For many millions of Americans, time seemed to move differently under President Donald Trump.
There was no breathing room ā no calm in the eye of the storm. From beginning to end ā from the āAmerican carnageā inaugural on Jan. 20, 2017, to the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 ā 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 nationās 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 donāt intend to return to his den.
There are other voters who take a very different view. To them, Trumpās term was a time of peace and prosperity. They donāt register the pandemic or the subsequent economic crisis as part and parcel of the administration. They donāt 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 anĀ April CBS News pollĀ of key battleground states, roughly 62 percent of registered voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin said that when they look back at 2020, their stateās economy was good. In the moment, however, a majority of voters in those states disapproved of Trumpās 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. āThe economyā under Trump is simply the one that existed from Jan. 20, 2017, to March 13, 2020, when the White HouseĀ 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 donāt 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.
So youāre going to blame progressives if RFK peels off enough votes and trump wins, regardless of if those votes come from progressives or centrists.
Iām going to blame people who have not grown up enough to realize the choices we actually have in front of us.
Uh huh. Iām sure you wonāt preemptively decide theyāre all progressives without evidence.