evidence: Let the 2020 election bury the mistaken notion once and for all that the 2016 election was a historical accident, an American aberration. [...] But Donald Trump also lost the presidency in 2020 partly because he was a norm-busting political outsider who was prepared to say what had previously been unsayable. [...] But the 2020 election was not a re-run of the 2016 election. This time he was the incumbent, not the insurgent. He had a record to defend, including his mishandling of a coronavirus outbreak which by Election Day had killed more than 230,000 Americans. In this age of negative partisanship, where politics is often driven by loathing of the opposition, he was not pitted against a hate figure like Hillary Clinton.