The animating concept behind the Trump campaign will be chaos. This is what history shows us fascists do when given the chance to participate in democratic political campaigns: They create chaos. They do it because chaos works to their advantage. They revel in it, because they can see how profoundly chaos unnerves democratic-republicans—everyone, that is, whether liberal or conservative, who believes in the basic idea of a representative government that is built around neutral rules. Fascism exists to pulverize neutral rules.
So they campaign with explicit intention to instill a sense of chaos. And then comes the topper: They have the audacity to insist that the only solution to the chaos—that they themselves have either grossly exaggerated or in some cases created!—is to vote for them: “You see, there is nothing but chaos afoot, and only we can restore order!”
This is demonstrably true, though. Hell, there’s no point to voting if you do win, when the election is sufficiently lopsided. The general election process is the tail end of a far larger and more financially involved whittling of the candidate pool.
Even then, the focus is on building a movement rather than a single candidate’s campaign. Elections are not one-and-done. Candidates can rise and fall in iterative races based on the coalitions they built (or squandered) in prior campaigns.
Turnout hardly matters when only a few candidates have the resources to compete. This Presidential primary is case-in-point. When Trump is favored to win 60% of the primary vote and Biden is virtually uncontested, volume of participation is irrelevant. Whether turnout is 10% or 100%, the same two guys are going to move on to the general.
I’ll spot you that primaries have an outsized influence and that entryists in the democratic process are savvy to focus their attentions on these races. But Beto O’Rourke winning the primary for Texas Senate and then Texas Governor did nothing to overcome the enormous support-deficit he suffered in the general.