Even as Democrats scramble to decide who will be their presidential nominee — in an election barely 100 days away — they somehow always find the time to keep up with their day job of saying ridiculous things about their GOP opponent. Their message to voters, played on continuous loop: The 2024 election is about democracy, and Donald J. Trump plans to take it away.

Hogwash. There are plenty of good reasons to worry about our steady retreat from the democratic principles on which our nation was founded, but Donald Trump is not one of them. Democrats, if you’re truly concerned about democracy, look in the mirror.

For the record, I’m not much of a Trumpster. While I admire Trump’s boundless energy and I marvel at his self-driven political resurrection, he was not my first choice for the GOP nomination. But at the same time, I object vehemently to the unfair and fundamentally anti-democratic actions (e.g., lawfare) to which he has been subjected.

Since Trump threw his hat in the political ring in 2015, his name has evoked a persona — a caricature, actually — that has become so thoroughly entrenched in the public view that it has become an alternate truth, impervious to challenge. He’s the egomaniac, the guy out only for himself, the peddler of disinformation, a sexist, a racist, a womanizer, a blusterer, a buffoon, etc.

In fairness, Trump’s everyday demeanor — and particularly his compulsive social media blather — reinforces that image. Frankly, I think he likes it. But the picture is largely contrived, a convenient façade built by those invested in his failure.

But whether or not it’s a bad rap, the RNC just held its most productive convention in decades, positioning the party with a very real shot at winning the election with — wonder of wonders — Donald Trump at the helm.

It remains to be seen whether that will endure to election day. The tumultuous events of the past two weeks — Biden’s precipitous collapse, Trump’s near-assassination, and then the triumphant GOP convention — are a reminder that anything can happen, and fast. But one of the convention’s more significant impacts has been the first-ever crack in that stale Trump façade. Suddenly, a different picture is taking shape.

If you’re a skeptic, you’re not alone. Among others, the always-insightful Whoopi Goldberg warned us last week on “The View,” “They’re trying to humanize Trump. Don’t fall for it!” Evidently, Whoopi is convinced that the former president of the United States is subhuman — or maybe superhuman? Whatever. Just don’t fall for the old humanizing trick.

Instead, I suppose we should assume that the repeated expressions by Trump’s adult sons of love and admiration for the father who has stood up to ceaseless criticism, defamation, legal persecution, and now physical assault are just phony, made-for-TV talk. And his 17-year-old granddaughter’s obvious adoration for her grandpa? That was just a well-rehearsed act.

I was surprised at how many of the RNC speakers recounted years of close friendship with the former president — not business relationships, not political relationships, but personal ones. Yes, those were invited participants, of course, and every minute of the RNC was carefully orchestrated. But to me, the sentiments felt very real.

And then there’s the assassination attempt and Trump’s extraordinary reaction to it. As with everything else Trump, it has been subjected to microscopic scrutiny. There are some who were enthralled by his coolness and courage under fire, while others were quick to dismiss those actions as more Trump showmanship.

Frankly, I don’t think any of us — Trump critics included — have any idea how we would react in that instant of crisis. But this much we know: The time between that horrifying moment when a bullet came within a fraction of an inch of exploding Trump’s skull on live TV and his subsequent fist-raised “Fight! Fight! Fight!” exhortation was no more than a minute or two. Trump’s reaction was remarkable, authentic, and obviously unplanned.

Could it be that Donald Trump is not much like his caricature at all? That maybe the man behind the blustering façade is a just another imperfect and very human person? That maybe “making America great again” is exactly what he wants to do?

J.D. Vance, Trump’s new running mate, has been widely criticized as hypocritical because he was once (eight years ago) an outspoken Trump critic, while now he’s an all-in supporter. Political opportunism? Vance offers a much simpler explanation: a change of heart, driven by his observation of Trump’s actions in office, which were starkly different from what he expected based on the extant caricature. What’s wrong with that? And perhaps J.D. Vance isn’t the only one.

Watching Donald Trump slog through endless personal and political attacks calls to mind the perspective offered by Teddy Roosevelt more than a century ago. In part:

It is not the critic who counts; the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; who spends himself in a worthy cause; at the best who knows the triumph, and if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly — so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Donald Trump is our 2024 man in the arena. Like him or hate him, the best each of us can do, Republican or Democrat, is to judge him by what we see and not by what we’re told to think about him — either by his haters or his diehard supporters. Surely that’s the best path to making a sound election choice. And it’s the least we can do to respect the man in the arena.