Really? Am I really going to do this? Am I really going to try to deflect blame away from the man who never accepts the blame for anything, and infamously said, "No, I don't take responsibility at all"?
Remember: There will be a verdict afterward, to see if maybe he can be blamed.
Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame Donald Trump for Losing the 2020 Election
5. Voter Fraud. You can't trust the Democrats to run an honest campaign.
4. Disloyalty. The Lincoln Project is a group of anti-Trump Republicans, running ads against him that hit him every bit as hard as they would normally have hit Democratic nominees for President, Senator, Governor, and so on. They didn't stand by their Party's leader.
Also, Cindy McCain, widow of Senator and 2008 Republican Presidential nominee John McCain, cost Trump Arizona. Where was her loyalty?
Also, the Congressional Republicans focused on their own races, not on their Party's leader. The Republicans gained a few seats in the House of Representatives (but not enough to take control), and they may also hold onto control of the Senate.
(But that's not yet certain, as the 2 Georgia seats are headed for a runoff, and if the Democrats can get the vote out at the same rate that they did in the Presidential contest, that will make the Senate a 50-50 tie, and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will break the tie and give the Democrats the majority.)
And finally, President Vladimir Putin of Russia and his hackers helped Trump last time. Why didn't they help this time? Where was their loyalty? Has Putin abandoned Trump, too?
Calm down, people. I'm trying to show you what Trump is probably thinking.
3. Black Voters. They were angry at the police brutality incidents, and they came out against Trump for that reason. They also came out for Biden because of his selection of Kamala Harris as his Vice Presidential nominee.
2. The COVID-19 Epidemic. It may have killed enough people to make the difference in some States. Or, it may have convinced enough people that Trump wasn't doing enough to make the difference.
1. Joe Biden. He ran a great campaign. This is the one reason here that Trump would never agree with: He simply cannot accept that "Sleepy Joe" ran a better campaign than he did.
But he did. He actually found a proper balance between "The other guy has been horrible" and "Here's why I'm better." He made the case that he was the right person at the right time for the country. In his 2 previous races, in 1988 and 2008, that case wasn't there to be made.
But because of his current place in American culture -- Barack Obama's Vice President, the man who wrote the 1994 Crime Bill and the Violence Against Women Act, and a man who has been shaped by personal tragedy that gives him the empathy to show Americans, to borrow Bill Clinton's words from 1992, "I feel your pain" -- he was the right person.
Not Bernie Sanders. Not Elizabeth Warren. Not Pete Buttigieg. Not Beto O'Rourke. Not even Kamala Harris, who nonetheless made a fine running mate. As Sir Walter Scott wrote, over 200 years ago, "The hour's come, and the man." (It usually gets erroneously written as, "Cometh the hour, cometh the man.") And Joe Biden is the Man of the Hour.
He is the right person for our current conditions. It doesn't mean he'll be the right person for 2025 to 2028 (even if he, about to turn 78, lives at least a full 4 years and runs for re-election), or even for 2022. But the way 2021 is shaping up, he's the one for the next year.
So, do these 5 reasons absolve Trump from blame?
No. Not by a long shot.
VERDICT: Guilty. Let's look at the 5 reasons again:
5. Voter Fraud? Republican State governments, certainly inclined to want a Republican nominee for President to win, have looked for voter fraud. It's been 8 days since the polls closed. They haven't found any.
Also, if the Democrats had been guilty of voter fraud, why would they have allowed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to be re-elected in Kentucky? Or Senator Lindsey Graham to be re-elected in South Carolina? Or Senator Susan Collins to be re-elected in Maine? Where was the fraud there? It wouldn't make sense to let those people win, if they had the extralegal means to prevent it.
4. Disloyalty? If Trump hadn't been such an ass, screwing everything up, there never would have been a Lincoln Project. And there was good reason for Cindy McCain to endorse Biden: Because of the way Trump treated her husband. Where was her loyalty? It was to John, not to Donald. It was to the country, not to its President.
And if Trump is surprised that Congressional Republicans tried harder to save their own chances than his, then he doesn't know the Republican Party as well as he thought. They have been the Party of Selfishness for over 150 years. He fit right in, but he should have known that he couldn't count on them.
As for Putin, the current rumor is that his health is in decline, possibly due to Parkinson's disease. He may have gotten what he wanted out of Trump: Ending the sanctions on his country.
Just like the Republicans got what they wanted out of Trump: 3 new Justices on the Supreme Court, including a replacement for Ruth Bader Ginsburg. So maybe Trump outlived his usefulness to both the GOP and Putin, so they were less likely to back him.
3. Black Voters? Trump could have come forward and done a "both sides," in a positive way: "Police brutality hurts both sides. It hurts the innocent people who have died, and it hurts their loved ones. But it also hurts the reputation of the police. It needs to stop. There are better ways to enforce the law, and our police departments need to find it."
It would have been Trump's version of "Only Nixon can go to China," but the cops might have listened, and done something about it. Had this happened, the black community might have noticed, and been less inclined to get out the vote against Trump.
Trump could have done it. He had the power, and he had the charisma. What he did not have was the willingness. It would have been so far against his worldview, that he simply could not imagine himself doing it. Indeed, had any other President done it, even a Republican, Trump would have lost his shit over it.
2. The COVID-19 Epidemic? There was no State that was close enough for COVID to have killed off enough Trump supporters to make the difference. As of this writing, Biden leads by:
* 11,434 votes in Arizona, where 6,240 people have died.
* 14,163 votes in Georgia, where 8,655 people have died.
* 20,540 votes in Wisconsin, where 2,627 people have died.
* 36,866 votes in Nevada, where 1,880 people have died.
* 60,233 votes in Pennsylvania, where 9,272 people have died.
To put it another way: In order to make a difference, for every 1 person that died in those States, it would also have had to change the minds of this many people to throw those States from Trump to Biden: 1.6 in Georgia, 1.8 in Arizona, 6.5 in Pennsylvania, 7.8 in Wisconsin, and 19.6 in Nevada.
Did the disease make a difference in any State? Maybe Georgia and Arizona. Swing those States from Biden to Trump, and instead of 306-232 Biden, it would be 279-259 Biden.
So unless you want to make the case that the outrage over the disease would also have thrown the 3rd-closest State won by Biden, Wisconsin, to Trump, then there's no case. And even then, it can be argued that it wasn't so much the disease's fault, but Trump's idiotic response to it.
1. Joe Biden? It wouldn't have mattered how good a campaign Biden ran if Trump had run a good one. Gerald Ford ran a good campaign in 1976, but he couldn't overcome the voters' anger about Watergate, and full 1 big State short. Bob Dole ran a good campaign in 1996, but lost in a landslide. John Kerry ran a good campaign in 2004, but lost by 1 big State. John McCain ran a good campaign in 2008, but conditions were so hard against a candidate of the incumbent party that he didn't have much of a chance. Hillary Clinton ran a good campaign in 2016 (Shut the hell up, Brocialists, she did), and she fell 3 States short of winning the Electoral Vote.
If Trump had run as well as he did 4 years ago, he could have won. If he had run as a better man than he was 4 years ago, he probably would have won. But that would have been completely against his nature. He just can't do it.
So, yes, the biggest reason that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election is Donald Trump.
The sooner he accepts this, and finally offers his concession to Biden in private, and to the country in public, the better.