Middle Finger

 At a visceral level, this election isn't about policy or achievements or law and order or immigration or campaign promises kept or even COVID-19—although all of those things factor into the vote. At its core, this election is about our culture and who gets to define it, who establishes the overriding rules, and who gets to tell us who we are. Rich Lowry nails it when he writes:

If Donald Trump wins a second term, it will be an unmistakable countercultural statement in a year when progressives have otherwise worked their will across the culture.

After months and months of statues toppling and riots in American cities and a crime wave and woke virtue-signaling from professional sports leagues and absurd firings and cancellations, the year would end with a stunning, stark rebuke of all of that.

If Trump manages to pull off an upset in 2020, it will be as a gigantic rude gesture directed at the commanding heights of American culture ...

If he wins, it will be despite all [of Trump's [character flaws]. An enormous factor would be that Trump is the only way for his voters to say to the cultural Left, “No, sorry, you’ve gone too far.”

Besides the occasional dissenting academic and brave business owner or ordinary citizen, Trump is, for better or worse, the foremost symbol of resistance to the overwhelming woke cultural tide that has swept along the media, academia, corporate America, Hollywood, professional sports, the big foundations, and almost everything in between.

He’s the vessel for registering opposition to everything from the 1619 Project  [link mine] to social media’s attempted suppression of the Hunter Biden story.

To put it in blunt terms, for many people, he’s the only middle finger available — to brandish against the people who’ve assumed they have the whip hand in American culture.

In the voting booth, there are tens of millions who will ignore all of the issues that should be considered to elect a president, and instead rely on emotion. 

On the Left, that emotion is hatred of Trump—the only reason that most people could vote for a cognitively challenged,* do-nothing politician who has had 47 years to change things for the better and has accomplished very little during that time, except to enrich himself and his family. 

On the Right, the emotion is the one described by Lowry—push back on those who tell "deplorables" that they are morally inferior, that they are racists, that they are stupid, that they have no say in the direction of the culture.

This election will decide which set of emotions holds sway.

FOOTNOTE:

* Just a few days ago, Biden confused Trump with George W. Bush, suggesting on video:

"We don't need four more years of George ... uh, George ..." He then stopped, confused, not able to remember Bush or Trump's last name ... until his wife (a.k.a. DOCTOR Jill Biden) whispered some help. 

I guess Jill Biden's Ph.D. in education somehow excuses the cruelty of putting her confused and struggling husband through all of this. It does not excuse the utter irresponsibility of the Democratic party for running a candidate for president who through no fault of his own cannot think clearly.