Not the Answer But the Question

Peggy Noonan's weekly opinion piece has a small deception.

The title is Who Can Beat Trump?, and a reader would naturally expect her answer to be contained somewhere therein.

Cover from 2016: he should have gotten it
again because he dominated the airwaves.
I guess they're saving him for 2020.

But the essay is really about how the question itself has become paramount to Iowa Democratic voters--not the impeachment and not specific issues like taxes, trade, or medical care.

But “Beat Trump” is back. When 2019 began Democrats were thinking that was priority No. 1. Then other things became more important—Medicare for All, climate change, policy. But it feels like Democrats here are circling back to their original desire. “Who can beat Trump?” is again the most important question. They don’t know the answer. They’re trying to figure it out.

After all the sturm und drang it's probably going to be another pedestrian nomination: Democrats won't vote where their heart is but for the person least likely to scare Republicans and Independents. At the moment it's Joe Biden, the safe candidate who inspires few.

The Republicans, by the way, often opt for safety, too. In 1976 they nominated Gerald Ford over the inspirational but scary Ronald Reagan...and lost.

As the sports folk like to say, if the game were held today it would be Trump over Biden, but a lot can happen in the next eleven months.