A.B. Stoddard writes for Real Clear Politics about a challenge for Democrats hoping to defeat Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

… Americans are witnessing an economic turnaround they want to believe will eventually reach them, and this seems to be lost on the Democrats trying to win the presidency next year.

Klobuchar doesn’t stand out from the other 20 Democratic candidates in her responses, which tend to start with “yeah, but” before going on to credit President Obama and then criticize the tax cut Republicans passed last year. And the tax cut is unpopular: Republicans couldn’t campaign on it in the midterm elections. But the average Democratic answer to terrific economic data likely sounds to the average voter like this: Obama started the recovery, the tax cut was wrong, so we want to get rid of it and these good times are a mirage. Democrats do not acknowledge what is, after the downturn of 2008, a stark improvement that voters see as progress, nor do they appear to grasp that even voters who can’t stand Trump want it to last.

Put aside the constitutional standoff, the Mueller report, the lies, the dysfunction, the corruption, unethical Cabinet members, nepotism, potential emoluments violations, disdain for the rule of law, undermining of the judiciary, infants and toddlers separated from their parents at the border, the haphazard foreign policy, swooning for dictators, the dark hour of Helsinki. If it truly is the economy, stupid, Democrats may be asking to lose.