Is Trump fomenting an uprising?
Donald Trump is not behaving like a man seeking re-election. His latest nod to the radical possibility of declaring National Emergency powers to erect his beloved border wall is just the latest case in point.
There are two theories as to why this is, but only one of them makes any sense as a political strategy for the embattled United States president.
The first is to take Trump at his word: that he expects to run in 2020 and his relentless pursuit of his 35 per cent base will somehow deliver enough votes for re-election. In reality, Trump’s abandonment of swing voters in favour of a base-only approach will doom any prospect of a second term (if he makes it that far).
Don’t take my word for it. Barely two months ago, Republicans lost the national House race by 10 million votes, the largest such margin since Watergate. The midterms were so indisputably a referendum on the Trump presidency that even Trump admitted as much – in fact, he did so ad nauseam throughout his red state rally tour in October.
The midterms result disproved, once and for all, the notion that Trump possesses some magic powers that bend electoral norms to his will. It turns out there is no silent Trump majority awaiting the chance to humiliate pundits by turning out in record numbers at the polling booth. Trump’s dire polling on critical questions of job approval and whether he deserves to be re-elected – languishing around 35 per cent – might be the only category of fact he cannot ultimately avoid. Politics boils down to fairly simple maths.
Even if Trump has fooled himself into believing 35 per cent is sufficient to win re-election, the GOP establishment, and politicians seeking re-election in 2020, will share no such illusions. Republicans know what a bloodbath the November midterm elections were – and, make no mistake, they’re cleareyed enough to see another one coming in 20 months.
Presidents are elected by coalitions of voters with intersecting if divergent interests. For Barack Obama, it was a combination of people of colour, urban and suburban middle-class voters, especially women, and union households. To win re-election, Obama suffered some attrition across the board, but mainly managed to keep his alliance of supporters intact.
Trump, on the other hand, shows no interest in coalition-building. Every word, every tweet, every stunt, every rally applause line, is aimed squarely at maintaining strong support among noncollege-educated whites, rural and evangelical voters, who are often the same people.
As I said, it’s possible Trump is pursuing the strategy because he is so hopelessly stuck in his euphonious echo chamber, so fearful of bad news, so desperate for validation, that he has convinced himself that the base, alone and enough, will fuel his surge to a second term.
In many ways, we ought to hope the above explanation holds because the alternative is chilling. It may be Trump has already given up on a second term. Staring at the midterm results, along with his dire polling, facing the prospect of a devastating Special Counsel report and sprawling congressional investigations into his personal and business finances, Trump may have concluded democracy alone cannot extend his political career.
If this is the case, why is he so determined to hold on to every single resentful white vote? Why is he making no effort whatsoever to expand that base; instead aggravating moderate swing voters daily, if not hourly?
This leads to a troubling hypothesis: Trump understands that, while 35 per cent can’t reelect him, it nevertheless represents millions of voters who, if sufficiently primed, can be activated in his defence as the walls of scandal and perfidy close in.
Trump’s strategy makes less sense as electoral maths than it does as the preparation of a mass grassroots pushback against his enemies in the Congress, Robert Mueller’s office, law enforcement and intelligence agencies and, of course, the national press.
If I’m right, and Trump is preparing for rebellion, not reelection, his comments last week invoking National Emergency powers should not dismissed out of hand. Declaring a National Emergency, which is entirely at the president’s discretion, would offer him a staggering array of unfettered powers, up to and including shutting down the internet. It would effectively obliterate any proper role for Congress, even the courts, in offering a check and balance to executive authority.
Again, no president with an eye on the next election would seriously contemplate such a drastic step. But I can see its appeal to someone seeking to foment a popular uprising, as opposed to merely victory at an election.
In all likelihood, Trump will stop short of such extreme measures, but even a non-trivial possibility he won’t is terrifying.