By fixating on his election victory, President Trump may be ensuring it’s his most impressive accomplishment.
Jacob Sullum writes:
Last month Donald Trump interrupted his own comments on Republican health care legislation to marvel once again at the victory he had won six months before. “I’m president!” he exclaimed. “Hey! I’m president! Can you believe it, right?”
Trump’s comical obsession with his own electoral accomplishment is at the root of his current political troubles, including investigations that will hobble him for months, even if they ultimately find no criminal wrongdoing. By constantly revisiting his unexpected defeat of Hillary Clinton and insisting that everyone acknowledge how amazing it was, he may ensure that nothing he does in the White House will be nearly as impressive.
After the election, Trump called his victory a “landslide.” It wasn’t. As political scientist John J. Pitney Jr. pointed out, Trump’s share of the electoral vote ranked 46 out of 58 presidential contests.
Trump said his feat was still impressive because, as he put it last week, “it’s almost impossible for the Democrats to lose the Electoral College.” That is not true either. If anything, Republicans have a slight advantage in the Electoral College, because Democrats are more concentrated in certain parts of the country and therefore tend to waste more popular votes by far exceeding the threshold needed to win a state.
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