There were always going to be challenges for Donald Trump’s reelection. The first is that he wouldn’t be running against Hillary Clinton, who managed to be extremely unpopular but threatening enough to unify many Republicans underneath Trump’s banner. The second is that his 2016 campaign overpromised in a way that made it impossible for him to deliver. He vowed to get rid of Obamacare, and “take care of everybody;” to increase spending, and get rid of the national debt; to bring the troops home, and end terrorism. He’d build a wall, and “Mexico would pay for it.” His only attempt at playing both sides of the issue this time is his emphasis on “law and order” when talking about rioters, but also attacking Biden’s crime bill and emphasizing his own attempts at criminal-justice reform.
Running on a four-year record is obviously different. And what we’ve found is that Trump’s need to work with existing Republicans in Congress and in his administration has made his administration more like that of a replacement-level Republican: tax cuts, conservative judges, and a foreign policy of confrontation with Iran. The populist Trump is almost gone. This is also a serious problem because it deprives him of the chance to run partly against his own party, which surely helped him win those crossover Obama-Trump voters. In 2016, a vote for Trump was not just a vote against Hillary Clinton, but a vote for a different Republican Party.
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