在过去几十年里，美国总统的第二个任期往往没有善终。罗纳德·里根遭遇了“伊朗门”事件；比尔·克林顿因试图掩盖与一名前实习生的私情，成为自十九世纪中叶以来首位遭弹劾的总统。乔治·W·布什的两个任期先是受“9·11”袭击和伊拉克战争拖累，最后又以2008年金融危机收场。
In recent decades, the second terms of American Presidents have not ended well. Ronald Reagan had the Iran-Contra affair; Bill Clinton, after attempting to cover up his affair with a former intern, became the first chief executive impeached since the mid-nineteenth century. George W. Bush capped off two terms marred by the attacks of September 11th and his invasion of Iraq with the 2008 financial crisis.
唐纳德·特朗普第二个任期将因何丑闻载入史册，或许尚未发生（或者已经发生，只是我们还不知道）。但在将决定特朗普任期最后两年走向的中期选举前夕，值得注意的一点是：美国在2024年让他连任，给自己制造了一种不同性质的麻烦——一位本身就是危机的总统。
The scandal for which the second term of Donald Trump will go down in history may not have even happened yet. (Or maybe it has and we just haven’t found out about it.) But, on the eve of midterm elections whose results will shape the final two years of Trump’s tenure, it’s worth noting that, in reëlecting him in 2024, the United States created a different kind of problem for itself: a President who is himself the crisis.
无论新一届国会多么“蓝”（注：民主党占优），都极不可能改变这一局面。宪法规定以三分之二超级多数票罢免犯有“重罪和轻罪”的领导人，在一个像现在这样分裂的国家里，这几乎是一道不可逾越的屏障。美国历史上唯一一位被弹劾两次、无罪释放两次的总统特朗普，在其第一任期内已证明了这一点。根据最新民调，民主党目前充其量只能指望在参议院获得五十出头的微弱多数，甚至连这一点都可能无法实现。
The new Congress, no matter how blue it is, is highly unlikely to change that. The Constitution’s requirement of a two-thirds super-majority to remove a leader guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors is an all but insurmountable barrier in a country that has become as divided as this one. Trump, America’s only twice-impeached, twice-acquitted President, has already proven that point in his first term. According to most recent polls, Democrats are right now dreaming of, at best, a Senate majority in the low fifties, and they may not even get that.
但选举是另一种、可以说同样强有力的宪法制约，对任何总统皆是如此，现任总统也不例外。距离我们得知2026年中期选举结果仅剩几个小时，我无法过分强调，华盛顿政坛——民主党人、大多数共和党人、民调专家、新闻界——都在多大程度上认为，这一次对特朗普来说与以往不同。请忘掉那些嵌入大量选举预测中的模棱两可和小心避责的说法，请相信我：首都里那些痴迷竞选的人真的认为，这可能终于会是那场“大决战”。
But elections are another, arguably just as powerful, constitutional constraint on any President, this one included. And with only hours to go until we know the results of the 2026 midterms, I cannot overemphasize the extent to which Political Washington—the Ds, most of the Rs, the polling wonks, the press—believes this time is different for Trump. Forget the hedging and careful ass-covering embedded in so many election forecasts and trust me on this: the campaign obsessives in the capital really think that this may finally be the Big One.
更令人瞩目的是，如果他们预期的特朗普遭拒真的发生，那将不是出自厌恶他的民主党人之手，而是由于红色美国大片地区的数百万共和党人投票否决这位总统、他鲁莽的政策，以及在一些高关注度的案例中——例如得克萨斯州参议院竞选——他亲自挑选的候选人。
Even more remarkable, if Trump’s rejection materializes as they expect, it will come at the hands not of the Democrats who loathe him but as a result of millions of Republicans in large swaths of red America voting to renounce the President, his reckless policies, and, in a number of high-profile cases, such as the Texas Senate race, his handpicked candidates.
