The panic and excitement attending Donald Trump have always shared an assumption: that his election marked a profound break with the American politics that came before it. During his inaugural address, as he surveyed the national landscape of “American carnage,” Trump himself invoked the advent of “a historic movement the likes of which the world has never seen before.” In the years and events that followed — the endless soap opera of the White House, the forceful separation of children from their families at the border, the pandemic, Trump’s refusal to permit even a passing interest in a peaceful transfer of power — it seemed increasingly clear that the world never had.

But for all the attention paid to what Trump represents in American politics, the most salient feature of his ascent within the Republican Party might be what he doesn’t represent. When Ronald Reagan overthrew the old order of the Republican Party in the 1980 election, he did so as the figurehead of a conservative movement that had been gestating since the 1950s, with an intellectual framework that William F. Buckley Jr. had been articulating for a quarter-century, with a policy blueprint provided by the Heritage Foundation and with a campaign apparatus that quickly pivoted to the task of converting the new constituencies he’d brought into the party to a base durable enough to build on. The total merger of his movement with his party didn’t happen immediately, but the key elements of it were in place by the end of his first term, and there was not much ambiguity about what the G.O.P., if it was transforming, was transforming into.

Trump’s takeover, by contrast, has been as one-dimensional as it has been total. In the space of one term, the president has co-opted virtually every power center in the Republican Party, from its congressional caucuses to its state parties, its think tanks to its political action committees. But though he has disassembled much of the old order, he has built very little in its place. “You end up with this weird paradox where he stands to haunt the G.O.P. for many years to come, but on the substance it’s like he was never even there,” said Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist.

During Trump’s presidency, his party has become host to new species of fringe figures. Laura Loomer, a self-identified #ProudIslamophobe and erstwhile Infowars contributor who has been banned from Twitter and Facebook, earned presidential praise — and a campaign-trail cameo from Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump — for winning her Florida congressional district’s Republican primary in August. There is also Marjorie Taylor Greene, the party’s current nominee in the race for Georgia’s 14th district, whose embrace of the QAnon conspiracy theory and litany of racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic statements didn’t dissuade Trump from calling her a “future Republican star,” or Representative Kevin McCarthy, the Republicans’ leader in the House, from pledging to give her committee assignments should she win in November.

In the next two days, as Trump and Abe talked about trade and North Korea, Trump’s Palm Beach, Fla., club billed the U.S. government $13,700 for guest rooms, $16,500 for food and wine and $6,000 for the roses and other floral arrangements.

Since his first month in office, Trump has used his power to direct millions from U.S. taxpayers — and from his political supporters — into his own businesses. The Washington Post has sought to compile examples of this spending through open records requests and a lawsuit.

In all, he has received at least $8.1 million from these two sources since he took office, those documents and publicly available records show.

The president brought taxpayer money to his businesses simply by bringing himself. He’s visited his hotels and clubs more than 280 times now, making them a familiar backdrop for his presidency. And in doing so, he has turned those properties into magnets for GOP events, including glitzy fundraisers for his own reelection campaign, where big donors go to see and be seen.

Size of defeat matters. A Trump defeat by 5 or 6 points in the popular vote, say, and especially one in which Republicans hold the Senate, would look somewhat like 1992. A defeat by 8 or 9 points, with the loss of the Senate, would be more reminiscent of 1980. A double-digit tsunami extending even to the loss of Republican strongholds such as Texas or Georgia, accompanied by a higher number of Senate seats flipping, might begin to look more like 1932.

Consider three alternate Wednesday, November 4, headlines:

“Trump loses presidency as Midwest flips; GOP holds Senate.”
“Trump defeated by big margin; election called early as Florida and North Carolina go to Biden; Democrats win Senate.”
“Biden wins by double digits in popular vote; rout extends to victory in Texas; Democrats control Senate easily.”

The initial reactions to these would be very different. But so, probably, would be the lasting effects. One would be a defeat for Trump, the second a rejection not just of Trump but perhaps of Trumpism. The third would open up the possibility for a re-making of the GOP and of conservatism itself.

Of course, history doesn’t repeat itself. It doesn’t even rhyme. And election consequences don’t move in a straight line from size of victory to impact on our politics. But it does seem likely that next week not just the fact of victory, but the margin of victory, will matter.

