It Could Be the Best of Both Worlds
While Trump might be fine with losing I’m sure he’d prefer to win. He’s doing endless rallies, coming up with new outrageous things to say or pie-in-the-sky promises to stay in the headlines every day. He has promised to not just slow grocery price increases but actually bring prices down. That’s impossible in any practical sense and, as the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics has noted, is the kind of action that could trigger recession. He’s even making a swing through states he is unlikely to win, apparently on the chance it could make a difference.
Then again, losing would be fine for him in numerous ways, and in some ways he’s been acting like it.
If he loses he will of course make an enormous campaign of claiming the election was stolen, especially up until the inauguration. What does that mean for him? A lot of attention, a lot of interviews, a lot of being a pest to the Democrats as they would be preparing for transition, all of which he would relish. It would also mean great material for endless fundraising off of his supporters.
He can make the case to his supporters that it’s an existential need. Since he has a track record of raising funds for such things and then having a lot of it go to his own interests or his personal legal cases, that will be good for his personal economics. The New York Times did an excellent track of money coming in for other reasons, like intended to help his Save America PAC or for the Republican National Committee, but which went to his personal legal fees or other personal interests. It would be fair to call it grifting because if a good chunk of it goes to pursuing court cases and audits which are doomed to fail, as happened after 2020 when almost half were immediately dismissed by judges of various backgrounds for lack of merit, then he’s hitting up his supporters for projects that are certain to fail, with the only real goal being to continue to look like he’s fighting a good fight so he can do yet more fundraising. Does that fit the definition of grift? It would seem to.
Then he’ll be able to go on for the next several years with ever more of the same. He’ll have an enormous number of supporters who think of him as the true president. That’s a nice position to be in for someone who likes all the perks of upper-echelon life.
And while he’s doing all of that he won’t have the headaches of actually being president. He doesn’t have to deal with the conflicts that come at a president. He doesn’t have to succeed at any policies. He can just criticize those actually in office trying to make things work. Of course there are downsides to his being out of office relative to what he likes. He won’t be able to tell people what to do to the same extent. He won’t be able to use government agencies to harass his perceived enemies. So definitely a negative in some ways, but all the downside of being president? He won’t have to worry about. Won’t have to have that on his shoulders.
With that in mind, as he finishes this campaign, if he gets to a rally and is tired and would rather just let the music fill in for most of an hour, why not? If he’s in Detroit and just feels like talking about what a terrible city he thinks Detroit is, and offending all those potential voters? Eh, why not? Given his likes and goals it’s not going to work out bad for him either way, so why put in the tiring effort of campaigning smartly all the time?
There’s no way to know if this is the way he’s thinking, but keep watching him in these final campaign days and see if it doesn’t sometimes make sense.
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