我承认，我难以接受这些预测。特朗普主导我们政治的十年，扼杀了我让自己相信美国大选仍存在明确积极结果的能力。2020年特朗普的失败——既被预测到，也是可预见的——证明了，即使在选举之夜全盘落败，对于一个愿意不惜一切代价争夺结果的总统来说，也可能不是决定性的。所以请接受所有惯常的警示。聪明钱（注：指专业投资者/预测者）很可能再次看走眼，而那些从阿拉斯加到缅因州的摇摆州参议院竞选中，民主党候选人岌岌可危的一两三个百分点领先优势，或许不如所有那些参议院民调的误差范围更值得关注。
I admit to finding these predictions hard to accept. Ten years of Trump dominating our politics has killed my ability to convince myself that there is still such a thing as an unambiguously positive outcome in an American election. Trump’s defeat in 2020—which was both predicted and predictable—proved that even an across-the-board loss on Election Night might not be decisive with a President willing to do anything to contest it. So please accept all the usual caveats. It may well be that the smart money is wrong again, and that the margin of error in all those Senate polls was the thing to watch rather than the tenuous one- or two- or three-point leads for Democratic candidates in tossup races from Alaska to Maine.
无论如何，更大的问题恐怕在于特朗普对即将到来的选举挫败将作何反应：为了配合他关于“选举舞弊”的指控，他愿意采取多大程度的行动让选举真的变成那样？他已成为我们政治中永恒的X因素。许多人主张这样一种理论：阻止特朗普通过试图推翻选举结果而把国家拖入另一场危机的唯一办法，是出现一场规模巨大、囊括一切的民主党大胜，以至于没有任何合理的方式可以声称那没有发生。那究竟需要多大的胜利，我想知道。这不是内特·西尔弗的选举预测模型所能预测的。
The bigger question, in any event, may well be Trump’s reaction to the electoral rebuke that looks to be headed his way: How far is he willing to go to back up his claims of a “rigged election” with actions designed to make it so? He’s become the perpetual X factor in our politics. There are many proponents of the theory that the only way to stop Trump from plunging us into another national crisis by seeking to overturn the election is with a Democratic wave so enormous and all-encompassing that there is no plausible way to claim that it didn’t happen. Just how big is that, I wonder? This is not something that Nate Silver’s election forecast can predict.
假设他确实输了，而且输得很惨。在什么东西——年龄、他的共和党同僚、他一直坚定无视其末日可能性的AI毁灭机器——阻止他之前，他还能破坏多少？
And let’s say he does lose, and lose big. How much more will he be able to destroy before something—age, his fellow-Republicans, the A.I. doom machine whose apocalyptic possibilities he has been so steadfastly ignoring—stops him?
特朗普本人一直在为其政党即将到来的失败提供最有力的佐证。如果在本届中期选举竞选季初期，他蓄意要破坏共和党，恐怕也做得不比这更好了：挑起一场不得人心且明显失败的与伊朗的冲突，征收昂贵关税，并发动一场与加拿大的贸易战。所有这些都推高了美国人的物价，而他2024年竞选的标志性承诺正是要遏制导致拜登总统任期陷入困境的通胀。
Trump himself has been making the strongest possible case for his party’s impending defeat. If, at the beginning of this midterm campaign season, he had set out to sabotage the Republicans, he probably could not have done it better: starting an unpopular and notably unsuccessful conflict with Iran, imposing costly tariffs, and launching a trade war with Canada. All of which have driven up prices for Americans, when the signature promise of his 2024 campaign had been to curb the inflation that sank the Biden Presidency.
但看来削弱特朗普的，与其说是燃油价格，不如说是他自身政治傲慢的代价。他嘲笑那些因其鲁莽行动而受影响最深的人的担忧，同时却坚持认为大选应当单一聚焦于他本人及其政绩。前几天他在佐治亚州为两位陷入苦战的全州范围候选人助选时发表的言论便是典型代表——这两位候选人现在极有可能落选。“我才不在乎呢，”他说，指的是那些对美国经济唱衰的人。“我们赚得盆满钵满。”这简直可以作为他整个奸诈、漠视民生总统任期的题词——或者该说是墓志铭？
But it’s not the price of fuel so much as the cost of his own political arrogance that appears to have weakened Trump, who has mocked the concerns of those most affected by his rash actions while at the same time insisting that the election should be singularly focussed on him and his record. Typical was his comment the other day, while campaigning in Georgia on behalf of two embattled statewide candidates who are now quite likely to lose. “I don’t give a damn,” he said, referring to the naysayers about the American economy. “We’re making a freakin’ fortune.”It might as well have been the epigraph—or should I say epitaph?—for his entire crooked, let-them-eat-cake Presidency.
