Right on cue, the country’s dominant political and media voices, after wildly applauding Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, have responded to Donald Trump’s week in the spotlight with laughter, derision and anger for its supposed amateurism, lack of star power, and racism.

And the convention has given critics plenty to laugh at, or cry if you are a Republican. The use of the gun-wielding wealthy St. Louis couple was a strange way to address the Democrats’ very real plans for undermining the nation’s suburbs. Placing the utterly clueless and unsympathetic Donald Trump Jr. on the podium, while elevating the Trump family over the party faithful, revealed a serious cognitive shortcoming worthy of the Bourbons.

But the smart set said the same sorts of things about a “branding disaster” after the 2016 Republican convention, and we know how that turned out. Given the weak economy, the ham-handed response to COVID-19 and the miserable persona that is Donald Trump, four years later this election should be in the Democrats’ bag. But there are three big things that Trump is getting right, and Democrats are mostly just ignoring, that explain why the smart money in Vegas sees Trump’s odds of winning going up.

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