Why Donald Trump Lost

In the final, furious days of his reelection campaign, President Donald Trump often turned his public rallies into personal therapy sessions, at which the embattled and embittered President rued what might have been.

Autopsies examining why Trump became the first president in 28 years to lose reelection may list Covid-19 as the proximate cause. But that is only part of the story.

Like the patient with chronic disease, Trump's political demise wasn't caused by the coronavirus but by the underlying and familiar deficiencies of character and leadership of America's first reality show president. 

Donald Trump defeated Donald Trump.

Even before the pandemic, many Americans had grown weary of Trump's act --

• the seemingly endless tweets, tantrums and conspiracy theories that dominated his days and ours;
• the petty battles in which he seemed to delight, as chaos reigned around him;
• the penchant to lie so habitually that he galvanized a cottage industry for fact-checkers;
• the preening self-absorption and shocking lack of empathy for others;
• the apparent lack of seriousness or interest in the substance of the job;
• the blatant contempt for the rules, norms, laws and basic institutions of democracy;
• and, perhaps worst of all, his divisive, ugly appeals to racism and White supremacy.

His apparent calculation was that people would tire of the hardships required, and he didn't want the blame. Trump didn't want to throttle down the economy upon which he planned to run, though the virus itself would do that. He knew the steps necessary would particularly inflame his anti-government base. So after reluctantly embracing a brief regimen of partial shutdowns and social distancing in the spring, he declared the mission accomplished and prematurely urged a return to business-as-usual.

The virus didn't kill Trump's re-election. He did, by reminding the majority of Americans yet again through his bungling of the worst pandemic in a century, just how costly and exhausting a reality show president can be.

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condensed from an opinion piece by David Axelrod, published by CNN