DAVID BROOKS: Why Trump gets away with all those horrible things

Those of us in the anti-Trump camp love to play the Horribleness Game.

Donald Trump does something horrible. We are righteously appalled. We send emails to our friends saying, “Did you hear about this horrible thing Trump said?”

We click on articles that fulminate against the horrible thing. We watch TV shows in which the pundits emote shock and dismay at the horrible thing. We feel very morally superior about ourselves and very morally appalled by that horrible man. It’s very satisfying. In fact, it’s addictive.

But somehow the horrible thing — or even the sum total of all the horrible things — never seems to end Trump’s career. He’s still leading in the polls, especially in swing states. So then we switch to the Wait Until They Know Game. Wait until voters know the latest thing Trump said about immigrants. Wait until voters know what’s really in the indictments.

The ultimate dream of these games is that the Trump era will end with some massive moral disqualification. We’ll be morally vindicated. They will be morally disgraced. The people who play these games dream of that killer conviction. They dreamed that 14th Amendment clause would disqualify Trump from even being on the ballot.

Biden is losing ground among his most loyal constituency groups. In 2020, Biden won young adults by 24 points; now his lead is 12 points. He won Hispanics by 21 points but now trails by 6. There used to be a lot more Democrats in this country than Republicans, but now the two parties are tied.

That’s because many voters don’t see politics as a place to go for moral affirmation. They want to know who will create a good environment in which they can lead their lives, and right now they trust Republicans more than Democrats to handle the economy, to handle immigration, to be generally competent. It’s about policies.

There was a lot to like about Biden’s State of the Union address, but the most important thing was this: He understands that if you want to beat Trump, you have to show you have better policies that will improve people’s lives. It’s less emotionally satisfying, but it’s what people actually vote on.