But whatever your views on the electoral merits of a Trump candidacy, it is important to think about the big-picture implications of his approach. It’s not that Trump can’t win Reagan Democrats or can’t coax support from what Sean Trende has labeled the “missing white voters.” It’s that the gains would be marginal compared with the hemorrhaging losses inflicted by his apparent strategy. The ranks of the Reagan Democrats have dwindled as the parties have re-sorted themselves along ideological lines. And data suggest that these missing whites are disproportionately confined to uncontested states.

The $64,000 question for Trump is the same as it is for Cruz or any other Republican: Which Obama states can he flip to reach the magic number? It doesn’t matter if you top Romney’s record share of white voters if it doesn’t occur in the right states. Trump can run up the popular-vote score all he wants riding white-working-class resentment. It won’t help him when he gets buried in swing counties such as Fairfax, Hamilton, Hillsborough, and Arapahoe. Sure, he can target the Rust Belt, but big margins in Western Pennsylvania or the Upper Peninsula won’t matter if he can’t play in Bucks or Oakland Counties. And this doesn’t even contemplate the galvanizing effect Trump would have for turnout on the left, or the intraparty class tensions such an aggressive strategy would inevitably stoke.

There’s no question that both Republicans and Democrats have failed to put forward policies and messages that appeal to the beleaguered working class. But pandering to this group by playing to their grievances and resentments is both cynical and politically myopic. Let’s say for the sake of argument that a Mexico-financed wall and a total (“temporary”) ban on Muslim entry into the United States mollifies the white working class and wins the election. What lessons can you draw? It’s an electoral black swan: Culturally ubiquitous and ideologically heterodox billionaire defeats the most divisive major political figure of the era (or, if you’re optimistic, her socialist challenger) who is offering herself as the third term of a controversial incumbent.