Can Republicans escape nominee Trump in 2020?

It has been 37 years since an incumbent president drew a serious primary challenger — Ted Kennedy against Jimmy Carter — and 25 years since Pat Buchanan made noise in New Hampshire against George H.W. Bush. But if someone who had slept through 2016 were suddenly awakened and given a few key facts about the state of Donald Trump’s administration, they would instantly suggest that he should expect not just a Republican challenger in 2020 but one with decent prospects of success.

Those facts start with Trump having a 38 percent approval rating just nine months into his presidency. They include the ongoing investigation into his associates’ ties to Russia, which has already produced indictments, and his Carteresque failures on domestic policy. And they include the quiet fear and loathing Trump continues to inspire among Republican elites.

But unlike our fictional Rip Van Winkle, we were all awake in 2016, and so this litany of weaknesses is not enough to vindicate Matt Bai, the longtime political correspondent, who recently called a serious primary challenge “inevitable.” Instead, the experience of ‘16 points to a different interpretation of the facts — that having failed to stop Trump when he was eminently beatable, the ranks of Republican politicians are unlikely to throw up a serious challenger now that he has consolidated partisan support.

Which he certainly has done. Trump’s unpopularity is stark, but not among his party’s voters.

The fact that Trump has tried to govern as more of a conventional conservative than a populist is probably one reason the core now supports him so steadfastly.

But the biggest reason for Trump’s support from core Republicans is likely the simple pull of partisanship. When he wasn’t yet the face of the party, they found various principled and practical reasons to oppose him. But now that he’s their Republican president, all those doubts seem irrelevant, and identifying as a partisan means identifying with him.

This is a difficult environment in which to imagine a primary challenger flourishing.

But I still think somebody should primary the president.

But no rising figures in the GOP are likely to consider sacrificing their careers — leaving the task to retirees and elder statesmen, to a Jeff Flake or a Bob Corker or a John Kasich or even a Mitt Romney. And there is every reason to think that most of them would demur as well, and that the inevitable challenger will look more like the third-party challengers of 2016 — an Evan McMullin or a Gary Johnson, or some foolhardy NeverTrump pundit.

A primary campaign would need to be waged more in sorrow than in anger, accusing Trump of broken promises, lamenting his administration’s inability to legislate, and promising to carry on certain parts of his agenda ( judges, above all) but with more competence and tact.

Better a Kasich than a Flake, in other words — but better still a Scott Walker or even a Matt Bevin.

If today’s status quo holds, all of this is so much NeverTrump fanfiction, and none of these names will be on the 2020 ballot. But these days fortune favors pundits who entertain the unexpected — and ambitious politicians who prepare for it.