Stung by their unexpected electoral college defeat in 2016, liberals often ascribe almost magical powers to Donald Trump. Well-meaning pundits warn the left never to underestimate him, and the decent part of America is undergoing a form of national collective trauma preparing for all the ways in which Trump might try to avoid the electoral consequences of his own disastrous presidency.
But Trump never had any magic powers to begin with. He was running against a historically unpopular Democratic nominee in 2016, lost the national popular contest by 3 million votes, and barely squeaked into office by a 70,000 vote triple bank shot across three states. His singular innovation was maximizing negative partisanship among the most bigoted elements of America: the nation’s most insecure men and most racist whites people. Trump managed to accelerate the sorting of the electorate in a way that maximized a conservative cultural voting bloc faster than the left-liberal bloc could fully realize what was happening and consolidate against it.
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