I think, I have identified Trump's biggest political nemesis.

[Whiskeytide]

13. Traditional political science theory and conventional wisdom...

... support what you’re saying here. And I have always agreed with it.

BUT - trump defied it. He NEVER shifted back to the middle after winning the primary. Instead he pushed his rhetoric even more to the far right. And he AND his party won. Bigly.

Backlash against a successful black president;
Gerrymandering;
Mass communication conditioning via fox/AM radio;
Flipped votes;
Russian/Saudi interference;
Defunded education system;

And ... let’s face it ... A lot more of us are assholes than we thought...

There are dozens more “reasons”.

But, fundamentally, something has shifted on our political landscape. Their numbers analysis on their base against the general election is working for them. They figured out that most republicans will NEVER vote for a Dem due to tribalism. They have the moderate conservative votes no matter what. Then they realized that there was a whole underground of disengaged racist assholes out there that could be whipped up into a frenzy. They tapped into that. You combine those two groups, along with evangelicals (who generally fall into one of those two groups anyway), and you get just enough electoral college votes to win.

It’s a scary time when you think about the next few election cycles. I suspect it’s going to get a lot harder to predict what’s going to happen.