Shocked by Donald Trump’s sweeping victory, Democrats are playing the blame game, and Joe Biden is the scapegoat. Democrats who knew Biden was well past his prime in 2020, and who concealed his frailty all the way until June, now say he was “selfish” to run for reelection.

Yet Biden was the only Democrat capable of giving Trump a real fight, as Kamala Harris’ dismal performance proved. In fact, Democrats sealed their fate four years ago by picking a ticket that might work for 2020 but had no hope the next time, unless Republicans nominated someone without Trump’s popular touch and resilience.

Make no mistake: Any Republican other than Trump would also have been branded a “fascist” and woman-hater, but unlike a typical politician, Trump never tried to soften his image to please his enemies. Biden could only compete with Trump because he reminded voters of the days before Democrats went woke.

They wanted to believe they could still vote for the party of Franklin Roosevelt or John F. Kennedy, a patriotic party with a focus on blue-collar workers, not just the financial interests and identity-politics obsessions of the college-educated elite. Biden challenged Trump for Trump’s own voters, even if in truth Biden wasn’t so different from the politically correct yuppies who’ve run the Democratic Party since the 1990s.

Biden was too infirm to fight a second election, yet Democrats had no one else—and no one on their horizon today looks ready to compete with the populist Trump-Vance version of the GOP.

This leadership crisis began with Barack Obama.

What’s true for kings is true for presidents as well: Success depends on producing an heir. But Obama left his party without anyone who could do what he did—maybe because what he did was less impressive than his admirers assumed. After all, Obama chose an already senior Biden as his vice president because Obama was inexperienced and unsure he could count on older Democrats’ support. Biden was a crutch in 2008—and still was in 2020.

Once Democrats didn’t have anyone with Obama’s charisma to deflect concerns about the drift of the party, what did they have? They had Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, who thought that being female—and, in Harris’ case, black and Indian—would earn them points regardless of their bankrupt policies.

By contrast, Trump was an outsider, and that’s what voters longed for: someone to break with the weak border policies, foreign-policy incompetence and “Americans Last” globalist economics of Washington’s leadership class. Clinton and Harris—and other Democratic hopefuls from Pete Buttigieg to Gavin Newsom—only offered more of the same, plus identity politics and transgenderism for children.

The closest things Democrats had to an alternative were the illusion of Biden the Ordinary Joe and the throwback socialism of Bernie Sanders. What do Democrats have now?

There’s Newsom, under whom the Golden State is bleeding population—the climate’s no less alluring, but single-party Democratic rule has made California an increasingly hostile environment for middle- and working-class families. Then there’s Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who in the midst of Harris’s presidential campaign stopped to pose for a photo mocking the sacrament of Holy Communion, with the governor placing a Dorito on a kneeling social media influencer’s tongue.

Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania governor Harris passed over when she chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, is less offensive to ordinary Americans’ sensibilities. Yet the same things that kept Shapiro off Harris’s ticket will haunt him if he seeks the presidential nomination: Shapiro’s youthful involvement with the Israel Defense Forces is a deal-breaker for the anti-Israel wing of the party, and Shapiro is deeply disliked by Sen. John Fetterman and other powerful Democrats in his home state, who hint the governor has personal scandals that have yet to be fully exposed.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis isn’t as beholden to wokeism and identity politics as other leading Dems, though he would be tempted in a presidential run to boast of being the first openly homosexual candidate with a plausible shot at the White House. Polis is no economic populist, however, and while his libertarian streak might help with some general-election voters, even his modest support for school choice is likely to be fatal in Democratic primaries.

The only man who can save the Democrats is the one they hate most: Donald Trump. They have to learn from his success, as Ronald Reagan’s success taught reluctant Democrats to appreciate free markets.

Now they have to learn to appreciate secure borders and a perspective on economics and foreign policy that puts America and Americans first. If Democrats do that, they’ll naturally become less woke—and more electable.

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