Of course Trump can win. Simple.

 He doesn't have to cheat.

He has a simple path to re-election. 

Democrats might as well get used to the potential of loss now.  It could easily happen, and that way Wednesday won't be such a shock.

Here's how: Trump wins the sunbelt, states that are a stretch for Democrats. Then Trump also wins Pennsylvania. Bingo!  It isn't rocket science.

First, let me acknowledge the obvious so readers don't think I am ignoring "reality" as they understand it. First of all, yes, Trump will lose the popular vote, worse than in 2016. He will lose California and New York by huge margins. National polls show him behind by about 7 points, 49-42 nationally. It doesn't matter. He will win more than 270 electoral votes, which does matter. 

This is how Trump wins

   

Let me acknowledge that Trump has grave problems. Trump has a noxious personality that even most of his supporters recognize. They know he lies constantly. They know he thinks only about himself, a world class narcissist. They know he is cruel and vulgar and a terrible example of Christian virtues. They know he tweets embarrassing, dishonest things. They know he paid off porn stars. They know he uses the pardon power to get people to keep mum on things that would get him in trouble. They know he is prejudiced against Muslims. They know he governs for his base and not the whole country and that he is intentionally divisive. They know he is feeding them baloney about having "turned the corner" on COVID and they know the virus is spreading and that people are dying. They know he says things that reflect White pride and distaste for the aspirations of Blacks and citizens of Latin American heritage, Cuba excepted. They know he sounds authoritarian and that he is using tactics that European fascists and Third World dictators have used.

Voters know all that! Either those are irrelevant to enough of them in the right places, or they are good things that reflect their own policy preferences. A lot of voters don't mind a criminal bully as president, if his cheating helps them. 

Sunbelt retirees are a huge voting block and seniors have good reason to be unhappy with Trump, but those seniors are a Republican-oriented group. Trump won them big in 2016. Democrats are so glass-half-full in their thinking that they are missing the real meaning of the Sunbelt polls: amid a pandemic that targets old people, Florida and Arizona are essentially even in the polls. Trump is letting the virus spread to get herd mentality--meaning herd immunity--which means that seniors will likely pretty soon get exposed and if/when we get it, some two to ten percent of us will die early because of that, depending on our age and health. What more could Trump possibly do to estrange senior voters than risk their deaths so the rest of the country can go maskless to bars and restaurants? The even polls, in the face of all that, are a sign of Trump's resilient strength. A lot of seniors think they should be self-reliant and protect themselves. The Democrats are thinking of their children, grandchildren and the community good. The ones who think of self defense and self-reliance are Republicans. I expect them to vote their habit and team, like they did last time.

And North Carolina? North Carolina is Dixie.  Trump is the White person's candidate. Eventually the generations will change things, but not yet.

If Trump carries the Sunbelt, all he needs is Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania will be close, and yes, at this moment polls show Biden ahead narrowly, but there are disturbances in Philadelphia this week . Biden is famously a Scranton boy, but he is not doing whatever a Democratic leader might do to stop the urban violence. He is not going there, showing himself on a truck with a bullhorn, telling people to go home, and having them go home. Voters see the storm and they know Trump helped create the storm, and they see Trump looking to the familiar tactic of heavy policing, a mixed message of cause and effect. But they also see Biden's absence. If two or three Pennsylvania voters in 100 conclude that Biden is old and ineffective and that he cannot and will not bring Philadelphia together, much less the country, then even though Trump is is a divisive jerk, at least he is doing something. Trump can win Pennsylvania fair and square.

Of course, Trump also has plan B, which is to  contest the validity of some big percentage of votes coming out of Democratic Philadelphia, and just a little of that will do the trick. Getting the Republican legislature to present a whole other slate of electors in a failed election is actually Plan C.

That's it. Trump wins the Sunbelt and Pennsylvania, again. 

Democrats can already begin thinking about what went wrong. How did we lose to a obvious narcissistic sociopath who screwed up a pandemic while a thousand Americans die every day??

Some of it is that Democrats talk of income redistribution sounds great to Democratic activists, but it hasn't been sold as all-American fairness. It has been presented as an attack on wealth and that is a mistake. I had a thirty-year career working with people and their money. They don't hate money. They want to be a little or a lot rich themselves. It is suicidal for Democrats to label policies "socialism," but they do it anyway and pay the price. Democrats who insist on third trimester abortions hand big margins of churchgoers to Republicans. It is pro-choice orthodoxy, but Democrats change a winning issue into a moral offense, and pay the price. Democrats appear to be helpless to stop urban violence, afraid of offending Black Americans and White anti-racists if they don't tolerate violence as a form of speech, and for that, too, they pay the price. 

Trump is not sure to win, but he easily could. Trump is, after all, a stunningly unpleasant person disliked by a great many Americans. There may be, barely, just enough voters who are sick of his act.

In the meantime Democrats can quit telling themselves everything is going to be OK.