For many millions of Americans, time seemed to move differently under President Donald Trump.
There was no breathing room — no calm in the eye of the storm. From beginning to end — from the “American carnage” inaugural on Jan. 20, 2017, to the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — it felt as though the country was in constant flux, each week a decade. We lurched from dysfunction to chaos and back again, eventually crashing on the shores of the nation’s worst domestic crisis since the Great Depression.
For many, if not most, of these Americans, the choice this November is no choice at all. They escaped Polyphemus once; they don’t intend to return to his den.
There are other voters who take a very different view. To them, Trump’s term was a time of peace and prosperity. They don’t register the pandemic or the subsequent economic crisis as part and parcel of the administration. They don’t hold Trump responsible.
In fact, one of the most striking findings in a number of recent polls is the extent to which a large portion of the electorate has given Trump a pass for his last year in office. For example, in an April CBS News poll of key battleground states, roughly 62 percent of registered voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin said that when they look back at 2020, their state’s economy was good. In the moment, however, a majority of voters in those states disapproved of Trump’s handling of the economy.
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Again, Trump presided over a recession worsened by his total failure to manage the coronavirus. As Covid deaths mounted, Trump spread misinformation and left states scrambling for needed supplies. It was not until after the March stock market crash that the White House issued its plan to blunt the economic impact of the pandemic. And the most generous provisions found in the CARES Act, including a vast expansion of unemployment benefits, were negotiated into the bill by Democratic lawmakers.
None of this seems to matter to voters. “The economy” under Trump is simply the one that existed from Jan. 20, 2017, to March 13, 2020, when the White House declared the coronavirus a national public health emergency. For everything else after that date, the former president gets a pass.
No other president has gotten this kind of excused absence for mismanaging a crisis that happened on his watch. We don’t bracket the secession crisis from our assessment of James Buchanan or the Great Depression from our judgment of Herbert Hoover or the hostage crisis in Iran from our assessment of Jimmy Carter. And for good reason: The presidency was designed for crisis. It was structured with the power and autonomy needed for handling the acute challenges of national life.
Ah, yes, a political party that spends millions and millions of dollars and countless labor hours running campaigns really wants to lose the election.
Biden et al may not do everything we want, but it’s ignorant to suggest they aren’t at least trying to change some things.
If you believe that political party has any of your interests at heart, you’re extremely gullible. People aren’t asking them for the world just a basic standard of living and to stop enabling genocide.
Ah, there’s the both sides argument.
How did you get that out of that statement? One party can be better than another, and both could still not have your interests at heart. Standing beside fascists throwing immigrants under the bus and enabling genocide and police violence isn’t a good way to say you want to save Democracy.