As we near the three year mark in the national water torture called the Trump presidency, it would seem to be a matter of common knowledge that “tragedy”, “disaster” and “catastrophe” would be useful adjectives. It clear to most people who care about the present and future of this country that one more year of the Trump presidency will be an almost unbearable ordeal for this nation’s institutions. Further, it is almost a settled fact that five more years of the Trump presidency are likely to produce institutional catastrophes that could actually prove to have terminal effects.

Which makes the current state of the Democratic presidential candidacies such a mystery. The men and women who run the Democratic Party and the men and women who are candidates are behaving as if in 2019 it is time for political business as usual. We see candidates descending upon Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina and anyplace else that airplanes fly to advance their candidacies even though only a handful have any hope of securing the nomination.

We see candidates raising tens of millions of dollars to support their cause, in the process dividing the limited pool of Democratic donors with the hope that their cause will prevail. And, of course, these same candidates are bombarding local, state and national constituencies into a state that lurches for catatonic to platonic, in the process exhausting the attention span of the constituencies that need to be motivated and energized so that they will be present and accounted for on November 3, 2020.

It is as if the Democrats are so sure that whoever is their candidate will be the awful mess that is the Trump presidency that it simply doesn’t matter who that candidate might be. The delusion continues with the accompanying belief that the eventual successful candidate will be able to knit together a coalition of over twenty disgruntled constituencies (supports of the eventual unsuccessful candidates) as well as attract the underwhelmed independents who may just stop caring what ten to twelve people on a stage have to say and will therefore continue to stop caring when there is only one.

The Democrats are playing with existential fire. Trump has been called a plague on the American presidency. But even a cursory glance at history reveals that plagues are very difficult to dislodge and eradicate and that plagues are, if nothing else, resilient.

There is no column long enough to recount Trump’s faults, failings and transgressions. But there should be no doubt that Trump is resilient. There is not an epithet that has not been hurled at him – to no effect. There is no shaming a shameless person, and Donald Trump is not only shameless, he is incapable of being embarrassed.

And……true to the plague analogy, Donald Trump is relentless when he is in attack mode. His attacks do not have to be logical, fact-based or rational. His attacks contain energy that would make the Energizer Bunny envious. And when the Democrats finally come out of this super scrum and a bloodied but unbowed “winner” gets ready to take on Trump, his/her chances at victory will be dangerously diminished.

Consider that Tom Steyer alone has spent $46 million on television ads. Consider that Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren have already raised over $100 million between them. And then consider that Trump has already raised over $300 million, spending very little on media to date. And then consider who will have the advantage in September 2020 if these trends continue.

So, if the Democratic Party wants to begin conducting seminars on “How Donald Trump Got Re-elected” in the spring of 2021, they are doing a great job at preparing the syllabus. One would hope that the sheer terror that accompanies the contemplation of the pure horror of a second term for Trump would motivate the leadership of the party to recast and reboot and rethink before it gets too late.

As the great philosopher Yogi Berra once said, “It gets late early around here”.