There's a lifelong maxim that states that only the complete destruction of one's enemies will suffice.  Merely winning a particular battle is not enough.  If they survive the defeat and can come back to fight another day, then the ultimate victory is not assured.  In contrast, the contest still hangs in the balance, and the outcome of any one battle may not be the overriding determinant of the final result.

This thought is summed up in the work The 48 Laws of Power, a bestselling 1998 book by American author Robert Greene.  Law 15 states, "[A] feared enemy must be crushed completely.  If one ember is left alight, no matter how dimly it smolders, a fire will eventually break out.  More is lost through stopping halfway than through total annihilation.  The enemy will recover and seek revenge.  Crush him, not only in body but in spirit."

The Democrats and their liberal media allies employ this strategy relentlessly, day after day, nonstop.  Their total refusal to accept Donald Trump's win over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election is evident in the nonstop attacks — both policy-based and personally insulting — that they use against the president every single day.  There is not a solitary news cycle or issue that the Democrats let pass without criticizing President Trump in their never-ending attempt to undermine his presidency and force him from office.

As a matter of fact, the Democrats and the liberal media exercise the 48 Laws on a continual basis.  Whether it's a conscious decision or simply undertaken automatically, they follow them religiously.  The following laws are definitely recognizable as integral to the Democrats' playbook:

Law 11: "LEARN TO KEEP PEOPLE DEPENDENT ON YOU." Make people depend on you for their happiness and prosperity.  Never teach them enough so that they can do without you.

Law 12: "USE SELECTIVE HONESTY AND GENEROSITY TO DISARM YOUR VICTIM."  One sincere, honest move will cover dozens of dishonest ones and bring down the guard of even the most suspicious people.  Once your selective honesty opens a hole in their armor, you can deceive and manipulate them at will.

Law 25: "RE-CREATE YOURSELF."  Incorporate dramatic devices into your public gestures and actions — your power will be enhanced and your character will seem larger than life.

Law 33: "DISCOVER EACH MAN'S THUMBSCREW." Everyone has a weakness, a gap in the castle wall.  Once found, it's a thumbscrew you can turn to your advantage.

Law 42: "STRIKE THE SHEPHERD AND THE SHEEP WILL SCATTER."  Self-evident.

The Democrats follow these rules consistently.  They never let up, not for even the briefest moment.  Neither the Democratic Party nor the liberal media have accepted President Trump as the legitimately elected president for an instant.  By refusing to recognize his election victory as valid, they have absolved themselves of any obligation or requirement to accord either Donald Trump or the office of president with the respect and deference that is ordinarily due.  In their minds, his "illegitimacy" gives them free rein to bombard him with all manner of public disrespect, to disavow any policy or accomplishment of his as meaningless, and to concoct an endless stream of fantastical so-called crimes and transgressions that require immediate investigation, with the thinly veiled aim of ending his tenure.

First it was Russia, Russia, Russia!, "backed" by the phony-as-a-three-dollar-bill Steele dossier; the bogus Flynn FBI investigation; and the inventing of nonexistent crimes out of thin air against Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, and others.  When that didn't work after almost three years and the all-Democrat Mueller Report was shown to be baseless, the Democrats moved on to fabricate some sort of Ukrainian phone call delusion to charge President Trump with impeachment-worthy crimes.

The ink was barely dry on his acquittal when the Chinese coronavirus pandemic hit. Before anyone else even recognized it as a threat (NY mayor Bill DeBlasio and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were telling everyone to go out, visit the restaurants, live your life as normal, etc.), President Trump banned flights from China and Europe and closed our borders. While Dr. Fauci, CNN and MSNBC were busy saying that the coronavirus was not likely to become that big a deal, President Trump was way out in front.

But when one party—the Democrats—has the complete backing and cooperation of the mainstream media, the narrative becomes anything they want it to be. Very quickly, the pandemic became President Trump's fault. He didn't act fast enough. He didn't take the proper steps. He let the situation get away from him, to the detriment of the health of the American public. The fact that President Trump closed down the country and established a Coronavirus Task Force while the Democrats were still looking for their next avenue of political attack following their just-failed impeachment fiasco didn't matter to the liberal media.

The Democrats aren't concerned with governing the country. They're concerned with ousting President Trump. Predictably, all of the recent racial unrest triggered by the George Floyd situation is being laid at the feet of the President, as if Donald Trump—not the Democratic-run cities and Democratic-run police departments—caused it. No, the Dems and the liberal media make it seem as if President Trump actually approves of the racial strife on some level. Just as predictably, the President's recent Law Enforcement Reform initiative is being discounted by the Democrats and the liberal media as being inadequate and too little, too late. Pelosi and Biden have been in office for close to a collective century, but the liberal mainstream media never press them on why they hadn't addressed this issue before.

In the end, the upcoming election is not about Donald Trump vs. Joe Biden. The 2020 version of Biden is plainly afflicted by severe, paralyzing dementia, but even in his so-called "prime," he had no particular vision or core convictions. This is an election either for Trump or against Trump. Biden's presence is irrelevant.

The roughly 43% of the solid for-Trump vote and the approximately 45% of the always-anti-Trump vote are already baked into the election. The election will turn on that casually-attentive, somewhat-persuadable 12%. The Republicans will make their usual mistake of thinking that the merits of the issues--the facts on the ground, like how far back the economy/employment has come by November and whether or not the racial tension has smoothed out a bit—will carry the day.

The Democrats will instinctively operate on the correct presumption that it is their skill at employing the 48 Laws of Power approach to campaigning in addition to the facts on the ground that will win the day. President Trump's team had better get up to speed quickly on waging effective trench warfare in 2020, or they will find themselves outflanked, out-maneuvered and out-gunned in the most crucial electoral battle of our lifetime.