Eight words of advice to win the election

"Act like a gentleman for just 36 days."

Let’s get right to the point: Donald Trump can and should win this election on the merits but is headed to lose it because he insists on acting like a jerk.

The political lay of the land — which should decide things, and would with a normal candidate — is markedly favorable for Republicans, as this Gallup survey shows. Here’s how Gallup, an honest pollster with a long pedigree, leads it off:

Nearly all Gallup measures that have shown some relationship to past presidential election outcomes or that speak to current perceptions of the two major parties favor the Republican Party over the Democratic Party. Chief among these are Republican advantages in U.S. adults’ party identification and leanings, the belief that the GOP rather than the Democratic Party is better able to handle the most important problem facing the country, Americans’ dissatisfaction with the state of the nation, and negative evaluations of the economy with a Democratic administration in office.

This doesn’t leave a lot of room for imagination, and is confirmed by other sound measurements such as those in Real Clear Politics (Biden disapproval 55.7%; country headed in the wrong direction, 61.3%).

The specifics are eye-opening:

More U.S. adults identify as Republican or say they lean toward the Republican Party (48%) than identify as or lean Democratic (45%)….

Party affiliation and voting are strongly predictive of individuals’ vote choices, with the vast majority of identifiers and leaners voting for the candidate of their preferred party. At the aggregate level, there are typically more Democrats and Democratic leaners than Republicans and Republican leaners in the U.S. adult population. Democrats have won presidential elections in years in which they had larger-than-normal advantages in party affiliation, including 1992, 1996, 2008, 2012 and 2020.

And this, which grabbed my attention (emphasis added):

Republicans previously have not had an outright advantage in party affiliation during the third quarter of a presidential election year, and they have rarely outnumbered Democrats in election and non-election years over the past three decades.

When, instead, and for a big change, the Republicans hold a non-trivial edge in party affiliation, they should be well ahead.

And the news gets better.

By 46% to 41%, Americans say the Republican Party is better able than the Democratic Party to address what they think is the most important problem facing the country. The top issues Americans currently name as the most important are ones that tend to favor the GOP, including the economy (24%), immigration (22%), the government (17%) and inflation (15%).

This measure has been highly predictive of election outcomes in Gallup trends dating back to 1948. The party rated as better at handling the most important problem has won all but three presidential elections since that year.

Translation: Republicans are ahead on what the electorate views as the four most important issues.

So Trump is way out in front, right?

Wrong. According to the RCP average, Harris is ahead nationally by 2%, and the race is extremely tight in the seven swing states that the conventional wisdom holds will decide the election (e.g., Trump is ahead by 0.2% in Pennsylvania but behind by 0.8% in Wisconsin).

And why is that?

We all know by this point, but an honest (I grimly suspect) New York Times survey spells it out. Here it is in a nutshell.

Again, this does not leave a lot to the imagination, especially compared with the same question asked of swing voters about Kamala Harris.

The percentage of swing voters who have questions about Kamala’s temperament is less than half the percentage who question Trump’s — this despite the fact that, as is impossible to miss, she’s a word-salad machine and a palpable phony. On the other hand, the percentage of voters who question Kamala’s ideology is three times the number who question Trump’s.

So what’s the solution?

Easy again. For just over a month, Trump needs to act as if he were something resembling a gentleman. It shouldn’t be that hard, especially if he can bring himself to remember that — c’mon, Donald! — it’s just five skimpy weeks. By being a gentleman, I mean the obvious: Cut out the insults, be at least a little generous and gracious, show some modesty, put away the absurd exaggerations, be restrained and thoughtful rather than belligerent, talk about others’ concerns rather than yours. A little self-deprecating humor wouldn’t hurt either. It did wonders for Reagan, whom the press was trying to paint as an airhead wahoo.

Quite a few readers might remind me that telling DJT to be gracious rather than loud-mouthed is like telling the moon not to be round. I hear you, believe me. But consider the stakes, as I can only hope Trump will. If he follows this advice, he’s going to win. If otherwise, he’s going to lose, and the country will get stuck with the most left wing President in its history at a time of great and growing peril.

It’s all really simple, and more important for our future than I can easily put into words.