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.
ImageMembers of the incoming freshman class of Congress posing for a group photo on Capitol Hill in November 2018.
Members of the incoming freshman class of Congress posing for a group photo on Capitol Hill in November 2018.Credit...Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press
“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.\