这就引出了他在最后竞选活动中的最后一次亮相：周一下午的收官演讲，散发着同样的玛丽·安托瓦内特式氛围——只不过这位被判死刑的王后变成了一位迷失方向的八旬老人，自诩为花岗岩专家。在大选投票仅剩数小时之际，特朗普选择出现在国家广场，倒影池前，该池夏季耗资巨大却烂尾的翻修工程，已成为总统执着于按其个人帝国宏伟愿景重塑美国首都的象征。
Which brings us to his final appearance of his final campaign, a closing speech on Monday afternoon which channelled that same Marie Antoinette vibe—if, that is, the condemned queen had been a disoriented octogenarian who fancied herself an expert on granite. With hours to go until the election, Trump chose to appear at the National Mall, in front of the Reflecting Pool, whose costly botched renovation over the summer has become a symbol of the President’s obsession with remaking America’s capital to suit his personal vision of imperial grandeur.
他的计划很快显露无疑，不是要消除外界对他漠视选民的担忧，而是要在这条路上一条道走到黑。演讲前二十三分钟，特朗普的收官论点归结为一番冗长辩解：他究竟如何才最终赢得了胜利——不是中东战争的胜利，而是战胜了倒影池里的藻类，而这曾让他的许多前任望而却步。
His plan, it soon emerged, was not to debunk concerns about his indifference to the electorate but to double down on them. For the first twenty-three minutes of the speech, Trump’s closing argument came down to an extended justification for how he had, however belatedly, finally won—not the war in the Middle East but the fight against algae in the Reflecting Pool that had defeated so many of his predecessors.
在跑题谈及他关闭的许多无家可归者营地和他整治的锈蚀管道之后，总统确实花了必不可少的几分钟向全国陈述他的选举理由，其核心是要确保共产党人、圣战分子和搞性别残害的民主党人不会上台，不会再次毁掉我们国家的这个黄金时代。至于伊朗，他辩称：“这不是一场战争——我们没打多少仗。”这次活动中也许我最喜欢的一幕，是总统把内政部长道格·伯格姆叫上台，就泳池翻新讲几句话。
After digressions to cover the many homeless encampments he’d closed and the rusty pipes he’d vanquished, the President did spend an obligatory few minutes making his electoral case to the country, which revolved around the need to insure that communists and jihadists and gender-mutilating Dumocrats did not come to power and mess up this golden age of our nation all over again. As for Iran, he argued, “It’s not a war—we’ve done very little fighting.”Perhaps my favorite part of the event was when the President called his Interior Secretary, Doug Burgum, to the stage to make a few remarks about the pool renovation.
“今天是向特朗普总统感恩的日子，”伯格姆说。他此前曾是富商，并两度担任北达科他州州长。我不禁想，如果那股浪潮真的袭来、当它袭来时，这是否意味着特朗普内阁的成员们将不必再说这种话了。
“Today is a day of gratitude to President Trump,” Burgum, who, in a previous life, was a wealthy businessman and two-term governor of North Dakota, said. I found myself wondering, if and when the wave sweeps in, whether it will mean that the members of Trump’s Cabinet won’t have to say stuff like this anymore.
最终，特朗普以开场时的同样方式结束了演讲，为他仍希望在剩余任期内推进的所有未竟项目做宣传。他要建一个“世界锦标赛”级别的高尔夫球场，还要建一座无论在哪里都是最大、最美的凯旋门。整整十年前，特朗普以“让美国再次伟大”的承诺开启了他的政治生涯。但也许事情终究会落到这一步：自由世界的领导人吹嘘自己蒸汽清洗了华盛顿的雕像，还“重新铺了草皮”。
Eventually, Trump closed his speech as he began it, with a pitch for all the unfinished projects he still wants to take on with his remaining time in office. He’s got a golf course—“world championship” level—and the biggest, most beautiful triumphal arch anywhere to build. Ten long years ago, Trump started out his political career promising to Make America Great Again. But maybe it was always going to come down to this, with the leader of the free world bragging about steam-cleaning Washington’s statues and “re-grassing” its parks.
如果本周的选举终于代表着终结的开始，那么，这个终结来得再快也不为过。
If this week’s election represents, at last, the beginning of the end, well, the end can’t come soon enough.