National Review writer pinpoints exactly why Trump's 2020 campaign is flailing

Current polling averages suggest that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has a lead of around eight points over President Donald Trump -- and that polling lead has been the steadiest of any election in recent history.

National Review writer Michael Brendan Dougherty has written up a comparison of Trump's 2020 campaign to his 2016 campaign and has found that he has completely lost touch with the populist issues that put him over the top in key swing states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

"By the absolute crudest measure, Biden is getting to be 'more populist' than Trump," he notes. "In last week’s debate Joe Biden said the word 'jobs' over a dozen times. Donald Trump said it just three times. That’s a loss for Trump."

Dougherty points out that Trump has plenty of ammunition to use against Biden thanks to his past support for trade deals and for writing legislation beneficial to credit card companies -- but has so far bafflingly failed to use it.

Additionally, Dougherty says Trump completely blew his chance to attack Hunter Biden by going after his past battles with drug addiction, which is something that many Trump voters will recoil from given how the opioid epidemic has ripped apart Rust Belt communities.

"[In 2016] Trump talked compassionately and forcefully about drugs in American communities, blending it with his message of economic and cultural populism," he writes. "Voters rewarded him for it. If Trump loses this race, it will be because he was too self-obsessed and forgot the forgotten man that he campaigned for in 2016."