How 2020 is different from 2016 — and why Trump loves it
Stephen H. Provost
Election Day is a week away, and by all rights, Joe Biden should have this thing in the bag.
The pundits keep telling us how bad things look for Trump. He’s bungled the COVID pandemic, has spent almost his entire presidency with anemic approval ratings, and he’s run an awful campaign. He’s behind in fundraising and behind in the polls. And perhaps most importantly, he isn’t running against Hillary Clinton, like he was four years ago.
Pundits make a point of emphasizing that Trump is running against a far more likeable candidate this time, and one he can’t tar and feather with sexist rhetoric. (He tried ageism, but that didn’t work.)
This should be 1936, 1972, and 1984 all over again.
So why the hell is this race so close?
Clinton was the second-least-popular nominee in modern history, with only Trump less popular. Remember those “Neither One” bumper stickers? A lot of people voted for third-party candidates. And because of their disdain for Clinton, a large majority of voters who decided in the voting booth held their noses and pulled the lever for Trump.
They took a chance.
But the anti-Clinton vote highlights something else that’s different this time, too — something the pundits seem to be missing. They’ve commented on it in isolation, but seldom in contrast to 2016. Unlike then, when Trump voters largely voted against Clinton because they didn’t like either candidate, this year’s Trump voters are far more likely to be voting for His Orangeness.
Trump has tried to hit Biden with the same kind of smear campaign he used against Clinton, but without much effect. Without Clinton as a foil, Trump needs voters who actually want to vote for him, and astonishingly, he’s got enough of them to make this a race.
On the surface, this is baffling. Four years of incompetence, corruption, and malignant narcissism should have made Trump less likeable, not the opposite. You’d expect those Trump voters who haven’t abandoned ship to be holding their noses even more tightly this time around. And since there aren’t nearly as many undecided voters (and a lot of Democrats are voting early), you’d expect Trump to be screwed. The last-minute deciders won it for him last time; they won’t in 2020.
The question is why Trump still has a chance? Here are a few reasons:
Partisanship
The party has coalesced around “their guy.” Disaffected supporters of more traditional 2016 candidates were still grousing in 2016 that they couldn’t vote for Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, or some other more traditional (or reliably conservative) candidate. Since then, two things have happened:
Party leaders have circled the wagons around Trump. Even his worst critics, people who said he wasn’t fit to govern in 2016 and who were targets of his most vicious attacks — such as Cruz and Lindsey Graham — did a 180 and supported him. This signaled to reluctant Trump supporters that it was OK for them to do so. More than that, it was expected of them.
Trump has so effectively intimidated critical leaders within the GOP that they’ve either left government, left the party, or both. He’s effectively made himself the only viable option.
While Trump hasn’t been effective at demonizing Biden the way he did Clinton, he has been able to demonize the Democratic Party as a whole — at least among Republicans. They’re a bunch of socialists who are intent on turning the suburbs into Lebanon. They’re worse than the Russians, who are suddenly the good guys.
Judges
Trump has taken credit for a bulldozer strategy of filling court vacancies with friendly judges, especially on the Supreme Court. Republicans have long cared more about the Supreme Court than Democrats have, so this has given Trump a leg up in this category.
Why do Republicans care so much about the court? Because they know they’re in the minority. They need the court to overrule popular programs such as the Affordable Care Act and popular social stands such support for same-sex marriage.
Republicans already have a built-in advantage in the Senate, which favors rural (Republican) states and the Executive Branch, which can use tools like executive orders to usurp the powers of Congress. The House has gone back and forth, but they don’t have a systemic edge there, so the courts are crucial in tipping the balance of power away from the majority.
Orwellian politics
To say Trump is a liar — even a pathological liar — is overly simplistic. What he’s done is far more pervasive and devious than that. He’s harnessed the power of misdirection by touting conspiracy theories, repeating false narratives (COVID will miraculously disappear), and inviting his followers to repeat and retweet them.
The result is an Orwellian alternative reality in which a billionaire con artist is a champion of the middle class, Confederate flags are a symbol of patriotism, and Vladimir Putin’s views are more credible than those of U.S. intelligence officers. Up is down, green is pink, and two plus two equals five. If you think otherwise, there’s something wrong with you.
Trump has gotten millions of people to buy into believing what they want to believe, regardless of the facts, and he’s cowed millions of others into saying they believe it because they’re afraid to step out of line.
Cult of personality
Trump believes the world revolves around him, and he’s succeeded in getting others to enable him in this fiction. He’s turned the Republican Party into his own personal ego boost, and they’ve gone along with it because they want to believe someone’s fighting for them. It doesn’t matter if he fights dirty — in fact, that’s better, because they think he’ll stop at nothing to undo what they see as a corrupt system that has screwed them over time and again.
Biden might seem like a nice guy, but he represents that system. And they don’t want a nice guy; they want a “law and order” mob boss/vigilante who shows no mercy. That’s why depicting him as a cheater doesn’t resonate with his followers. They want a cheater because they feel like they’ve been cheated by the system, and they think it’s time to fight fire with fire. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life.
Trump’s greatest Orwellian trick is to make the public like him: a thoroughly despicable human being. He’s turned a person whose only real talents are backstabbing, bullying, insulting, dividing, lying, and betraying people into someone people will actually vote for.
Enthusiastically
That’s the biggest difference between 2016 and 2020, and it’s the reason Trump still has a chance.