Brief memories are the most serious threat to the American Republic | Opinion

If you’re still undecided in the presidential election, you’re not alone: ​​According to Change Research, up to 13 percent of voters may find themselves in the same boat: undecided, or looking to a third party, or simply not being sold yet.

To avoid getting stuck, try this short exercise. These are three simple steps that can clear up a lot of things.

First, let’s remember how things were at the end of the 2010s. It’s hard because it was 6 or 7 years ago and a pandemic, but go back. Donald Trump was president. He came from a business that looked shiny and successful, but turned out to be largely a Hollywood creation and based on a lot of fraud. Many of his main political allies were actually sketchy con artists who ended up in prison. Trump ended up filling his administration with unskilled crooks who didn’t know how to run things like he did.

The result was week after week of ongoing unrest that led to the collapse of many of the functions of the US government on which Americans rely. Just one example: Trump delayed much-needed aid to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, in part because he pushed for the longest government shutdown in history. And this was only one of his three blackouts.

Much has gone wrong during the Trump administration. Crime was up, including the biggest jump in the murder rate in a year. Jobs were transferred overseas even faster than during Obama’s presidency. Costs have been rising due to Trump’s trade war with China. The national debt was growing rapidly. And everything people hate about politics has gone on steroids: After Trump abused his power, work on anything productive outside Washington stalled. Trump is known to have a glass jaw and thin skin, so he attacks everyone. He spent most of his presidency tweeting instead of doing anything for the people who elected him. That’s why historians consider him the worst president ever and Americans gave him one of the lowest approval ratings ever.

Second, move forward a little to what you experienced four years ago. It was the end of Trump’s term. Covid was rampant. The number of American deaths has already reached almost 200,000. Eleven million were left without work. Crushing stress for parents trying to manage their children’s ‘distance school’. Couldn’t get toilet paper. It’s hard to get food. It was awkward and inconvenient if you were masking and social distancing, but a little unsettling if you were in a place that didn’t have those things (who the hell would cough on you anyway?). Zoom work. Claustrophobia of loneliness. The boredom of exhausting your drinking watch list. What about dating? Gym? Is your grandmother immunocompromised?

Try to remember why things got so bad. Trump really knew how big of a threat Covid posed. But he ignored it and lied about it. He had already dismantled the state apparatus for fighting pandemics and then abandoned the plan to combat new diseases. So we missed the window to limit the damage. When our best and only remaining weapon against the pandemic became smart and cohesive public health strategies, he confused, undermined, politicized and completely stopped all measures that might have helped. His own top Covid coordinator said Trump single-handedly caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans (he certainly caused the deaths of many more in Republican areas). His incompetence and destructive decisions have greatly exacerbated the economic and social pain of the pandemic.

Fast forward one last step. Remind yourself of what happened in our economy as the pandemic waxed and waned (you can read it for yourself in the testimony before Congress of Mark Zandi, chief economist at the research firm Moody’s). Covid has forced shops, schools, restaurants and factories to close, people to stop driving, and food supplies to stop. So, demand dropped for everything.

As president, Joe Biden implemented the most successful American vaccination program in history. This allowed us to get things running at full capacity again (under Biden, for example, we went from having less than half of our schools open to almost all of them). So, the demand has increased dramatically. However, the supply of most of our goods and services has been severely disrupted. More demand and less supply meant prices began to rise. Then Russia’s invasion of Ukraine limited energy supplies and caused prices to rise further.

So what can we take away from this mental refresher? The most important point – and if you remember one thing, please remember this – is that Donald Trump had more to do with the increase in costs than anyone else: the reason prices have gone up so much is due to Covid and economic consequences of Covid. were much more serious because of Trump.

Trump is trying to shift the blame. He argues that it is government spending under Biden that has worsened inflation. This is nonsense. In fact, Trump has spent far more than Biden, both on Covid and overall. And if it was Biden’s spending here in the United States, then why did inflation rise around the world? And why has the United States been more successful than any other advanced economy in reducing inflation? And while we’re on the subject, why is Trump now pushing a plan that will cause inflation to skyrocket again? Trump is an arsonist trying to blame the fire department.

With Trump there are a lot of similar things, a lot of hopes that we will forget important things. Take, for example, the issue that undecided voters say has them second-guessing Vice President Kamala Harris: concerns about the Biden administration’s approach to the Gaza war. Remember, Trump was one of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s closest friends and gave him everything he wanted, which is partly why former Trump officials believe that “compared to the Biden administration, a second Trump administration will likely be more lenient towards the Israeli military campaign.” in the Gaza Strip and are less willing to use US leverage to shape Israeli behavior.” Trump hopes we’ll forget about it.

If you are undecided, no one should tell you how to vote. But before you do, just try to remember exactly what happened before. And from that, think about what might happen in the future.