Sometimes we must take special note of the obvious.

Why? 

If the obvious can’t be taken for granted, what can?

Well, in politics, and perhaps some other realms of life, vast and audacious engines of hope and desperation mask the plain truth, obscuring what stares us square in the face.

Here is something obvious: it should be an easy glide into office for the Democrats this year, in their bid to recapture the White House. President Donald Trump remains as controversial a figure as he was when elected, and he had just squeaked in to office with slim margins. Any reasonable group of political strategists should be able to appraise the situation, push the most sane and accomplished of the moderate Democrats, and walk right into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

It should be easy.

But it won’t be.

The party is in astounding disarray.

Oh, sure, it is the party of government workers and of the some of the biggest and most organized minority groups. It is the party that unashamedly promises to give free stuff to everyone. America’s oldest party has the natural advantage that comes with demagoguery.

But despite this obvious advantage, the party’s leftist ideology is so thread-bare that, despite all the advantages of selling magic beans to rubes, its members cannot help themselves. They are under a spell. The spell is so great that the New York Times, one of the party’s oldest propaganda mills, cannot even decide on one candidate to endorse — the Gray Lady chose two . . . on the apparent ground that both were women.

What a ridiculously superficial criterion.

This sort of shallow pandering becomes a hard sell to anyone with a lick of sense, even to independents who don’t like Trump.

They sure are in a pickle. A pickle jar. Tightly sealed. By their own mad fervor and desperation.

Obviously.