Circumstances might change, of course. The flare-up with Iran and mixed signals from the bond market remind us that our political future isn’t a straight-line projection of the present. But Mr. Trump is wary of foreign entanglements, and a slowdown is not the same as a recession. Sustained peace and prosperity improve Mr. Trump’s chances of a second term.

So does the continuing revolt against global elites. One of the many oddities of this presidency is that a uniquely American figure such as Mr. Trump is part of a worldwide phenomenon. But there really can be no doubt that Mr. Trump was among the first heralds of an anti-elitist turn that has disrupted politics from London to Melbourne. The issues animating this upheaval have not disappeared. Nor is Mr. Trump likely to.

Brexit, Election Day 2016, the collapse of the center-left in France, Germany and Italy, the so-called yellow vest protests, the losses by centrist parties in the recent European elections and a political upset in Australia have been categorized as examples of “populism” or “nationalism.” They are labeled a reaction against “globalization.” But these grand terms mask as much as they reveal. And they sometimes are used to play down or dismiss political activity that an analyst finds uncouth, retrograde or offensive.

It helps to be more specific. Behind the rise of outsider politicians such as Mr. Trump are the interrelated issues of unchecked immigration, terrorism and the imposition of carbon taxes and other measures to mitigate climate change. Elites’ inability or lack of interest in tackling these problems — or even seeing them as problems — generates a crisis of representation in which large numbers of voters look for alternatives they cannot find within traditional political structures. The results have been unexpected.

The furor surrounding the arrival of unaccompanied children on America’s southern border in 2014 was a harbinger. President Barack Obama’s expansion of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, following his party’s shellacking in the midterm elections that November further polarized a disenchanted Republican electorate. The next summer Mr. Trump opened his presidential candidacy with inflammatory remarks about illegal immigration. And Angela Merkel announced, “We can do this” during a visit to a migrant camp in Dresden, Germany. The willingness and capacity of electorates to absorb large numbers of newcomers would be on the ballot. The answer was not what leaders had in mind.