If you, like me, have read approximately 500,000 think pieces over the past year explaining the rise of Donald J. Trump, you might have picked up one consistent, enduring thread in between your quiet sobs and occasional frozen-waffle binges: Trump, in his own special and slightly insane way, embodies a powerful backlash to our nation’s stifling obsession with political correctness.

Go ahead: Google “Donald Trump” and “political correctness,” and you shall reap an avalanche of hits. Some accuse Trump of making political correctness worse, inspiring a rising pro-P.C. backlash to his original, anti-P.C. backlash. Some note that Trump, in certain ways, can be quietly politically correct when he wants to be.

But in the end, most agree that Trump’s incredible journey from shouting reality star to hollering GOP presidential nominee was fueled at least in part by a long train of exhausting harping and hawing from various Democratic politicians. In certain circles, the agonizing never stops, at least when it comes to who is allowed to say what and when, who in America is more oppressed than whom, and how various rich and powerful women — ahem, cough, cough, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — are actually the victims of a debilitating, sinister, and institutional sexism that clutches the deepest cockles of the American heart.

So, with polls tightening and a significant swath of undecided voters debating whether to halfheartedly vote on Election Day or simply go hide in a hotel room in a random city, get drunk, and then watch the Three Stooges all night — no, seriously, I know of at least one couple planning to do this — what do Democrats do as they find themselves in the remarkable position of flailing against Donald J. Trump?

You guessed it: They pick the issues that annoy people who might vote for Trump, and then double down! Witness President Obama at a Clinton fundraiser in New York City on Sunday night: “There’s a reason why we haven’t had a woman president. We as a society still grapple with what it means to see powerful women, and it still troubles us in a lot of ways, unfairly.” Later in his speech, Obama went all in, tossing out this little doozy: “This should not be a close election but it will be, and the reason it will be is not because of Hillary’s flaws.”

Are you laughing? You should be laughing. Crying’s fine too, I suppose. As a woman, I know I really should embrace this whole “women can’t have flaws” train of thought — probably better described as a rhetorical hairball — but come on, man. Hillary Clinton is a disastrous and ethically challenged candidate, and President Obama knows it. When he was running against her in 2008, in fact, he was more than happy to point out her various and sundry flaws. Sometimes this was blunt and direct: Clinton represents everything “wrong with politics today,” claimed one Obama ad. Sometimes things got hilariously passive-aggressive: “You’re likeable enough, Hillary!” Ouch. Just how clueless does he think we are?

Sorry, don’t answer that. After all, “How Clueless Do They Think We Are?” could be the official slogan of 2016. But with clichéd and desperate “Look! Sexism!” shenanigans like these, it’s almost as if certain Democrats — and certain members of the media — are inadvertently doing their best to boost a Donald Trump win.

Then there’s the Obama administration’s response to this weekend’s bombings in New York City and New Jersey, which almost seemed like a caricature of Trump’s critique of our current “war on terror.” After hours of the press freaking out about Trump calling the explosion in New York a “bomb” — which, of course, it was — White House spokesperson Josh Earnest told the nation, with a presumably straight face, that when it came to ISIS, we are “in a narrative fight with them, a narrative battle.” This likely came as a big surprise to ISIS supporters, most of whom are likely not English majors, are quite comfortable with their narrative, and seem to prefer to fight with guns, knives, and bombs.

For her part, Hillary Clinton listlessly faced the cameras — that’s sexist to point out, I know — seeming annoyed that she had to talk about the bombings at all. Clad in a jacket that looked like it was made of woodland moss, perhaps Clinton hoped she could quietly blend into the backdrop of life like a mythical forest creature while she accused Donald Trump of giving “aid and comfort” to terrorists by saying mean and inappropriate things. No, really, that’s what she did. ISIS, we are told, gets quite a charge when Americans aren’t politically correct.

It’s amazing, isn’t it? And so it is that today’s Democrats are struggling to face down a guy who repeatedly praises Vladimir Putin, told an audience he would force the military to commit war crimes, repeatedly telegraphs instability and insecurity, flip flops like a champ, donated to his opponent, boasts an entire luxury wardrobe full of ethical problems, publicly refused to leave nuking Europe off the table, and gets all excited about the strength of those tanks that rolled out that one time in Tiananmen Square. They could talk about these things, you know. But hey! Democrats gotta Democrat — and I must be sexist.