Beware of Trump wishcasting!

He's not going away.

Scrolling through election returns from Wisconsin last night (I know — I am a GIANT dork), something caught my eye.

It was this from former Illinois GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger:

Kinzinger is one of the most well-known Never Trumpers in the GOP — and someone, I think, who has handled himself generally admirably as his party has been taken over by the billionaire businessman.

But, this tweet — for me — is an example of a particular form of wishcasting that has infected some elements of the never Trump movement as well as plenty of Democrats.

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The notion expressed by Kinzinger is that because some decent-sized chunk of Republicans voted against Trump in Wisconsin that he is “crumbling,” that he is growing weaker by the day and that support for him may collapse entirely before election day.

This is, obviously, what Kinzinger would LIKE to see happen. Because he believes — and I think rightly — that Trump represents an existential threat to the GOP and to the broader way in which we have conceived of democracy in this country for the last 200 or so years.

But, I see very little evidence that Trump is a) fading or b) something any worse than a coin flip to be the next president.

Which doesn’t mean, of course, that we should ignore the Wisconsin results! Here is the latest from the state:

More than 100,00 people voted against Trump despite the fact that there is NO doubt that he is going to be the Republican nominee. That’s something! And the fact that Nikki Haley got 76,000 votes suggests to me that there are a whole bunch of moderate Republicans who (still) aren’t happy with Trump and wanted to send a message to him — in one of the biggest swing states in the country! That’s a big something!

But, in my mind, there’s a major difference between saying that Trump has considerable work to do to win over moderate Republicans, which he does, and predicting that these Wisconsin results are the beginning of the end for Trump.

Because, well, there are lots of other data points that suggest Trump is just as strong as he has ever been — and maybe stronger.

Witness the polling released Tuesday night by the Wall Street Journal, which shows Trump leading Biden in 6 of the 7 states expected to be very close in November.

Now, that’s just one set of polls! And, as I have written, I think Biden has made up some ground in the last few months as he has been campaigning more actively around the country.

All that the WSJ poll affirms for me is that this race is very, very likely to be close. Which people paying attention — like you all! — have known for a while now.

My point here is that waiting for Trump to fade or crumble or collapse in terms of his political support is a fool’s errand.

I think of it in the same way I think of Trump’s many legal problems. They are, without question, serious. But, people who believe that a Trump conviction will a) definitely happen or b) somehow force him out of the race are engaging in this same sort of wishcasting.

They wish a conviction — in one of his four indictments — would happen. They don’t understand how a conviction, if it comes, would not be disqualifying for Trump.

Which, again, I get! Truly, I do. But I simply do not believe — based on what I have seen from Trump and his supporters over these last 9 years — that a conviction would fundamentally alter the race. And it certainly would not change his plans to stay in the race.

The political reality as I see it is this: Donald Trump is in the presidential race to stay. Polling — nationally and in swing states — suggests that he is running even with or slightly ahead of Biden. Nothing that has happened over the past few years — not the election denialism, not the January 6 insurrection, not the indictments — has changed those facts in any meaningful way. And I can’t imagine there is anything that could happen between now and November that would change those facts.

Wishing things would be different has its appeal! But, it takes away from dealing with the realities on the ground. And those realities suggest Trump is here to stay — and is a toss up to be the next president of the United States.

Dealing with the world as you want it to be as opposed to how it is can be a dangerous thing when it comes to politics. Democrats and the Never Trump movement need to be careful.