The inversion of political norms has been a hallmark of the 2016 presidential campaign, but none has been more startling than the one that appears to be emerging now with roughly a month left before Election Day.

Presidential elections usually turn on whether the candidate of the incumbent party can make an effective case for continuing its policies. In this case, Hillary Clinton has embraced the Obama administration’s record closely and detailed how she would incrementally build on the foundation that has been laid over the past eight years.

It is an impressive record in many, though far from all, respects. Last year, median household income rose 5.2 percent, with families at all income levels enjoying renewed prosperity. That was the largest single-year increase since record-keeping began in 1967. The portion of Americans living in poverty also showed its sharpest decline in decades in 2015, with 3.5 million Americans clawing their way above the poverty line as hiring surged. Employers added 3 million new jobs in 2015, and the unemployment rate fell to 5 percent. The percentage of the population without health insurance declined to 9.1 percent, the lowest since records have been kept. And although small numbers of American troops are engaged abroad, no large- scale military conflict is underway.

But this may prove to be largely irrelevant to many voters. Increasingly it appears that this election will be a referendum on Donald Trump himself, not on the Obama/Clinton program. In fact, in some respects, it seems that Clinton has been reduced almost to a bystander in the media storm. One gets the impression that almost nothing she does, whether it is another impressive debate performance or making another damaging misjudgment, is going to decisively affect the outcome of the race. Instead, the Trump candidacy has become a kind of Rorschach test for the American people, in which they identify themselves by what they see in him.

That Trump is even close in the polls is a surprising turn of events for many Clinton supporters, but it probably should not be. Alienation has been a prominent feature of American life for some time now, although it has perhaps not been widely recognized as such. Work and family, social interaction and spiritual belief have lost force in many lives, creating empty spaces into which a generation of manipulative politicians have poured racial and class resentment. Meanwhile, social media have removed normal inhibitions on expression and unleashed a torrent of ugliness that feeds on itself, in imitation of the right- wing media that spawned it.

Marx wrote that, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” In a country where opiates have become the opium of the people, no one should be shocked that Trump, having come this far, could actually be elected. His candidacy reflects a cultural and spiritual despair felt by many people whose material circumstances may not seem to justify it but who appear ready to take a big gamble with the nation’s future because of it.

Now that what was heretofore unthinkable has become highly thinkable, it is time to consider what a Trump presidency would be like. There are three possible outcomes: He will actually do what he has said he will; he will be thwarted in doing what he wants to do by Congress and the courts; or he will betray his supporters by abandoning his radical proposals. If the first would certainly be disastrous, it is not clear to us that the other two possibilities are less so. We only hope that American voters look at Trump and identify not with his grievances but with their better selves.