Trump Is Really a Terrible Candidate Who Is Very Unlikely to be President

Jamelle Bouie has more detail about why Donald Trump is an obviously terrible candidate for president. For starters, I think anyone who thinks Trump has a path to victory barring extraordinary circumstances needs to explain 1)how Trump can win barely white-majority Florida or 2)how Trump can win without Florida. I don’t think there’s a remotely good answer to either question.

Still, people like to play Eeyore, and I admit that it’s sometimes my instinct. So it’s worth addressing the various forms of way in which Democrats who feel the need to be panicked will express it. To deal with the most easily dismissed first, there’s one argument that Trump is in fact a terrible candidate but liberal writers shouldn’t say it because it would be bad for the Clinton campaign. Leaving aside the rather dubious causal logic (“we were going to build a serious ground operation, but since I read that article about how Trump is a bad candidate let’s all go to Antigua!”), nuts to that. This is just the flip side to how so many Republican pundits acted in 2012  — if you UNSKEW THE POLLS and COUNT THE YARD SIGNS IN YOUR SUBURBAN NEIGHBORHOOD by gum Romney has it in the bag. Reflexively pessimistic hackery is no less hacky than reflexively optimistic hackery. If you’re not giving your honest analysis but trying to write what you think is best for the party, you’re not worth reading, period.

Some more common counters:

• “But the Republicans always find a way to steal the election.” If you’ve predicted 6 of the last 2 Republican Electoral College winners, I wouldn’t say your analysis has much value. Plus Bush didn’t “steal” 2004 either.
• “They will suppress the vote.” This is worth taking seriously, because it’s a real thing and one with real effects, and it’s also a really bad thing that should be fought with every available weapon irrespective of the partisan consequences. In 2016, however, the effects of vote suppression will primarily be felt downballot. First, vote suppression tactics matter at the margin, and whatever effects they have are likely to be swamped by the increased mobilization of women and minority voters. Also, vote suppression is not uniform, and some of it will occur in states that the GOP will win anyway (Texas) or than are just gravy for Democrats (North Carolina.) It’s not going to save Trump.
• “But this Clinton messaging is very ineffective.” This stuff only matters much if an election is very close, and it’s also very difficult to know ex ante what messaging will be effective — must discussion of it this far out is just reflexive pessimism or a pundit’s fallacy. It’s really not worth worrying about at this point.
• Sanders voters won’t vote for Clinton. The #BernieorBust crowd is very, very annoying, but it’s not likely to be very significant. The PUMA movement looked considerably bigger in 2008, and we know how that turned out. The small subset of Sanders voters who are fools or narcissists is almost certainly greatly overrepresented online.
• But the Republicans have won a lot of elections lately.  I can understand looking at recent results in statehouses and Congress and seeing an electoral juggernaut. But this is a fallacy. Just as it’s wrong to assume that the Republican Party is doomed because it’s not very competitive at the presidential level right now, it’s wrong to assume that because Democrats haven’t done well in state election in off years and in the gerrymandered House they’re in trouble in presidential elections. The electorates are different. As Corey Robin recently observed, the Democratic Party was in fine shape at the state level and in Congress in 1972.

This doesn’t mean that Democrats should be complacent, or that anything is guaranteed. But Trump is a bad candidate that a party that’s already at a significant disadvantage in presidential elections can’t afford.