All those annoying TV ads, interrupting online ads and irritating texts, not to mention a forest of mail and yard signs littering the landscape — they were all for nothing. For the past year, all signs pointed to a Trump win. Maybe not exactly this win, but a win nonetheless.

It’s the inflation, stupid! And an uncontrolled border and a non-existent national security policy. In short, the Biden administration has been a failure for most Americans.

Starting in the second half of 2023, the political ground shifted decisively against Joe Biden and the Democrats. Nobody seemed to notice among the media elites and the chattering classes of both the left and the right, as they were all consumed with Donald Trump’s trials. While the political junkies were watching the ridiculous circus, millions of Americans were watching their budgets getting squeezed, homes and cars become unaffordable and health insurance costs rising.

I noted in this column back in February that Biden’s polling had taken a clear and durable fall. Trump had taken solid leads in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Nevada — all states he had lost in 2020. That lead was echoed in several polls. Biden had hit a similar inflection point in the aftermath of his incompetent Afghanistan withdrawal, where his approval went from positive to deeply negative and never recovered.

The Biden administration had to make a drastic policy turn. And yet, drunk on fawning praise from the establishment and blinded by antipathy to anything Trump, they either could not or would not see the........

© The Hill