I don’t know if we should be looking at this from a “luck” standpoint. There were, and are, plenty of candidates that would crush Trump. These are DNC decisions that are…questionable at best being generous to them.
I'm constantly marveling at Trump's luck as a politician. He only won in 2016 because he ran against one of the Democrats' weakest candidates. In 2024 he ends up running against someone even weaker.
Who? There are never named names in this conversation. Gretchen Whitmer is the only one who seems plausible to me but has little to no national profile.
There's a reason all the op eds throwing out names never mention anyone who has run a national campaign.
And when it comes to women candidates, they are always the woman people would vote for, up to the moment she opens a national campaign.