Has anyone noticed that Trump isn't even trying to expand his base?

He can't admit to himself how unpopular he is. It comes with his Narcissistic personality disorder.

he is incapable of recognizing his own incompetence and to assume "he can't admit to himself how unpopular he is" requires connecting and then disconnecting from reality...there was never a "connecting"...Trump is a self-promoting public relations creation coddled by a media that despised the Clintons, Hillary in particular..Trump is now what he has always been...a stupid emotionally apathetic narcissistic sociopath but unlike 2016, Trump's stupidity, racial and ethnic hatred, sexual deviancy and repugnant optics are on full display in a never-ending 24/7 news cycle...and because we are now living in this upside down world consumed by a horrific virus that could have been stunted if not for his apathetic self serving response, we are witnessing the true nothingness that is Trump...2020 is not 2016...he's cognitively incapable of understanding that he's losing...and because he's legend in his own corroded mind he's going to win and win bigly...

:huke:

The guiding principle during his entire tenure has been to be president of only "his base."

and anti BLM stuff

He believes his own press. In 2016, he was going against an unpopular candidate who had just gone through a bruising primary, there was a lot of dissatisfaction with her actions (even if there wasn't that much against the Democrats per se) and at a critical juncture in time, the Comey report happened. It was the perfect storm, and he won by what amounts to a technicality.

He took the wrong lessons from that election - that he had actually tapped into a deep wellspring of hate in this country, and that such a wellspring was typical of half of the population. He squandered his first two years when he was in office, not bothering to reach out and build bridges, and was shocked when the 2018 elections put the Democrats back into the House, ultimately blocking his access to the purse and opening up avenues for investigation and impeachment.

Portland is not a deeply thought out plan. It's an attempt at thuggery, at showing to his base that he's tough on protestors, just like his march to the church was an attempt to show that he was the religious right's man, which was another disaster, just as the rallies in Oklahoma and Arizona were intended to show that he had a powerful following, but instead only proved that his followers were actually wising up to him.

Now, it is possible that between now and November, he will attempt to do what he can to cancel the elections, but he really has no control over them. Trying to take over the post office is being seen as a blatantly political move, one that could very well backfire upon the GOP when Republicans try to VBM and discover that their ballots never made it through, and it adds election fraud and mail tampering onto the LONG laundry list of crimes that DT has committed. Also, at some point, even the most fervent true believer has got to be asking himself whether or not Trump is worth re-electing.

He does what he does. Against an unpopular candidate it worked. Had any of his primary opponents won they would be in a good position now.

But trump is too stupid to realize he is stupid. He is not playing chess or even Checkers.

It was a time when Trump was down 4 or 5 points in the polls. I told him that is any of the other candidates had won the nomination they would be up 10 points on Clinton.

She was vastly unpopular and the 2016 Democratic primary was very weak. We were up against the 3rd term wall and we didn't have much interest from our best candidates to get in. The sitting Vice President didn't even run. Sure, there were special circumstances to that, but some of it was likely that he knew he would be at a disadvantage based solely on the political environment at the time.

Had the democrats known that Donald Trump was going to be the Republican nominee they would have been climbing over each other to run. Warren would have run, Biden would have run, others as well. Most of those would have beaten Trump. Clinton was very unpopular, even among many Democrats.

... the popular vote - what with being so unpopular and all.

She still managed to lose three states that had been considered Democratic locks for years.

are misogynist .

She got millions more votes in the primary and GE . And this is taking into account all the attacks she recieved for decades plus the russian shit and Comey to top it all off.

All while the media and certain others gave a pass to Trump .

The biggest difference between HIllary and Biden is he doesn't have to deal with misogyny .

If he can’t win at the ballot box he will use force and terror to disrupt the election.
It looks like he has assembled his own personal secret troops that are perfectly fine using thug tactics.
I won’t be surprised when vocal opponent of Trump mysteriously disappear.

And the Republican Party will support this, of course.
Other than an occasional lone voice you won’t hear any opposition from half of the government.

he is a one-trick pony

and behave with so much hostility to the rank and file of the other party.

So he figures he can count on it a second time.

I have no doubt it is correct, to some extent. Trump pulled in numbers and percentages the GOP did not expect from that block. I'm sure it has quietly been targeted even more for the past 3.5 years

It doesn't take a lot of magats to die in rural states for there to be a big impact electorally.

… that the most likely explanation for whatever Trump does is the most obvious one: it’s because the man is an idiot.

There has never been a plan.
Let's face it; running at all was a PR stunt. Or, a Trading Places style bet with one of his golf cheating compatriots.
He never really wanted this job.
The 3 hours a day he actually spends working is the most he's ever done in his life.
He was winging it in early 2016, and he still is.

I've said this all along. And Mary Trump's book confirms it. But we also have to realize he has surrounded himself with people intelligent enough to pull off some very dastardly things. By himself, he couldn't even pull of pardoning someone. He literally could not do the paper work required.

he is trying to start enough civil unrest to declare a state of national emergency as a reason to not leave? It’s Stephen Miller’s idea. trump can’t think that big.

But that does not mean he is planning on leaving either.

This is what happens when a crime ring gets power. All of them have a reason to stretch this out as long as they can.