Donald Trump isn’t running anything remotely like a normal presidential campaign. He’s not appealing to a wide swath of the electorate. He’s not trying to win over the middle. He’s not even trying to expand his base. He’s just further instigating his core supporters with racist appeals, conspiracy theories, scare stories and culture-war rhetoric.  He’s narrowcasting to bubbles of ignorance and grievance and authoritarian submissiveness.

He doesn’t really have much choice. Any informed, non-blindered analysis of his leadership during the pandemic leads inescapably to the conclusion that he is dangerously incompetent. His fury over the surging national protests against racism, inequality and police brutality has durably positioned him on the wrong side of history.

Those who continue to support him at this point are truly Trump dead-enders. There is no way they constitute anywhere near a majority of Americans.

Covering this campaign with the hoary campaign-reporting algorithms made for typical elections would be a terrible mistake. Those algorithms were constructed to cover elections in which there was a rational choice between two reasonably proportional and plausible candidates.

And even under those conditions, they failed miserably, overemphasizing […]