WE'RE PREMATURELY DECLARING VICTORY OVER TRUMP AGAIN

For the thousandth time, we've begun to think we've really got Trump this time! David Frum writes:

For nine years, Trump has dominated the Republican Party.... Enough of the Republican base supported him. Everybody else either fell in line, retired from politics, or quit the party.

... Trump won almost every fight that mattered....

On aid to Ukraine, Trump got his way for 16 months. When Democrats held the majority in the House of Representatives in 2022, they approved four separate aid requests for Ukraine, totaling $74 billion. As soon as Trump’s party took control of the House, in January 2023, the aid stopped. Every Republican officeholder understood: Those who wished to show loyalty to Trump must side against Ukraine....

[But now] Trump’s party in Congress has rebelled against him—and not on a personal payoff to some oddball Trump loyalist, but on one of Trump’s most cherished issues, his siding with Russia against Ukraine....

He has deflated to the point where he could no longer thwart Ukraine aid in Congress. Ukraine won, Trump lost. That may be a repeating pattern in the year ahead.

Reading this, you might imagine that the entire House GOP delegation has been afraid to support Ukraine aid until this week, out of an unwillingness to risk Trump's wrath. But in July 2023, a majority of House Republicans voted to reject bills proposed by Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene that would have blocked military aid to Ukraine. Two months later, a majority of House Republicans voted to retain Ukraine aid in a Pentagon appropriations bill. For quite a while, Republicans linked Ukraine aid to the passage of an immigration bill, and so the aid never passed, but it was perfectly acceptable to be a Republican in Congress and express support for Ukraine aid -- it's not like believing that Trump should have been convicted in one of his impeachment trials, which is a red line Republicans have crossed only at their peril. It's a big deal that Speaker Mike Johnson allowed a vote on the Ukraine aid bill, but support was there. Not every Republican is a Putin bootlicker yet.

Trump opponents increasingly seem to believe that President Biden has this election won -- at the betting site PredictIt, Biden leads Trump 54%-44%, after a rapid improvement in his fortunes over the past few months:

And this Maggie Haberman piece in The New York Times conveys the impression that Trump simply can't be Trump anymore now that his New York criminal trial has begun:

For the next six weeks, a man who values control and tries to shape environments and outcomes to his will is in control of very little....

The mundanity of the courtroom has all but swallowed Mr. Trump, who for decades has sought to project an image of bigness, one he rode from a reality-television studio set to the White House.

...the shared sense among many of his advisers is that the process may damage him as much as a guilty verdict. The process, they believe, is its own punishment.

Trump's superfans, of course, think he's Jesus, so a process they regard as persecution will only confirm them in that belief. Will swing voters peel away as Trump is accused of wrongdoing every day, and is trapped in a courtroom rather than out attacking enemies? Maybe, but I'm not sure that's how this works when you're dealing with a criminal who has a big persona. Think of Trump as an organized crime figure -- a Mafia don or a Latin American druglord. Do guys like that really seem diminshed by the process of being on trial? They look diminished when they're convicted and jailed, but until then, they look like people who are important enough to be tried in a courtroom full of reporters. Trump in an orange jumpsuit would seem diminished. Right now, he seems like a dangerous animal in a cage -- restrained, but still a threat.

Sure, this might really be the beginning of the end for Trump. On the other hand, we've been promised the beginning of the end so many times over the past nine years that we ought to be skeptical. I'll start to believe the Trump era is ending when Biden leads in most polls by at least 5 points, enough to overcome the GOP's built-in Electoral College advantage. We're not there yet. We're not really close.