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发帖数: 29576 | 1 一大票人被2016把脑袋搞歪了，刻舟求剑。
Trump, Biden and the Myth of ‘But 2016’
Damon Winter/The New York Times
WASHINGTON — At first glance, there seems little in common between red-hat-
wearing admirers of President Trump and Democratic activists still nursing
PTSD from Hillary Clinton’s loss. Yet these political opposites share an
overriding conviction, one they are apt to invoke any time the president’s
re-election prospects are questioned:
But 2016!
Mr. Trump’s surprise win in the Electoral College is their Exhibit A, cited
repeatedly online or in real life, to counter any polls or election results
or momentary events that cast doubt on the president’s electability in
2020.
Just as William Faulkner wrote about how Southerners once daydreamed about
the moments before Pickett’s Charge, before Gettysburg turned the tide of
the Civil War, some activists seem frozen in the post-midnight hours of Nov.
9, 2016, when Mr. Trump won and time — political time — stopped like a
broken clock.
Ever since then, the assessment has been the same: Mr. Trump is a powerful,
if unconventional, political force; the polls don’t fully capture his
strength; and the Democrats are too complacent to win this November.
Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chairwoman, also
championed the “But 2016!” way of thinking this month when she dismissed
his current weakness in the polls. “The polling today is not going to be
what we see on Nov. 3,” she said. “And you know who knows that better than
anybody? Hillary Clinton.”
Yet as the president struggles to respond to the coronavirus, some Democrats
and anti-Trump Republicans believe too many voters are taking the wrong
lessons from the 2016 election, ignoring what just took place in the 2020
Democratic presidential primary and turning a blind eye to electoral trends
of recent years.
In that period, Democrats enjoyed sustained voter enthusiasm, and 2018
brought the highest midterm turnout in over a century, thanks largely to
voter backlash against the president — even in dozens of competitive and
red-state congressional races.
“Very smart people have convinced themselves that the normal rules simply
don’t apply to Trump,” said John Hagner, a Democratic strategist who calls
this view “almost a religious belief.”
It’s not that Mr. Hagner and like-minded political operatives believe 2016
isn’t instructive. It’s just that they believe the lessons are different
from the assumption that the president is coated in Teflon, politically
speaking.
What Mr. Trump’s stunning win and Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s extraordinary
comeback in the 2020 primaries both demonstrate, they say, is the crucial
importance of momentum-changing events, the mood of the electorate and the
ingrained perceptions of the candidates. Tactics like well-produced campaign
ads, high-profile endorsements and clever one-liners at debates often
matter far less, as Mrs. Clinton found.
In other words, Mr. Trump’s 2016 victory is not predictive in 2020 — not
for an incumbent running for re-election amid a public health catastrophe
that has killed over 80,000 Americans and caused another 36 million to lose
their jobs.
“If you’re ranking the things that matter in an election, macro issues
like a collapsing economy and a global pandemic are going to beat out a
campaign video,” deadpanned Addisu Demissie, who ran Senator Cory Booker’s
presidential campaign last year.
It’s not that Mr. Biden is a lock to win this November. In an era of
intense polarization, coast-to-coast landslides in presidential elections
are as much a relic as eight-track players. Further, as 2016 vividly
illustrated, late-breaking events can shape elections, and Mr. Trump will go
to great lengths to win. And in a close race, campaign organization can
matter.
But at a moment when Mr. Biden is stuck at home in Wilmington, Del., and
receiving all manner of advice from well-meaning supporters about how to
break through from his basement, the suggestion that a stronger Biden social
media presence would shape an election amid a looming depression is
prompting some eye rolls. And not just from his own campaign staff.
“You can have the greatest machinery in the world, but if a campaign is not
right for the times, it doesn’t matter,” said Tim Miller, an outspoken
Republican critic of Mr. Trump.
Mr. Miller speaks from experience. Working for Jeb Bush in the 2016
Republican primary and then against Mr. Trump in the general election, he
saw how rudimentary the president’s campaign infrastructure was that year
— and how little it mattered.
To call Mr. Trump’s political organization four years ago bare-bones would
be an insult to other bare-bones campaigns. Mr. Trump cycled through
campaign managers, ran his campaign from a spare floor in Trump Tower and
approached social media like a guy watching TV at the end of a bar. But it
all proved less important than the structural factors that shaped the 2016
election and ultimately favored him.
First, Mr. Trump ran in a crowded and fragmented Republican field and found
a strong plurality of voters for his racial grievances and attacks on the
political establishment.
Then he competed against a deeply unpopular Democrat, Mrs. Clinton, whose
gains in the polls often depended on Mr. Trump’s doing or saying something
that got him in trouble. It was perhaps inevitable, strategists say, that
many voters who disliked both candidates broke Mr. Trump’s way after the F.
B.I. reopened its investigation into Mrs. Clinton in the campaign’s final
days. This is to say nothing of the millions of voters who doubted that Mr.
Trump would win and therefore either didn’t vote for president or cast a
third-party ballot.
Mr. Trump faces a tough environment right now. After the president enjoyed
an initial bump in polling, voters have soured on his handling of the virus.
Surveys show that, in a contrast to 2016, voters who dislike both of this
year’s nominees overwhelmingly favor Mr. Biden. And polls currently
indicate that Mr. Trump is trailing Mr. Biden in battleground states such as
Pennsylvania and Michigan and that the two are running closely even in more
conservative states like North Carolina and Georgia.
“Democrats shouldn’t be fighting the last war when the current terrain
presents a very different battle,” said Jill Alper, a longtime party
strategist who said that, for starters, Mr. Biden is “not Hillary Clinton.”
Those skeptical of Mr. Trump’s chances in 2020 also point to the recent
Democratic primary as illustrative about how broad political forces such as
likability, momentum and public perceptions drive elections.
Just over two months ago, Mr. Biden’s candidacy was in dire shape. Yet in
short order, he revived his campaign and all but ensured he would be the
Democratic nominee by winning in a series of Super Tuesday states where he
had never visited, had not advertised and had only a skeletal staff on the
ground.
How?
He was broadly popular among black and moderate white Democrats and was
widely perceived to be the safe selection in a primary that revolved around
finding a candidate who could defeat Mr. Trump.
“You can meet the moment, but you can’t really change the moment,” said
Mr. Demissie, who was quick to credit Mr. Biden’s aides for positioning him
as the safe choice. “It’s very difficult to change the mood of the
electorate via campaign strategy and tactics.”
Be it Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump, a candidate’s performance is relevant, of
course. As former President Barack Obama demonstrated with his poised
response to the economic crash in 2008, how one handles a crisis can be an
important indicator to voters.
But Michael Halle, a Democratic operative who helped guide Pete Buttigieg’s
presidential bid, argued that Mr. Trump missed his opportunity to project
resolve and has not enjoyed the polling bump granted to an array of
governors, Democratic and Republican, for their leadership in combating the
virus.
“Had his response been strong, he could have transcended his problems with
the electorate,” Mr. Halle said.
Some Trump opponents, for strategic reasons, are not playing up his
political vulnerabilities in the general election. They want to make sure
their voters continue fretting about Mr. Trump’s re-election so they will
be more likely to volunteer their time and money toward defeating him.
“The bed-wetting is probably useful,” as Mr. Miller confessed.
But there is one invariably blunt political observer who couldn’t help but
to make an astute, if self-serving, assessment about what drives elections.
“I’ve always felt it was overrated,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Obama’s
vaunted campaign machinery. “Obama got the votes much more so than his data
-processing machine. And I think the same is true with me.” | i******0
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