Historian Victor Davis Hanson has a unique way of putting things in perspective. He’s at it again with a column explaining Donald Trump’s outlook going into 2024.

For six years, observers have noted the disconnect between Trump’s stellar record of governance, his occasional sense of humor and even self-criticism — and his ad hominem venom that often turns off the 3-7 percent of the electorate in the suburbs who otherwise might vote for him.

Trump has never listened to advice to moderate his language or demeanor, Hanson notes, and “for several understandable reasons.”

One, Trump is reactive in his “they started it, I finish it” mode. His theory of deterrence is to be disproportionate in retort to eliminate future preemptive attacks. Almost all of Trump’s crudeness was in disproportionate response, sometimes even to minor offenses.

In such a world of Trump deterrence, if you do not relish a crude Trump, then don’t first talk about cutting off his head, blowing him up, stabbing him, shooting him, or lighting him on fire, or don’t spread lies like “Russian collusion,” “laptop disinformation,” or that the influence-selling Biden consortium was innocent of shaking down foreign interests for millions of dollars that were routed into the clan’s coffers.

Hanson provides useful context by providing a contrast to Barack Obama, who “went ballistic” over the idea that he was born in Kenya — even though he himself fueled such tales. Obama got away with a slap on the wrist for significant campaign finance fraud. He got away with bribery and tax fraud in the Tony Rezko deal. Even his “wingman,” Eric Holder, got away with defying a congressional subpoena — unlike Trump’s associates. The two-tiered justice is loathsome.

Back to Trump, Hanson says:

Two, Trump’s base, unlike his other supporters, does not differentiate between Trump’s solid governance and his volatile character. They see what he does and says not as antithetical but complementary. Trump, in the base’s view, gets things done precisely because he displays open, unfiltered contempt for the swamp, the bipartisan political class, the globalists, and the media.

His 24/7 bellicosity, MAGA diehards feel, ensures he will always be hated by the media and establishment — and thus not compromised even if he wished to be. …

Three, Trump is seen as the MAGA rabid pit bull, who, from time to time, is to be unleashed and pointed in the proper direction. For those who were smeared collectively and nonstop by Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, or a late John McCain variously as clingers, deplorables, irredeemables, racists, sexists, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, chumps, dregs, semi-fascists, hobbits, bizarros, and crazies — and as smelly and toothless by the media — Trump is their payback.

So, how can Trump win? Hanson provides a roadmap:

Trump has an enormous responsibility in 2024 to stay calm, reach out, and get even rather than mad.

Why? For millions, he is now seen as the last and only obstacle to what more than half of America believes is the sustained, left-wing attempt to turn the nation into something unrecognizable — an imploding country of open borders, with two million illegal entries per year, racial separatism and tribal chauvinism, the end of deterrence abroad, soaring crime and homelessness, $35 trillion in debt with $2 trillion annual deficits, wars on natural gas and oil, and warping of the administrative state and the law to punish enemies and reward friends. …

He must concentrate on the disaster of the Biden administration and reiterate nonstop the agendas of 2025 that will save us from tottering on the brink. That forbearance demands that he speak and campaign in the only way that can win the election: unite the Republican Party, the conservative movement, the MAGA base, independents, disaffected Democrats, minorities, and even Never Trumpers into an eleventh-hour coalition to stop the revolution in our midst before it consumes us all.

Read the whole thing here.