ADVICE TO THE NEWS MEDIA THAT WON’T BE FOLLOWED:

Here’s my radical idea: Give up on attacking Trump, the person, and engage with the substance of his policy arguments. Act as if he’s a completely ordinary politician — pose as if you felt neutrality toward him personally — and engage with the ideas.

You really do need to take him seriously. He’s presumptively the Republican nominee, and he’s got an even chance of getting re-elected to the presidency. You can freak out about that, but you’ve been freaking about about him for 8 years, and it hasn’t fazed him. His supporters tune you out.

Reset. Be normal, and treat him as if he were normal. Give up on trying not to “normalize” him. Forefront the substantive issues, treat all the candidates equally, and let us see how each of them holds up to a thorough grilling.

They’re literally not capable of that. They don’t even understand it, really.

But of course, they can’t be neutral toward Trump unless they’re also neutral toward Biden. And they don’t dare do that. Even with them — more or less literally, Weekend At Bernie’s style — carrying him, Biden’s tanking in the polls. If they treated him neutrally, he’d be in the single digits.

Related: “Biden admin officials forced reporters to submit pre-written questions.” It didn’t take much force. Most are happy to help, and the rest are at least willing to.