WASHINGTON _ A months-long precipitous slide in the polls, an unfocused message, and deepening doubts about his ability to soothe a nation wracked by a trio of crises have suddenly recast President Donald Trump as an undisputed underdog in the 2020 campaign.
It's even raised the possibility that if conditions don't improve, Trump could lose decisively to Joe Biden in an election less than five months away, according to more than a dozen interviews with leading GOP and Democratic officials and strategists _ potentially upending long-held expectations that the White House race would be determined by razor-thin margins in a small handful of states.
"If the numbers were to hold and you had a big election, you're looking at things more aligned to 2008," said Robert Gibbs, a former White House press secretary for President Barack Obama, who won an Electoral College landslide over John McCain that year.
