Not ready for Trump. Again.

Let's talk it out.

I’m having a little trouble comprehending this one, frankly.

As others have said, a case could be made that in 2016, voters didn’t know what Donald Trump was like.

But at this point even his most fervent supporters have seen the lies, the insults and the cruelty. As he’s cheerfully demonstrated again and again, he’s a bully, a cheater and a predator.

And he’s now the elected president of the United States.

Again.

Which raises a difficult question for this country.

Do those people who voted for him simply ignore his crude, self-serving behavior?

Or, do they like it?

If it’s the first, well, you’ve got a disinterested voting group. They’re not following the latest Trump outrage — they figure that’s just him.

The second choice is something darker. And for a moment, maybe we ought to get off social media and think some deep thoughts about this country.

I have an theory. Not completely convinced it makes the point, but I’d like to give it a try.

I read most of my news on Flipboard, a news aggregator. You probably know how it works. A page appears with lots of little windows, showing a photo of whatever the lead story is on that news feed. Like Brock Purdy or the new pandas.

And on the top feed, in the upper left corner, it was Trump. Day after day. Every morning, I’d open it up and the first thing I’d see was Trump.

I think he may have decided — on intuited — that it doesn’t matter what he’s doing; it just matters that he is the lead story.

He insulted Nancy Pelosi. He was convicted of 34 felonies. At the end of the campaign his look-at-me obsession reached the point where he mimed giving a blow job to a microphone.

It’s the spectacle. Bread and circuses for the people. It’s always something with that guy. What’s he up to now?

I don’t know if that was conscious or not. Or if imprinting yourself, day after day, on the consciousness of an electorate is even a workable strategy.

But you can’t say it didn’t work.

Every day Trump — outrageous, obnoxious — was in your face.

And today, he’s the president-elect.

I also think one of Trump’s lines worked really well.

Just not on the group he targeted.

Much is being made about Trump’s support among Latino voters. Stories have his support shooting up 12 points, from 32 percent in 2020 to 45 percent this year.

Conventional wisdom was that American Latino voters would find Trump’s rhetoric about the border and deporting immigrants threatening and unfair.

But did they overlook the border talk? Or agree with it?

Maybe it is the latter. Trump talked about illegal migrants “taking black jobs.”

But isn’t it more likely an immigrant might take an American Latino’s job? Some of them are the people who arrived in the States, took tough jobs that might not pay very well, dug in and made a life here.

Now they may be thinking about pulling up the ladder.

Maybe are they feeling that Trump might have a point. The people who cross the border aren’t coming for a vacation. They want jobs. And maybe, because they are desperate, they will work for less.

It’s counterintuitive, but it could be that a portion of the American Latino population feels threatened by immigration too. After all, it’s the economy, stupid.

Now we begin the dreaded post-mortem campaign analysis, which generally consists of insiders on the losing campaign leaking nasty stuff. (Kind of hilariously, it looks like Trump insiders made the pre-emptive leaks to The Atlantic, making it sound like they thought they were going to lose.)

I don’t really know what else Kamala Harris could have done. She parachuted into the election a little more than a month out, and exceeded expectations.

She raised a shit-ton of money, recruited legions of volunteers and staged giant pep rallies that grew and grew in size.

At this point only a cynic with a mean streak would point to the Demos and say “Bless your heart.”

Seriously, you really thought a bigger TV budget was going to help? People get tired of ad after ad after ad. And so cute, to think that — in this age — that door knocking would carry the day. Make a Tik-Tok of somebody knocking on a door.

Harris was too cautious, which is a feature, not a bug. She could have separated from Joe Biden sooner and more directly, but stayed on the safe, party line. Good old Joe.

And old criticism cropped up at the end — that she is too managed.

Joe Rogan’s podcast wanted her to come to the studio and do two hours. Harris’ team wanted him to come to New York and only do an hour.

Rogan declined the interview.

Just an unforced error by Team Kamala. Whether you like him or not, Rogan pulls 11 million listeners a day. And they’re not NPR types. It’s a group you’d be hard-pressed to reach any other way.

Fly to Rogan in Austin. Do two hours. It was a thing. The Hill even found a young voter who specifically said skipping Rogan cost her his vote.

Still, I’d say Harris did well when dealt a tough hand. (And let’s be frank, racism and misogyny are alive and well in America, and affecting elections.)

But early indications are that Biden is going to take the heat for this.

Scranton Joe has kind of turned into the Jimmy Garoppolo of politics. They are perfectly good quarterbacks. They had several important wins. But somehow the internet has decided they can’t cut it.

The bad part for Biden is that there is no path back. He is too old. I’m getting pretty old, and I feel it.

He should have quit after the 2020 term. He should have stepped aside to give the demos a primary, a race and an evaluation.

But it is too late for that now. And, as the vice-president said, we’re not going back.

Joe will have to live with it.

And now, so will we.

Honestly, the thought that we would stop taking daily rides on the outrage roller coaster was so real, so clear. Finally, this was going to pass.

Nope.

Contact C.W. Nevius at cwnevius@gmail.com. Twitter: @cwnevius