hankyoreh

John Feffer

Donald Trump seems as if he’s indestructible. He survived numerous scandals during his presidential campaign in 2016. He weathered numerous crises in his first years of office, including the indictment of close colleagues, scores of failed policy efforts in North Korea, Afghanistan, and Venezuela, and too many gaffes to mention.

And now, it appears that he has survived impeachment as well. Not only that, his favorability is at an all-time high of 49 percent. Republicans are nearly unanimous in their support of the president, and a significant share of independent voters has also moved in his direction since the impeachment hearings began in 2019.

During his 2020 State of the Union speech this month, Trump listed all of his accomplishments under two general headings of prestige and prosperity. America, he asserted, had regained its international reputation for strength. And the American economy was humming along with record highs for Wall Street and record lows for unemployment.

As with everything the president says, his speech was a mix of half-truths and lies. America’s international reputation lies in tatters. And the U.S. economy, pumped up on debt, is in precarious shape.

The Democrats continue to challenge Trump’s assertions. But it’s hard to maintain outrage continuously for three years. Frustrated at nearly every turn in the impeachment proceedings, the Democrats have been reduced to protesting, grumbling, and, in the case of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, ripping up Trump’s State of the Union speech at the conclusion of his remarks.

Meanwhile, the Iowa caucus this month produced three unwelcome surprises for the Democratic Party. The first was the malfunctioning of software that delayed the announcement of the results. The second was the humbling of the presumptive frontrunner, Joe Biden, who came in a distant fourth behind Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren. The third was the low turnout, which didn’t come anywhere close to the levels of enthusiasm in 2008, when Barack Obama ran for the first time.

Trump and the Republicans have established a façade of unity. The Democrats seem unhappy, incompetent, unenthusiastic, and fragmented.

Trump is doing everything he can to make his reelection appear inevitable. He has the incumbent’s advantage. He has raised an enormous campaign budget. He has remade the Republican Party in his own image.

And, by eluding impeachment, he has established a worrisome precedent that he, as president, has a mandate to do practically anything, even if it violates the constitution.

This exercise of presidential power is extraordinarily dangerous for the United States. But it might also prove dangerous to Trump himself.

Trump’s belief in his own invincibility has been central to his past failures. He recklessly expanded his hotel and casino empire only to face a succession of bankruptcies. He brazenly dove into the airline business only for his Trump Airlines to go bust. His university, his magazine, his vodka: they all failed.

As president, Trump believed that the report of special counsel Robert Mueller fully exonerated him of charges of collusion with the Russian authorities, so he went ahead and engaged in precisely the same kind of conduct with Ukraine. This time, because of a whistleblower report and subsequent revelations of presidential misconduct, the House pursued impeachment.

Trump can’t resist indulging in risky behavior. Each time, his critics charge that he has “gone too far.” And each time, he has wriggled out of the consequences.

Coming out of his acquittal in the Senate on the impeachment charges, Trump could self-destruct in two different ways.

First, in the belief that everything he does is “perfect,” Trump might commit another unconstitutional act, for instance a more blatant appeal to another country to interfere in the 2020 elections. Or he might commit crimes as Richard Nixon did to discredit his adversaries. These acts might not be enough to alienate his Republican Party supporters. But they might be sufficient to turn the rest of the country more decidedly against the president.

Or Trump could let his overweening self-confidence prevent him from doing the necessary electoral work of appealing beyond his confirmed base of support. Hillary Clinton fell victim to this kind of self-delusion when her campaign counted on a “firewall” of support in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. She slighted these states when she focused on other key swing areas. And she lost all three by very narrow margins.

Trump, too, might simply assume that his base will carry him over the finish line in November 2020. He might not make any special efforts to appeal to independents. He might not put enough money into “get out the vote” efforts.

Of course, much depends on the Democrat Party and the eventual nominee. Biden represents the liberal orthodoxy, but he doesn’t generate much enthusiasm beyond his claim that he’s the safest bet to beat Trump. His fourth place finish in Iowa suggests otherwise.

Buttigieg is what Biden used to be: the young, Kennedy-like politician with middle-of-the-road politics. Sanders offers the most radical platform and perhaps the most committed following. Warren promises to unite the radical and moderate wings of the Party with a platform of reform that’s not socialist like Sanders or blandly liberal like Biden or Buttigieg.

The Democrats should pay heed to a poll conducted in November by National Public Radio, PBS News Hour, and Marist Institute for Public Opinion. Among all registered voters, people showed the least enthusiasm for a socialist candidate (20 percent) and the most for a woman candidate (71 percent). Only 58 percent were excited about a white man, only 52 percent for a candidate under 40, and only 38 percent for a candidate over 70. These results closely tally with an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll from March 2019.

If the polling is accurate, Sanders would indeed have difficulty motivating a sufficient base to defeat Trump. Sanders can win in low turn-out caucuses, like Iowa, where his determined followers can make an outsized difference. But his odds are not good for a national contest.

A second take-away is that America is ready to elect a woman. Not any woman – Hillary Clinton would likely lose if she ran a second time. But being a woman is not a disqualification.

Donald Trump is not a shoe-in for reelection. But the Democrats must think more strategically and up their enthusiasm in order to dethrone Trump, the president who would be king.