What if trump is right

It was structured around a series of rapid-fire five-minute presentations on everything from which ads were working to messaging to legal strategy.

The invitation-only gatherings soon attracted hundreds, creating a rare shared base of knowledge for the fractious progressive movement. The group had no name, no leaders and no hierarchy, but it kept the disparate actors in sync.

He allowed this ecosystem to work together. Protecting the election would require an effort of unprecedented scale. And eventually it reached across the aisle, into the world of Trump-skeptical Republicans appalled by his attacks on democracy. For the thousands of local, mostly nonpartisan officials who administer elections, the most urgent need was money. They needed protective equipment like masks, gloves and hand sanitizer.

They needed to pay for postcards letting people know they could vote absentee—or, in some states, to mail ballots to every voter. They needed additional staff and scanners to process ballots. Private philanthropy stepped into the breach. An assortment of foundations contributed tens of millions in election-administration funding. The institute gave secretaries of state from both parties technical advice on everything from which vendors to use to how to locate drop boxes.

Local officials are the most trusted sources of election information, but few can afford a press secretary, so the institute distributed communications tool kits. Part of the challenge was logistical: each state has different rules for when and how ballots should be requested and returned. The Voter Participation Center, which in a normal year would have supported local groups deploying canvassers door-to-door to get out the vote, instead conducted focus groups in April and May to find out what would get people to vote by mail.

In August and September, it sent ballot applications to 15 million people in key states, 4. In mailings and digital ads, the group urged people not to wait for Election Day.

The effort had to overcome heightened skepticism in some communities. At the same time, Democratic lawyers battled a historic tide of pre-election litigation.

But the lawyers noticed something else as well. In the end, nearly half the electorate cast ballots by mail in , practically a revolution in how people vote.

About a quarter voted early in person. Only a quarter of voters cast their ballots the traditional way: in person on Election Day. Bad actors spreading false information is nothing new. Laura Quinn, a veteran progressive operative who co-founded Catalist, began studying this problem a few years ago.

She piloted a nameless, secret project, which she has never before publicly discussed, that tracked disinformation online and tried to figure out how to combat it. One component was tracking dangerous lies that might otherwise spread unnoticed. Researchers then provided information to campaigners or the media to track down the sources and expose them.

The solution, she concluded, was to pressure platforms to enforce their rules, both by removing content or accounts that spread disinformation and by more aggressively policing it in the first place. In November , Mark Zuckerberg invited nine civil rights leaders to dinner at his home, where they warned him about the danger of the election-related falsehoods that were already spreading unchecked. Was it enough? Probably not. Was it later than we wanted? But it was really important, given the level of official disinformation, that they had those rules in place and were tagging things and taking them down.

Beyond battling bad information, there was a need to explain a rapidly changing election process. Dick Gephardt, the Democratic former House leader turned high-powered lobbyist, spearheaded one coalition. They ran ads in six states, made statements, wrote articles and alerted local officials to potential problems. This is going to be just as important, he told them, to convince the liberals when Trump wins. Together, they were viewed more than 1 billion times. Setting public expectations ahead of time helped undercut those lies.

The organizers who helped lead it wanted to harness its momentum for the election without allowing it to be co-opted by politicians. Black organizers also recruited thousands of poll workers to ensure polling places would stay open in their communities.

The summer uprising had shown that people power could have a massive impact. Activists began preparing to reprise the demonstrations if Trump tried to steal the election.

Could he win? Of course he could. It is unlikely—though not impossible! Biden also retains certain structural advantages. Incumbents have a built-in edge, and although the future course of the pandemic is unpredictable, the economy seems likely to improve, if slowly. Most worryingly for Democrats, Biden has lost favor with independent voters. This adds up to a decent shot at Trump winning in —at least an Electoral College win, as in , and perhaps even the popular-vote win that has twice eluded him.

I wrote on the eve of the election that a second Trump term would be more dangerous than the first , but a second Trump term beginning in would go beyond that. But Douthat underestimates the changed institutional landscape that would greet Trump upon reentering office on January 20, But then, President Trump never takes the path of least resistance. There are legitimate reasons for skepticism about the election outcome, and they warrant full consideration.

They fall primarily in two areas: anomalies in the vote tallies and the consequences of large-scale mail-in voting. The emerging facts support the concern. In a recent statistical assessment of 8, incremental updates that added mail-in voting results to the vote tallies in multiple states, several of the updates were determined to be extreme outliers i. This is just math, not allegation of wrongdoing. But they raise glaring questions.

Regarding the election process, it is no surprise — as predicted months before the election — that large scale mail-in voting, particularly when implemented on the fly, is fraught both with potential for error and opportunities for fraud.

If Trump is dipping his toe once more into presidential politics, the prospect hasn't been universally welcomed outside the friendly confines of his rallies. A recent Pew Research poll found that, while two-thirds of Republicans in the US want Trump to remain a "major political figure", fewer than half want him to seek the Republican presidential nomination a third time.

It's what the New York Times' Jonathan Martin has called the "gold watch" constituency - a portion of the party that wants to thank Trump for his service and then usher him into retirement with a shiny gift and a pat on the back. That is a sentiment shared by Iowans like Josh Luedtke, a senior at the University of Iowa and a member of the school's College Republicans.

But he also did a lot of dividing of the people. If Trump is going to run again, he'll need to convince people like Luedtke that he can win in , says Bob Vander Plaats, a prominent Iowa evangelical leader.

And I'd recommend to him that you have to focus on your accomplishments. Vander Plaats, president of The Family Leader, has an opinion that carries considerable weight in the state.

He has endorsed the eventual Republican winner of the Iowa caucuses in , and when Texas Senator Ted Cruz easily beat Trump.

They are acting like it will be a wide-open nomination race - although they're all walking a fine line between laying the groundwork for a future campaign while not angering Trump or his supporters.

To be sure, there are reasons Trump may end up on the sidelines come While he managed to keep a vigorous campaign schedule last year, his age - currently 75 - could become a factor.

Then there are the criminal investigations, into his businesses in New York and his post-election pressuring of Georgia election officials, that might present legal obstacles. If Trump does enter the race, Vander Plaats says, he should be able to clear most of the field.