After already having been indicted in Michigan for a robocall scheme to intimidate urban-area voters with misinformation, the fabulously inept duo of Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman have now been indicted in Cuyahoga County for the same scheme.

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost's office referred the case to local prosecutors.

Congresswoman Marcia Fudge was among those who noted after the Michigan case was unveiled that similar calls had been reported in Cleveland.

Wohl and Burkman face eight counts of telecommunications fraud and seven counts of bribery.

With just days until voting ends (let’s stop calling Nov. 3 “Election Day,” since well more than 60 million Americans have already cast ballots), Donald Trump has reminded his critics why his presidency and his campaign are crashing.

First, Trump has refused to understand that without a strategy to control the spread of the novel coronavirus, we will not enjoy a sustained economic recovery. The Post reports, “U.S. markets slumped Monday as investors grappled with uncertainty about economic stimulus negotiations and soaring coronavirus cases around the country. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 650 points, or 2.3 percent, to 27,686.”

It was not hard to figure out why. The Post also reports, “The United States hit a record high in new coronavirus cases Friday, with more than 83,700 reported, according to data from Johns Hopkins.” The markets understand what Trump does not, namely that the spike in cases disproves that we are “turning the corner” and makes clear that the economy will not be able to return to “normal” for a long time. Moreover, the White House and Senate Republicans sunk the most obvious life-raft for the economy and ignored the advice of the Federal Reserve chair in failing to pass a stimulus bill. Trump has failed to control the virus, failed to champion a federal legislative response and, as a result, failed to stabilize the economy.

In addition to the big-picture policy failure, Trump is doing a bang-up job highlighting his personal failings. He stalks out of an interview with CBS News’s Lesley Stahl (which he hyped in advance) because she promised to ask tough questions and refused to allow his lies to go unchecked. We see not only Trump’s fragile connection to reality and personal weakness, but also his inability to deal with strong women. Instead of projecting strength and competence to suburban women, he comes across as the quintessential bully whose obnoxious conduct ineptly tries to cover for a weak, cowardly personality.

President Trump is now raging at the media for the sin of covering the pandemic and urging people to change their votes to him, demonstrating fury over an unalterable reality: This election is all about his catastrophic botching of a public health crisis that is rampaging furiously at the very moment when people are already voting in record numbers.

But, now that the Senate has confirmed Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court — and now that the court just issued a controversial ruling in Wisconsin that could help Trump — is it possible the court might save Trump if he’s on track to lose, as he has openly declared he wants?

It’s unlikely. A lot of things would have to line up perfectly for that to happen.

Twenty former U.S. attorneys — all of them Republicans — on Tuesday publicly called President Trump “a threat to the rule of law in our country,” and urged that he be replaced in November with his Democratic opponent, former vice president Joe Biden.

“The President has clearly conveyed that he expects his Justice Department appointees and prosecutors to serve his personal and political interests,” said the former prosecutors in an open letter. They accused Trump of taking “action against those who have stood up for the interests of justice.”

The letter, signed by prosecutors appointed by every GOP president from Eisenhower to Trump, is the latest instance of Republicans backing Biden. In August, dozens of GOP national security experts signed a full-page newspaper ad endorsing Biden over Trump.

“He has politicized the Justice Department, dictating its priorities along political lines and breaking down the barrier that prior administrations had maintained between political and prosecutorial decision-making,” their letter says.

Bloomberg: “Trump held three rallies Monday, all in Pennsylvania, with three more scheduled Tuesday and as many as five or six a day expected by the weekend. The rallies befit the showman with roots in reality television: blaring music, slick production, video montages, warm-up speeches, Air Force One as a backdrop and the president himself as the headline attraction. Attendees erupt in screams and cheers at his arrival, and local Republicans say it’s unlike any political event they’ve seen.”

“Holding rallies in defiance of coronavirus health recommendations has fueled voters’ disapproval of his handling of the pandemic — feeding Biden’s key argument that Trump has mishandled the first major crisis of his presidency. And pollsters say there’s little evidence of a rally boost.”

“Alan Abramowitz, an Emory University professor who studied Trump’s rally impact in the 2016 and 2018 cycles, found they didn’t move the needle in the states where they were held. He expects the same in 2020.”