Opinion | We Still Don’t Really Understand Trump — or America

“In the eyes of the suburban voter, the Democratic Party of 2020 was much more radical than the Democratic Party of 2018,” Bliss told me. “In 2018, it was a brand-new candidate with no record who wanted you to have better health care. In 2020, it was Bernie Sanders, Liz Warren and A.O.C.”

But politics is complicated: In some places, that reorientation benefited the Democratic Party, which is left with the paradox that the very priorities that most excite its base give serious pause to swing voters and potential converts. Biden, for example, performed much better in the suburbs of Detroit that are represented in Congress by Rashida Tlaib, one of Ocasio-Cortez’s close allies in the House, than Hillary Clinton had, and the turnout of progressive voters there was a critical building block of his victory in Michigan, which Clinton narrowly lost.

What’s uncomplicated is Trump’s mastery of one of the most potent political tricks: whipping people up. Love him or hate him, he’s mesmerizing.

“He’s got this swagger,” Heitkamp said. “If you read the stories about the rallies, they sound like fun events. People have fun there. That’s one thing the Democratic Party should take from Donald Trump.”

And in the final weeks of the campaign, Trump was able to dominate the stage, because Biden, concerned about the safety of big events, ceded it. That was its own considered political statement, its own strategy, but it’s not easy for absence to compete with presence. Quiet with loud. Prohibition with permission.

Trump committed to a furious schedule of his signature rallies in the homestretch, and, ever shameless, exploited Americans’ fears of new shutdowns amid an uptick of coronavirus infections by saying that he would liberate the economy while Biden would strangle it. According to a survey conducted by The Associated Press, 50 percent of voters who made their decisions in the days or minutes before they cast their ballots chose Trump, while 38 percent chose Biden.

I found one of the most intriguing takes on Trump’s appeal in the book “Trump’s Democrats,” by the college professors Stephanie Muravchik and Jon Shields, published in late September. It closely examined voters in three communities — one in Rhode Island, one in Iowa and one in Kentucky — that were firmly Democratic until Trump came along.