We are still trapped by the 2016 election.
That election pitted perhaps the two most unpopular nominees in our two-party history against each other, such that it is likely that most who voted for Hillary Clinton were actually voting against Donald Trump and most who voted for Trump were actually voting against Clinton. She might have been the only person he could have beaten, he the only person she could have. That it came down to roughly 80,000 votes in three states tells us that Americans were almost equally split in their assessment of lesser evil.
Because there was no "good" outcome in 2016, both of the elections since then have been motivated primarily by revulsion toward the winner of that one; 2018 rebuked Trump by handing the Democrats the House, 2020 by ending his presidency at the earliest ballot opportunity.
Had those 80,000 or so votes gone the other way, however, the hunch is that Republicans would have gained as many seats in the House as Democrats actually did in 2018 and 2020 would have also ended a second Clinton presidency at the earliest ballot opportunity.
Americans have, in short, spent the past six years rebelling against the dismal options that were put before them by their increasingly dysfunctional party system.
Within this context, Joe Biden was the ultimate irrelevancy -- he became the Democratic nominee only because he wasn't Bernie Sanders and then president only because he wasn't Trump.
There is, indeed, perhaps no more appropriate epitaph that could someday be written for Trump than that "here lies a man who managed to lose a presidential election to Joe Biden" (or, conversely, for Hillary, "here lies a woman who managed to lose a presidential election to Donald Trump").
Republicans can talk all they want about 2,000 mules, "Zuckerbucks," and the spiking of the Hunter Biden laptop story, but the truth is that no amount of election shenanigans would have mattered if they had put a half-normal candidate on the top of their ticket.
The coming midterms are also going to be another referendum election, only this time for Biden and a Democratic Party that has hitched itself to him in blissful disregard of his ineptitude. Since Biden won't be on the ballot, the only way to punish him will be to vote against Democrats who will be.
Democrats might want to talk about abortion, guns and Jan. 6, but the voters are going to be casting ballots on inflation, crime, and illegal immigration, with the likely result a Republican House and Senate next January.
But whether 2024 will be a fourth consecutive referendum election, with similar results, depends almost entirely on Trump.
This is because the Democrats are likely to be in even worse shape in two years than they are now, for a couple of reasons.
First, Biden's catastrophic presidency is likely to continue to be catastrophic, even if mitigated somewhat by a Republican Congress that he can attempt to blame for the catastrophes (along with Putin and corporate greed and Joe Manchin and whatever else at hand).
And the reason there will be only more blame-shifting will be the same reason for the lack of course change despite serial catastrophe to this point -- that a feeble, oblivious old man turned his administration over from day one to woke staffers and that the party he so unsteadily leads has gone so far down the woke path that it can't turn back, even if its political survival depended upon it.
This isn't Bill Clinton's Democratic Party any longer, and there will be no post-shellacking "triangulation" in this particular Democratic presidency. That old man isn't going to get any less feeble, oblivious or younger post-November 2022, and the Democratic Party isn't going to get any less woke.
The second reason for dim Democratic prospects will be that they might have the weakest and oldest bench in American political party history from which to promote. If they recoil from the prospect of picking among a by-then 81-year-old Biden, 82-year-old Bernie Sanders, and 75-year-old Elizabeth Warren, they can always jump from frying pan to fire by bringing back a by-then 77-year-old Hillary, or, in an effort to check more identity politics boxes, opt for the persistently embarrassing Kamala Harris (the fellow once called Barack Obama's "impeachment insurance" now has some of his own).
Bottom line: Whoever they pick will be a dud (such are the consequences for a party that lost over 1,000 elected offices nationwide during the Obama years).
Which means that the only asset Democrats have left is Trump; more specifically, Trump's destructive but inexplicable continuing hold over the GOP.
Contrary to popular perception, Democrats don't want an end to Trump; they want to keep him around as long as possible, forever if it were scientifically possible.
Because they know the only way they can win is with him (and they are counting on dim Republicans not knowing the only way they can lose is also with him).
The sheer absurdity of the phrase "President Biden" should provide all the proof needed that the guy who calls his critics "losers" is the biggest loser of all.
Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.