The Trump Flex
The images are indelible: Donald Trump’s mugshot. His visit to a New York City bodega. His bloody ear and face and raised fist after being shot. Standing before his name in lights at the RNC. Joining forces with RFK Jr. beneath sparkling fireworks. Praying at the grave of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Serving French fries at McDonald’s. Selling out Madison Square Garden. And then, this week, donning a safety vest and riding in a garbage truck.
If Donald Trump is elected president for a second time on Tuesday, such moments will have been signposts on the road to an extraordinary comeback. Trump’s willingness to take risks, his boldness in appearing in places and situations where the old Republican Party feared to tread, his knack for the memorable photo and cutting riposte have defined his political career and the 2024 campaign.
This campaign is notable, moreover, for Trump’s confidence in his team, and his team’s confidence in their candidate and strategy. McDonald’s, MSG, and the garbage truck are examples of a former president flexing his power to command attention, thrill supporters, and expose opponents as aloof and condescending. Such confidence has both strengths and weaknesses. It imbues a campaign with the élan of victory and the determination to succeed. But it may also blind a candidate to realities that limit his appeal.
Trump’s confidence stems from the belief that he is stronger than he appears. And he appears strong. He is running ahead of his polls from 2016 and 2020. He is more popular than ever. His coalition is broader than before, reaching Hispanic voters, black men, young men, organized labor, and disaffected Democrats. Trump is also competitive among independents. The electorate leans Republican. Voters prefer the Trump years to the Biden-Harris years. Biden is unpopular and demonstrates on a regular basis why he is a liability. And Biden’s chosen successor, lifted upward this summer on clouds of joy, has fallen back to earth.
The sorry state of Biden’s presidency convinced Trump’s advisers of their ultimate victory. By July, as the Democrats self-immolated over Biden’s terrible debate and physical and mental condition, The Atlantic featured an interview with Trump’s strategists on their plans for a landslide win. A few weeks later, when Biden dropped out and Vice President Kamala Harris quickly secured the Democratic nomination, Trump’s pollster predicted, correctly, that the “Harris Honeymoon” would not last. And when the political class deemed Harris the winner of the second presidential debate, Team Trump barreled forward, continuing its air campaign to define her as too weak and too liberal to be president.
The game changed in Trump’s favor when Harris told the ladies of The View that she couldn’t think of one thing she would do differently than Biden. The ad cut from that soundbite damaged Harris. A second spot, highlighting Harris’s position on transgender rights for imprisoned illegal immigrants, was just as cutting. Harris was unwilling or unable to separate from Biden and provide a coherent rationale for her candidacy. She was forced to abandon her positive campaigning and concentrate instead on delegitimizing Trump as unfit and extreme.
She may yet succeed. If Harris wins, it will be because Trump’s confidence led him to downplay or dismiss two groups that could seal his fate: women worried about abortion rights and suburban independents and Republicans alarmed at Trump’s personality and the MAGA movement.
In choosing JD Vance for vice president, Trump secured MAGA’s hold on the GOP rather than make a play for the middle. Trump’s convention speech was 35 minutes of persuasion and 60 minutes of fan service. His decision not to campaign with Nikki Haley is another sign that he does not believe he needs her voters to win. The Madison Square Garden rally was a classic mobilization effort, reminding Trump voters once again that Trump is on their side and no one else’s, at the cost of 48 hours of negative press. And Trump’s travel in the home stretch smacks of bullishness, with rallies planned in Virginia and New Mexico in addition to the seven battlegrounds of Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. At this stage, a candidate’s most valuable resource is time. On Tuesday we will see if Trump’s has been well spent.
The race is too close to call. Republicans hope the results will look like 2016 when Trump outperformed his polls. Democrats hope the results will look like 2022 when an anticipated red wave crashed against an anti-MAGA electorate. I keep thinking of the 1980 election, when polling showed a close race up to the moment that Ronald Reagan won in a landslide and brought Republicans control of the Senate. This is a different country, of course, and these are different candidates. Landslides belong to the past. We don’t know how things will break. We don’t know if we are destined for weeks or months of recounts, lawsuits, judicial decisions, and unrest.
But we do know America wants change. And change is guaranteed in the imperfect, querulous, dynamic, controversial, self-assured, shameless, and captivating form of Donald J. Trump.