Analysis: Trump sees few limits in bid for reelection

WASHINGTON (AP) — In 2016, Donald Trump blew through the guardrails of American politics. In his bid for reelection, he's poised to blow them up.

This time around, he's aided by the power of the presidency, with its unmatched megaphone and resources. And his latest provocation — prodding a foreign leader to investigate Democratic rival Joe Biden — suggests he sees little issue using his office for his personal political interests.

His actions foreshadow a no-holds-barred 2020 campaign, regardless of who Democrats select as their nominee in the coming months. If the lesson of Trump's 2016 victory was that deeply personal attacks and factually inaccurate innuendo are a pathway to victory, his 2020 playbook appears to include more of the same.

Democrats are more clear-eyed about the effectiveness of those tactics, but still deeply uncertain over the best approach — and the best candidate — to blunt them. Fight back against Trump and risk running a campaign on his terms and elevating his baseless attacks. Ignore him and allow his arguments to percolate unchecked through the conservative media ecosystem.

Democrats concede he is jarringly effective at dictating the terms of the political debate and throwing his opponents off stride.

"Donald Trump's greatest political skill is the ability to pull people into his vortex of terribleness where you spend all day every day responding to Trump's outrage du jour and defending yourself from absurd, baseless accusations," said Dan Pfeiffer, an Obama campaign and White House adviser.

That's where Biden finds himself at the moment, answering questions about his son Hunter's work for a Ukrainian gas company at the same time his father was leading American diplomatic efforts to help the country's fledgling government. There is no evidence of wrongdoing by either man, and...