This Is How You Know Trump Smells Victory

I’m used to Donald Trump being painfully loud, proudly obnoxious and, well, sort of bonkers. I’m used to alligators-on-the-border Trump, sharks-in-the-water Trump, Hannibal Lecter Trump.

I’m not used to the Trump of the past two weeks, who has held back almost as much as he has held forth, stripping the Republican Party platform of several extremist flourishes and distancing himself (for now) from the Heritage Foundation’s designs for a quasi-autocratic, demi-theocratic America.

And this loosely hinged version of Trump scares me much, much more than the utterly unhinged one.

It tells me that he understands what a turning point the June 27 debate was, realizes the virtue of stepping back while pundits pummel Biden and the Democratic Party reels, and can sporadically muster the discipline to do so. He smells victory in November in a way he’s never really smelled it before, and his nose isn’t off. As I said: terrifying.

It also tells me that he or at least some of his most influential advisers are open-eyed about his vulnerabilities and about key constituencies and are focused on both. What they did with the platform, just before next week’s Republican National Convention, was soften its anti-abortion stance and tone down the homophobia. Yoo-hoo, suburban women, you can safely park your votes here!

It’s a lie, but Trump is excellent at those. It’s also a warning. Biden’s theory of victory as he dismisses qualms about his candidacy, lashes out at critics and puts his legacy — and the nation’s future — in serious jeopardy is that Trump’s irrationality trumps any infirmity, and that as Election Day nears and voters start really paying attention, they’ll get fresh glimpses of what an erratic, cruel and ignorant despot Trump is.

But what if Trump shows them something else? Puts on sheep’s clothing or at least a few fleecy tufts here and there? What does that do to Democrats’ odds of keeping him out of the White House and American democracy intact?