I agree with Mark’s analysis of the media, Trump, and the election. In reading it, I can’t help but think that maybe everything that has happened in presidential elections since 2016 can be explained by three simple propositions. The first is:
Proposition No. 1: Any living human being would defeat Hillary Clinton in a presidential election.
Hillary Clinton is probably the least popular person to ever be nominated by a major American political party for president. She had given people about 25 years’ worth of reasons to hate her. Running against her in a presidential election is a gift from God.
Donald Trump accepted that gift, but defeated her only by the slimmest of margins. He, too, was tremendously unpopular, but he was not Hillary Clinton, which was just barely enough to give him the win in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Michigan. Many thought he had achieved some brilliant political feat, when in reality, he simply did what any other living human being would do in a presidential election against Hillary Clinton. That leads to the second proposition:
Proposition No. 2: Any Democrat except Hillary Clinton would defeat Donald Trump in a presidential election.
When the Democrats had a second chance to defeat Trump, in 2020, a seemingly endless litany of candidates stepped forward to contest the Democratic nomination. Perhaps that’s because they knew none of them was Hillary Clinton, so if they won the nomination, they would prevail in the general election.
Sure enough, Joe Biden won the nomination and prevailed in the general election. But then he got really old and was really unpopular. He stuck it out, though, because of Proposition No. 2. He loved being president and knew if he just stuck around, he would win again.
And he did stick around, for longer than most people thought he could. Polling consistently found for years that most Americans thought he was too old to be president, but he persisted, holding ever stronger faith in Proposition No. 2.
Proposition No. 2 was never broken, but Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama began to lose faith in it, and they essentially forced Biden out. That’s probably because they recognized the truth of the third proposition:
Proposition No. 3: The American people do not want a Biden–Trump rematch.
Democrats solved that problem, and Republicans did not. Proposition No. 2 is still in effect, as Kamala Harris is also a terrible candidate, yet she holds the very important quality of not being Hillary Clinton, so she is leading in the polls and seems likelier than not to win in November.
Because these three propositions have nothing to do with policy, the economy, campaign strategy, or any of the other factors people usually cite as making a difference in presidential elections, America will be released from their tyranny once each of the people named in them disappears from everyday politics. Hillary Clinton has been gone since 2016. Joe Biden is in the process of leaving. But Trump is still very much sticking around, keeping Proposition No. 2 operative.