If Donald Trump were a normal president, being impeached would surely kill his prospects for reelection. But, he is anything but normal. He’s also unpopular but appears far from doomed.
Democrats are partly responsible for Trump’s survival. They’ve made the impeachment process uninteresting. Democrats insisted on partisan and unfair hearings. That all but guarantees a Senate acquittal of Trump.
There’s another factor in Trump’s slipping the noose set by Democrats: Trump himself. He’s such an unusual political figure that he can benefit from things that a more conventional candidate could not. His personal behavior is less of a problem in a two-person general election.
Here are five examples of Trump’s magic:
Minorities. He will lose the black and Hispanic votes by landslide proportions. That’s a given. What’s important, though, is his potential to gain 4 or 5 percentage points, maybe more, in the minority vote than a normal GOP candidate would. This could affect the outcome in numerous states in a close election, as next year’s is expected to be.
The reason for Trump’s opportunity with minority voters is the economy. Blacks and Hispanics have felt the impact of historic gains in jobs, both for adults and teenagers. Trump has produced on a front where President Barack Obama didn’t. Hispanic polling has shown a significant drift in Trump’s direction.
In November, the president spoke to several hundred African Americans in Atlanta. The event got little press attention, but it was seen by Republican strategists as a breakthrough. With the withdrawal of Kamala Harris from the race for the presidential nomination, the Democratic field is without a major minority candidate. Trump will make the most of this fact.
Weak opponents. The Democratic presidential field is unimpressive. Only Joe Biden has serious backing in the black community. But in debates, he has been inarticulate and occasionally confused. At 78, he acts his age. Could he stand up to Trump in a one-on-one, nationally televised debate? Probably not.
Bernie Sanders, the socialist, has a built-in following from the 2016 campaign. But he’s not enlarged it. Like the other candidates, he’s proposing vastly more government and higher taxes. As a recipe for success next year, that’s problematic. Sanders is tough, but not as tough as Trump.
Elizabeth Warren already had her moment as the front-runner. She’s been plummeting in polls for weeks. Trump would not be kind to her. He’d say she’s lived a lie for decades by claiming Cherokee ancestry and exploiting it to gain jobs she otherwise wouldn’t have gotten.
Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, is exceptionally glib. And political strategists wonder if black and Hispanic voters would support him as strongly as they would a non-gay Democratic nominee.
Economy. Democrats have tried to deny Trump credit for the strength of the economy and attribute it instead to Obama. This hasn’t worked. Story after story in the media has warned a recession is looming. It hasn’t happened.
Absent a downturn, Trump will rub the nose of his Democratic opponent in the economic numbers. Think about the economic issue this way: Where would Trump be if the economy was in the dumps? He’d be headed for defeat.
Binary choice. That’s the structure of the 2020 campaign, as it was four years ago. It helps Trump enormously. He knows his task is to make his opponent as unacceptable as possible. It was easy in 2016 with Hillary Clinton. She wasn’t beloved and ran a miserable campaign.
As president, Trump has waged a verbal war against Democrats, the media, nearly every country in the world, and the Federal Reserve, for starters. In 2020, he’ll have a single target, his Democratic rival.
His style is to be relentless. His opponent will feel the brunt of the one-man Trump arsenal. The only thing that could cause him to ease his blitzkrieg would be a scandal such as the Access Hollywood tape in 2016.
Trait. Trump has a trait rare in politics. He gets the votes of people who loathe him. The binary nature of the race facilitates this. Voters who disliked Clinton and didn’t want her to fill the Supreme Court vacancy went with Trump despite being appalled by his personality and style.
Voters start out with no intention of voting for Trump. He runs his usual bombastic and brutal campaign. They hate every moment of it. But on Election Day, they become Trump voters. And he wins, narrowly. Have other successful presidential candidates had this trait? I can’t think of one.
Fred Barnes is a Washington Examiner senior columnist.
