Donald Trump is running for president in 2024. In 2015 and 2016, we knew why. He was the candidate offering a completely different vision. He was attuned to America’s darkened mood: “I will gladly accept the mantle of anger,” he proclaimed in one memorable debate exchange. He offered economic nationalism and competition with China as a corrective to a Clinton–Bush–Obama consensus on free trade with the third world. He offered a different foreign policy, wanting to bring Americans home from wars that had lost their original purpose. He made bold interventions in culture-war issues, becoming the first Republican president to vow that Roe v. Wade would be overturned if he were allowed to make Supreme Court appointments.
In 2015, that was a package of goods nobody else was quite offering. In 2022, however, Joe Biden has stolen most of Trump’s economic and geopolitical themes. And Ron DeSantis is running out ahead of Trump on cultural issues.
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