True, they’ve had successes in the past, notably the “Willie Horton” scare, used in George H. W. Bush’s 1988 campaign. What’s different this year is that there are no signs that Republican tacticians know how to appeal to people who are putatively in the middle. Even if they assemble focus groups, they have to keep both eyes on the Oval Office. How would their principal react to banners that don’t shout unwavering loyalty to him?

And it’s not just Donald Trump who is up for reelection. Voters are being asked to bestow their approval on the entire apparatus of the Republican Party. The cast includes Mitch McConnell and William Barr, Betsy DeVos and Stephen Miller, Pat Cipollone and Eugene Scalia, Wilbur Ross and Kellyanne Conway. Not to mention that their administration chose Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. It isn’t easy to visualize majority support for these and other enablers.

The president’s single legislative success was his “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,” enacted in his first year of office. The best index of its popular support was that the senators who passed it secured their seats from 45 percent of the voting public. (With the same template, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh both had 46 percent.)

This November’s ballots will show how the nation assesses the president’s postures on economics and immigration, the state of the planet and social policy, and his hostility to alliances and his interventions abroad. His rallies vouch that his stalwarts are still on his side. November will hear from less boisterous Americans.

All told, the Republicans’ candidates have placed second in six of the last seven presidential races. Indeed, the most recent year their choice won was in 2004, when George W. Bush attained a second term. (Two years later, he completely lost the House and the Senate.) In politics, a lot is possible. Two upsets were Harry Truman’s reelection and Donald Trump’s bombshell four years ago. The prime reason for the latter was so many Democrats stayed at home. If 2018 signaled anything, it was their remorse. They showed up for those midterms in numbers only matched back in 1932. This November, they’ll be out in force again, no matter who their party nominates. Indeed, the margins will be so high that even an Electoral College end-run won’t work. Every indicator in this book shows—and this is its last word—that there aren’t enough Americans to give Donald John Trump a second term.

I believe in Right to Life and the Second Amendment and holding teachers accountable for poor performance. (Michigan)

I am for beefing up the military to keep America secure from terrorists. (Florida)

Republicans support private companies that make the country grow. (Florida)

I believe in a strong military, secure borders, and a country with law and order. Immigrants are welcome, but they should be forced to become an American in its entirety. (Virginia)