Second, as my father used to say at the track, you can’t beat a horse with no horse. Right now, if you get three Democrats together, they will have at least two, and potentially three, different candidates. And even so, as if to acknowledge the problems, they will still be asking where the next Bill Clinton or Barack Obama is. We didn’t know about them in advance, did we? We did. Former President Clinton was the boy wonder of the Democratic Party, the youngest governor in the country. Former President Obama stole the Democratic National Convention with his amazing keynote when he was an Illinois state senator. Excepting 1992, primaries and caucuses on the Democratic side almost always tilt liberal, which is how Sen. Bernie Sanders came so close to beating Hillary Clinton, and which is why Sen. Elizabeth Warren would be such a strong primary candidate. The primary process is also grueling, which is why some Democrats worry that Joe Biden, a great vice presidential candidate who might have even beaten Trump the first time, might not get to the finals this time; not only will beating Trump be more difficult but marathons, at least in the past, were not his strong suit.

That brings me to the third reason, which my friends just hate. I’m sorry, Donald Trump may be many things, but he is not stupid. He is not in over his head; he’s been swimming along just fine. He is shrewd. You don’t get to be president without being shrewd. Blame former FBI Director James Comey, but Trump took some hard hits, too. Looking forward, you might try to convince yourself that the problem was Hillary Clinton, that she lost. I don’t see it that way. Clinton fought hard. Trump won. And he could do it again.