His Reelection Plan

To those who believed, sequentially, that Donald Trump would drop out soon after entering the GOP primary field; that this or that outrageous provocation of his would fatally turn off primary voters; that while he might be winning primaries, he had a ceiling of support among Republicans in the 40-percent range through which he could never pass; that he would never win a majority of delegates to the convention; that if he did, the party establishment would do its utmost to deny him the nomination; that under pressure from GOP defectors, he might drop out of the race; and that he could never win the general election—to all of you, I say: It's time to start thinking about how Trump intends to win reelection. He will certainly be thinking about it, and it is likely to illuminate some of the decisions he makes.

Let's start with a preliminary list of liabilities and assets. First of all, he lost the popular vote. Of course, getting to 270 in the Electoral College is how you determine the winner in this game, and Trump has declared with characteristic baldness that if instead he had needed to win the popular vote, he could have—a point pollsters dispute (just as you'd expect them to do, his supporters would say). Second apparent liability: The media no less than Democrats were shell-shocked by the election result and will give him no quarter, continuing to cover every move in maximal negative light. Third, the president-elect has given no indication he intends to give up tweeting, a medium known for neither nuance nor subtlety. And he has said he has no regrets about anything he said during the campaign, because "I won."

Fourth, although most Americans have come to terms with the election result, they have not exactly rallied around the president-elect to the extent seen in years past. Some bitter-enders remain defiant, and on social media as well as in street protests, the attention they draw far outpaces their numbers and is likely to continue to do so, providing little relief from the hyperpartisan tone of the campaign season. Fifth, there's the character issue: The percentage of Americans who see him as unforgivably deplorable is considerable. The Clinton attack on his character, though in retrospect misguided as the centerpiece of her campaign, was nothing if not thorough. Trump's core supporters don't care about critics' allegations, but the damage among softer supporters and independents was genuine.

Sixth, Trump showed little interest during the campaign in the details of policy, and many of his pronouncements have provoked the release of antibodies into the American system. His comments on making allies pay up, for example, have led a chorus of voices to note that we have treaty obligations that are not tied to accounts receivable, and that if we spurn these obligations, U.S. credibility would be shot. Finally, many such allies and global elitedom more broadly are in a panic, wondering what the Trump administration has in store for them. So those are the liabilities.

As for the assets, well, first let's reconsider those liabilities. On the popular vote, Trump knows perfectly well Hillary Clinton outpolled him. If he's running for reelection, he may indeed see it as good enough to win the Electoral College again, while likewise losing the popular vote, but I doubt it. Trump eked out his status as a winner in 2016, and he will want no doubt about that status in 2020. One could say of George W. Bush that he didn't appear to be fully comfortable with his presidency until after his reelection, when he finally won the popular vote as well as the Electoral College. Trump's style is never to look uncomfortable or as if he harbors a doubt, but he will certainly want his job approval rating to rise over time as he builds a plurality if not a majority for 2020. If he had won a big Reagan 1980-style victory, that might have encouraged him to "make America great again" in ways that could cost him with voters, but he has voters to burn only to the extent he can replace them with new supporters in greater numbers. Another word for an unpopular populist is "loser."