These are far from certain to be Donald Trump’s last months in the White House. The US president’s deficit in national and state polls is daunting but recoverable. His opponent, Joe Biden, has profited from an inconspicuousness that cannot last until the November election. One external shock — a military skirmish, say, or a Covid-19 vaccine — and this campaign would be upended, to who knows whose favour.
All of that stipulated, it is not rash to ponder the future of the Republican party after Mr Trump. And to sense that his threat to liberalism has been an amateur version of what is to come.
That Mr Trump’s successors will retain the substance of his views, even harden them, is plain enough. A base that is still mesmerised by his nativism will punish much deviation from it. If anything new does emerge, however, it will be an emphasis on governmental competence. Its absence has been the salvation of liberals in recent years.