I keep thinking back on all the discussions I've had in the past year or three with folks about how likely/unlikely Trump was to get a second term. A select few were in the category where a Trump-backer who considered himself my friend wanted to say "Trump will win in a landslide" because he (a) wanted to believe that and (b) wanted to see the expression on my face.
Those kind of folks always remind me of a "friend" (air-quotes) who would always e-mail to tell me of a bad review my work had received somewhere on the Internet. "Just thought you oughta see this," he'd type with a certain amount of glee/hope that he was causing me a bit of pain. There's a quiet sadism that exists in some people, living as they do for the schadenfreude. Fortunately, there are people who are on the Trump side of the aisle that I can get along with. We don't dislike each other. We just disagree on some things. Mostly, it's that they simply prefer Republican control of government to Democratic and at the moment, Trump seems like the only route to that.
My suspicion is that some prominent Republican — don't ask me who — will soon start a Dump Trump movement, saying he will bring the party down to defeat in so many places and races and so to save the G.O.P., they must repudiate D.J.T. It probably won't rid us of him but it might take his poll numbers down another few pegs.
Anyway, as I think back over those old discussions about Trump getting re-elected, I'm reminded they weren't about the global pandemic and Trump saying sunshine would make it go away after maybe a dozen people died. They weren't about his reticence to alienate the white supremacist vote at a time when a record number of Americans want black folks to be treated better. They weren't about compromising the Justice System to free his convicted (or should-be-convicted) cronies. They weren't about this latest allegation about Putin putting a bounty on U.S. soldiers and Trump doing nothing about it. They weren't about so many of the "best people" he once bragged about hiring turning on him.
They were about Hunter Biden. Somehow, we aren't talking a whole lot about him these days.