Meanwhile, Trump ran a reasonably disciplined campaign. There were his usual outrages: “Eating the pets”. And self-inflicted wounds: he might never step foot in Puerto Rico again. But Trump stuck to his simple themes of Democratic malaise and Republican renewal, and none of it seemed as scary as it did in 2016 – because the big change between then and now is that now he’s normal. Even the endless court appearances felt banal over time; the presence of TV cameras, tedious.
Voters have learnt to distinguish between jokes and serious comment, between Trump running his mouth and what Trump will actually do. It feels bizarre to write that he’s an “elder statesman”, but by sheer passage of time, that’s what he’s become. And his personal coalition, which once looked lucky and tenuous, appears to have solidified into something like the New Deal or Reagan realignments.
The old Republican middle-class vote – no longer enough for John McCain or Mitt Romney – has evolved into a coalition of rural, low educated, blue-collar voters with substantial pockets of Hispanic, possibly even black support (we’ve yet to crunch the numbers). Trumpism has a big base.
Assuming there are no last minute shocks, Trump is on course to become the only president bar Grover Cleveland to win two non-consecutive terms. In hindsight historians will call the miraculous, obvious. Americans thought Trump was an okay president. Biden depressed them; Kamala patronised them. So they decided to get Trump back.
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