Democrats need to do a better job of reminding voters exactly what life was like when former President Donald Trump was in office, argued Matt Bai for The Washington Post — because they've let what should be one of Trump's greatest weaknesses with voters be wielded as a strength.
"Trump has a record as president, and, strange at it seems, hardly any of his opponents ever mention it," wrote Bai. To some extent this is because "Democrats worry that, despite all the chaos and ineptitude that characterized the Trump White House, voters recall it differently. For much of Trump’s term, inflation was low, the economy (bequeathed by President Barack Obama) was humming along, and taxes were being refunded.
"It was a time of bread and circuses, and maybe circuses — in this case, the nonstop chaos that seemed entertaining for a while but grew wearying over time — are faster to recede from memory."
However, he wrote, there is one event that truly encapsulates how destructive the Trump administration was — and even if voters have been quick to memory-hole it, historians will not be.
"I’m not talking about the politicization of foreign policy in Ukraine, or the withdrawal from international treaties, or the horrific moment when Trump sided with Vladimir Putin over his own government in front of the entire world. Nor am I fixated on Trump’s tacit support for white nationalism, or his firing of the FBI director, or the delegation of power to his dilettante children," wrote Bai.
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No, what Trump should be remembered for most is the death of 1 million people from the COVID pandemic — an event that was bound to cause widespread death no matter what, but that Bai wrote Trump exacerbated with chaotic and incapable leadership.
The list of ways Trump bungled the pandemic is manifold, wrote Bai — he deliberately suppressed testing for fear the numbers would make him look bad, joined in with culture war fights against masking and business closures, and suggested people should use household cleaners on themselves. He did, to his credit, approve the federal program that rushed the vaccine to market — but "Trump’s personal skepticism of the vaccine had consequences; in the late stage of the crisis, pretty much the only people overwhelming emergency rooms were rural Americans who refused to be immunized. A lot of them never made it home."
Many voters have simply let this trauma fade from memory, warned Bai, and now remember that nothing was going on in 2020 except low prices.
"In 2016, Democrats assumed, wrongly, that voters would see Trump for what he was — an entertainer without intellectual depth. This year, they seem to be assuming that voters already lived through the worst of Trump’s presidency and don’t need to be reminded of his tragic record," wrote Bai. "I hope they’re right this time. Because the more clearly you remember the horror of Trump’s first go-round, the more terrifying a sequel becomes."
