There’s an old expression in sports that always applies to the losers: “playing out the string.” A team playing out the string has been eliminated from the playoffs but keeps on going simply because there are games on the schedule. A baseball team well under .500 plays out a lazy September series on the road and fulfills its obligations to the fans — and collects paychecks — even though the games no longer have any meaning.

It’s too soon to say Donald Trump, as the American president, is playing out the string, but there was a whiff of that sort of inevitable failure in his State of the Union address last night. Most Americans didn’t pay attention at all, and if they did, they’d find the usual Trump — the inanities, the absurdities, the wild boasts, and the outright lies — that have come to define his decade of lording over the American political scene. “Our country is winning again. In fact, we’re winning so much that we really don’t know what to do about it,” Trump bragged, very much the insult comic running through his tired material. “People are asking me, ‘Please, please, please, Mr. President, we’re winning too much. We can’t take it anymore, we’re not used to winning in our country. Until you came along, we were just always losing, but now we’re winning too much.’ And I say, ‘No, no, no. You’re going to win again. You’re going to win big. You’re gonna win bigger than ever.’”

And scene. Trump is a........

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