Chuck Todd: It’s still about Trump

One of the correct clichés about American political campaigns is if you’re fighting the last war, you’re most likely losing.

But what if there’s disagreement over how you won (or lost) the last war?

Ultimately, one of the reasons President Joe Biden’s campaign is locked in this moment of postdebate uncertainty is his inner circle’s complete misinterpretation and misunderstanding of both the 2020 and 2022 elections, including how Biden ended up as the head of the Democratic Party. And that misunderstanding has led to a cascading series of potentially fatal positions for the party as a whole in 2024.

Let’s start with the president’s base problem: He has never really had one outside the state of Delaware. Biden’s great strength throughout his political career has been his ability to always be in the “mainstream” of Democratic thinking. He’s not a hard-core liberal, nor is he a closet centrist. He has always been smack-dab in the middle between the two wings of the Democratic Party — slightly to the left of Bill Clinton and slightly to the right of Barack Obama, to pick just two random Democratic presidents out of a hat!

And younger Biden was always good at appearing to be more centrist to moderates in the party and more liberal to progressives. Arguably, his presidency has largely reflected that positioning, as his biggest legislative achievements are pretty reasonable compromises between the progressive and center-left factions of his party.

That positioning also explains why he failed to get traction as a presidential candidate on his own in 1987 and 2008 (or as he was considering running in 2000 and 2004). He has never been anyone’s first choice as a standard-bearer for the Democrats. But what has been key to Biden’s