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[And your another one who is naive enough to think that Trump didn’t win in 2020 and that the Democrats didn’t cheat.

It’s that naive point of view that will cause DeSantis to lose in 2024 if he is the nominee. ]

Trump lost in 2020. It wasn’t close and it was, frankly, consistent with 2016. He did a little better in the popular vote, increasing his number by 0.4%, but still did worse than Romney. Now, was it unfair that the Democrats expanded vote-by-mail and gathered blank ballots by bribing black voters who wouldn’t otherwise have voted? Sure. But those were the rules, and he did nothing to quash them while he was president.

Not only did Trump do nothing to upend the new rules, he did nothing to adapt to them. Instead, he spent $100m on rallies that were little more than monuments to his own ego. Romney ran those same rallies in 2012, and got a bigger % of the popular vote than Trump. The thing with Trump is he got lucky in 2016, and mistook his extraordinary luck for skill. If the $100m he spent on rallies had gone to vote harvesting, he might have won in 2020. His incessant need to feed his fragile ego with those exorbitant rallies may have cost him the election.

He’s addicted to rallies - by mounting them, he gets to feel like a Roman emperor/consul being feted by adoring citizens. Is there any indication that he is now more strategic, directing his funds towards the kind of low-key vote-gathering efforts that won Hillary the popular vote in 2016 and Biden both the popular and electoral vote in 2020? No. Because Trump *never* learns from mistakes. He is convinced of his own perfection.

I’m OK with a narcissistic liar who wins elections - it’s not as if the Democrats are running Jimmy Stewart-type straight arrows for president. The problem is that Trump doesn’t just lose by himself - he drags other offices down with him.