Whatever happened to Donald Trump?

Donald Trump is what happened to Donald Trump.

Paul noted here that this election should be a relatively comfortable win for the Republicans. The country is dissatisfied with how things are going; inflation, the economy, and uncontrolled immigration, where Republicans hold a marked advantage, are the top issues by far; and the ostensible head of the opposition, Joe Biden, lacks anything approaching normal levels of leadership or charisma. Yet his anointed successor and second fiddle, Kamala Harris, has moved into a slight lead (0.5%) in the RCP polling average, and is now, by a slim margin, the betting favorite to win the election.

Why?

Paul’s piece did a fine job of explaining this, as does today’s WSJ editorial. But I think there might be more to be said.

The main explanation is in front of our faces: Among the undecided voters who will determine November’s outcome, it had become clear that Biden was incompetent to run the country. He’s too old and too addled, and it was going to get worse. Trump is unpopular, being massively self-absorbed, not particularly honest, and classless, but — so these voters correctly thought — a better bet on the whole than Joe to run the country and face a dangerous world. So Trump led the polls by a small but consistent margin, a margin that grew after Biden’s debate performance exposed him in a way neither the press nor Kamala nor his other dissembling cheerleaders could continue to hide. Hence Biden got dumped (the notion that he patriotically stepped aside is bunk) and now we have a new face.

That alone, it seems to me, accounts for almost all the change in polling: Given the extent of Trump’s unpopularity, merely a different Democratic candidate — anyone who, unlike Biden, was still a functioning adult — was going to peel off enough of the hold-your-nose-and-accept-the-awful-Trump crowd that the polls were going to shift.

So what is to be done?

First, remind the electorate of the main reason, apart from Biden’s cognitive decline, the Democrats should be shown the door: That their Party thinks the United States stinks and has an unpleasant if not catastrophic “reckoning” coming to it (hence the title of this newsletter). The Republicans, for all their divisions and weaknesses, think the opposite — that the USA is a force for good, both for its own people and for the world, and therefore should be strengthened not punished. The parties’ starkly contrasting views of the basic decency of the country, more than anything else, shape the differences in their substantive policies for governing.

The upshot is that the Republicans should make substance the center of the national debate over the next three months. If they do, they’ll win — not because they’re great at making the case, but because a majority of the electorate has already seen enough to understand that it’s true, or at the minimum a better fit to the truth, than the Democrats’ sour-on-the-country counter-narrative.

So is this how the Republican campaign will go? Not likely. Exhibit A is Trump’s acceptance speech at the RNC, a meandering, tiresome mess that wandered from one conclusion to the next, seldom to never making an actual argument. And his campaign has gone downhill from there.

Perhaps this is the place to admit that, being the Old World person I am and a former appellate lawyer, I put more store in argument and less in “vibes” than the average voter. That’s certainly a plausible view of things, but not in my view a correct one. This is not because argument per se can be so compelling — although sometimes it can be, see, e.g., Ronald Reagan — but because the results of the Democrats’ counter-argument (to the skimpy extent in can be called that) are already in. Inflation is not a result of bad vibes; it’s a result of intentionally weakening the value of the currency to finance an even more gargantuan welfare state (than, to be honest, the Republicans have spent three generations acquiescing in). Russian, Chinese and Iranian belligerence has grown, not because it had to be that way, but because American power, and the willingness to use it, has shrunk, exactly as one would expect under the reign of a Party that views the country as lacking the moral standing to enforce either basic decency or even its own interests. (This is to put to one side for the moment the younger generation of Democrats and their shockingly explicit and widespread adoption of anti-Semitism).

This brings me to today’s WSJ piece, which puts a lot of it together. It’s aptly titled, “Will Donald Trump Blow Another Election?”

The economic and security fundamentals are teed up for a Republican victory. Voters and especially the working class are unhappy with the economy, as average real incomes have declined across the Biden Presidency. The chaos at the border has spread to cities around the country. [And drug abuse, whether or not related to illegal immigration, has skyrocketed to record levels of overdose deaths].

The Administration’s insistence on imposing progressive cultural policies by diktat has produced resentment and a strong counter-reaction…All of this has voters unhappy about the state of the country and looking for change.

The Journal is absolutely right in focusing on DEI policies as well as our economic and security crises. Although some Republicans think otherwise, the Left’s insistence on race huckstering and the lower standards that are often adopted to hide its corrosive and immoral effects are felt and properly resented my millions of Americans. (And when the MSM starts yelping about how “divisive” these issues are and how they bespeak closet racism, you know you’re on to something).

One reason for the surge for Ms. Harris is Democrats coming home in relief from their depression about Mr. Biden. But at age 59 she also presents a youthful contrast to 78-year-old Mr. Trump, who has now been on the presidential stage for nearly a decade. She’s trying to steal the “change” mantle with her focus on the future, and she’ll succeed if Republicans can’t wrap her in the Biden record and her progressive San Francisco views.

Indeed. Harris flips the age issue, an issue that had been key to Trump’s polling lead up to now.

The Trump campaign knows this, but the problem is the candidate. Mr. Trump has his passionate followers who don’t want to hear a discouraging word. Yet the political reality is that he has a ceiling of support that is below 50% because so many Americans dislike him. And now that he is in the news every day campaigning, he is reminding those voters why they didn’t vote to re-elect him in 2020.

Ms. Harris in particular seems to have unnerved him as he scrambles but fails to find an attack line that works. He’s said she “doesn’t like Jewish people,” though her husband is Jewish. He’s attacked her racial identity, which alienates swing voters. He calls her “low IQ” and “dumb,” as if the school-yard insult will persuade anyone.

To put it in less polite but more direct language, Trump is acting like a dope.

Why is this so hard to understand? His base, maybe 45%, isn’t big enough to elect him, so he has to bring in people outside the base. Empty rudeness will do the opposite.

WAKE UP.

Mr. Trump is still griping about his impeachments and the Democratic prosecutions against him that are now in limbo. His rally speeches are a bundle of personal grievances and impulsive floundering that drown out any consistent message against Vice President Harris. He is also helping her by saying little about what he’d do in a second term, beyond replaying the promises of his first term.

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All of this underscores the risk that GOP voters took in nominating Mr. Trump for a third time. They had younger alternatives who would have been fresher voices and could have served two terms….

This bet was paying off against Mr. Biden, but that race is over. Ms. Harris and her new running mate are still far to the left of the American people, if Republicans have the discipline to inform voters. This is still Mr. Trump’s election to lose but, as we learned in 2020, he’s more than capable of doing it.

America cannot afford a slightly disguised fourth Obama term. Someone Trump listens to — maybe Don Jr. — needs immediately to inject sobriety and seriousness into his campaign. The alternative — four years of Kamala Harris — will wind up making us wistful for the merely awful Joe Biden.