ILLUSTRATION BY GREGORI SAAVEDRA
Those of us who are horror film fans know that it can be a lonely pursuit, involving late nights in front of the television while the rest of the household retreats. The genre includes a lot of repetitive dross, but, at its best, it can be real art, as richly creative as anything in cinema. And when I saw the acres of newsprint that followed Donald Trump’s crushing victory in the Iowa caucus in January, much of it on the agitated side of overwrought, I was irresistibly reminded of the words of Pennywise, the malevolent, shape-shifting, reality-bending clown in the 1990 film of Stephen King’s novel It: “I’m every nightmare you’ve ever had. I am your worst dream come true.”
So will Trump’s Second Coming really take him all the way back to the White House? My answer would be somewhere between possible and likely. He has the Republican nomination nailed down, barring a personal catastrophe. For what it is worth at this early stage, he is ahead of Biden in the opinion polls in the marginal states. There are some media reports suggesting that young voters, ademographic that previously shunned Trump, are flocking to his banner. Well, perhaps. But there are also reasons why Trump may come up short. Here, briefly, are some of them.