WaPo notices the obvious

Jeff Bezos to the editor of his Washington Post: "Hey, these bullets bounce off President Donald John Trump. In fact, they make him stronger!"

And so Marty Baron assigned Robert Costa and Philip Rucker to craft, "Trump's resilience causes Democrats to sound the alarm."

The rubes in DC are catching on.

The boys wrote, "Anxiety is coursing through the Democratic Party as President Donald Trump emerges from his impeachment proceedings as a potent threat for reelection, with party leaders and activists uncertain about how to beat the incumbent and worried about a nominating race that remains crowded and is growing more acrimonious."

Anyone with an IQ above room temperature would have figured that out. President Trump is Chumbawamba singing their hit, "Tubthumping."

I get knocked down, but I get up again
You are never gonna keep me down

His entire life is a roller coaster. They thought they knocked him out in his first trip to bankruptcy court. But instead of losing his empire, he got the banks to cut him slack on the junk-bond interest on his debt. He got up again by convincing them he was too big to fail. You are never gonna keep him down.

In The Art of the Comeback, Donald Trump wrote of golfing with a banker who hated him.

I said to him, "Look, your grip is really bad, and if you could just move your hands over, I think you'd be a much better player." I repositioned his hands and he started hitting the ball better than he had ever hit it before. With just that one minor change, he actually became a good player. He never had a better time and even went to the driving range afterward to practice with his new grip. More important, he thought I was a nice guy, not the vicious, flame-throwing jerk he had envisioned. He couldn't believe it. As we were leaving the course he said to me, "Look, I know we're going to war tomorrow, but maybe we could make a deal." I laid out the terms of a deal that would be fair to all, and he agreed. The next morning his lieutenants, who had until that point been totally vicious, called my people and informed them that a deal had been made and to get the paperwork done. We signed the next day, and hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of problems went away. Just like that. Pfff!

Now for the punchline. He wrote, "I once saw Jack Nicklaus, and I told him, 'You know, Jack, I've actually made much more money playing golf than you have.' He didn't really understand what I meant, nor did I explain. But he probably went away thinking I'm a real jerk."

After going through tabloid hell over his first divorce in New York City (the media capital of the world) the backwater Washington press corps is nothing.

Nearly 5 years after he officially entered the 2016 race, the Washington Post is admitting publicly, hey, this guy is good.

The Post reported, "While Democrats see Trump as a corrosive figure and a threat to the nation, they also see the president and his well-funded campaign tailoring a reelection bid around the strong economy and visceral appeals to his ardent supporters.

"Trump's robust political standing came into view this past week, as he claimed vindication from his acquittal in his Senate trial despite damaging House testimony about his conduct with Ukraine - and set off on a path of retribution by ousting some officials who were witnesses. At the same time, his Gallup approval rating ticked up to 49%, its highest point yet.

"The developments have generated convulsions of angst among Democrats, who watched their first-in-the-nation Iowa presidential caucuses conclude in a chaotic fiasco and deliver an inconclusive result. Many in the party are now sounding the alarm that denying Trump a second term could be far more difficult than they had calculated."

Remember, the Fox poll showed his approval rate at 39% on Election Day 2016.

The Post quoted "Jennifer Palmieri, a longtime party strategist who advised Hillary Clinton in 2016 and is not aligned with any candidate this time."

She said, "We are letting Trump drive our process and getting ourselves all tangled up in who might be the best person to foil him. That became really clear to me just being in Iowa. The voters were so lost. They didn't have any orientation, no grounding . . . They felt paralyzed by this choice."

4 years ago, I said Donald Trump would win. I wrote, "The daily, relentless attacks on Trump have an interesting effect. Meant to set the agenda and discredit him, the stories make Trump the focus of the campaign. This works on the minds of the punditry in Washington who think income tax returns matter (they don't; we know he's rich and doesn't like to pay taxes)."

As Rush Limbaugh put it, Donald Trump was living in their heads rent free.

I wrote, "Every day the Washington Post's Daily 202 feeds a Trump story to its readers. And that is exactly what Trump wants. Attention. Negative or positive, that is what any newcomer wants. Trump like any politician knows that if the election is about him, he wins. The 2008 election was a referendum on Obama. The 1992 election was a referendum on Clinton. The 1980 election was a referendum on Reagan. Not every election works this way. It takes a strong candidate to pull it off."

The Washington press corps thought they could kill him with headlines. But headlines saved his bacon and his empire in the 1990s. He was a celebrity. That is why the banker golfed with him. Donald Trump's pitch was look, I screwed up, but the Trump name will help you recoup your losses.

It worked.

The Post has caught on, and so have Democrats. Cornell Belcher, a veteran Democratic pollster, told the Post, "We spend too much time chasing whatever foolishness Trump throws out there and he's masterful at it.

"This has got to be an election fundamentally about Democrats' vision for bringing the country together and solving the big problems that confront us. And if a Democrat can do that, a Democrat can have a good chance of cobbling back together and even expanding the Obama coalition, and that will beat Trump."

But it is too late. The press cannot ignore what the president of the United States does. Oh reporters can skip his rallies, and someday they might give up publicizing his tweets. What they cannot do is eliminate his ability to set the agenda.

The constant attacks by the press and the rest of the Democrats have galvanized President Trump's supporters who will never forget nor forgive being called deplorable.

The New York Times reported, "In Trump Country, the Resistance Meets the Steel Curtain."

The story lamented that not only has the resistance failed to change anyone's minds, it has tired out the anti-Trump people. They are tired of losing.

The Times story said, "Three years ago, when hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in protest of Mr. Trump, the resistance seemed immense. Two years ago, when legions of canvassers and postcard writers helped flip dozens of congressional seats nationwide, it proved effective. Now with the 2020 election approaching, the Democratic Party seems as disjointed as ever, while the Trump administration appears not only undismayed but emboldened.

"And veterans of the four-year-old resistance, particularly in places where they remain outnumbered, are facing up to an unwelcome truth: This is going to be even harder than it once looked."

But the press believes it can still get away with lies as if it were the 1950s.

President Trump gave a tremendous and patriotic State of the Union address.

Here was how the Post described it in its story today: "Trump also orchestrated dazzling reality-show reveals, such as first lady Melania Trump awarding talk-radio icon Rush Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And the president's speech featured his customary litany of false statements that outrage Democrats, such as casting himself as a guardian of health coverage for those with preexisting conditions, despite his administration's repeated efforts to repeal and gut former president Barack Obama's health-care law -- all but daring the fact-checkers to blow their whistles."

The press is all out of bullets. So are Democrats. I knew this would happen. That was why I wrote in September, "Go ahead, media. Impeach my day."

Democrats and the press have gone out of their way to not "normalize" this presidency, however they are the ones who look abnormal to the rest of us. Too late, they realize this.

He's a borg. Resistance is futile.