"If you took all the girls I knew when I was single
And brought them all together for one night
I know they'd never match my sweet imagination."Paul Simon, Kodachrome, 1973
"Thanks for the memory
Of faults that you forgave,
Of rainbows on a wave,
And stockings in the basin
When a fellow needs a shave,
Thank you so much."
Lyrics by Leo Robin, Thanks for the Memory. Sung by Bob Hope and Shirley Ross, 1938
We experience the present in the bright light of day. We experience the past in moonlight.
We remember the Trump years better than they were. That is a huge advantage for Trump in the 2024 election.
For decades Gallup has been asking Americans whether they approve of past presidents. There is a pattern. We remember them better than we experienced them.
Covid. What a mess. What lost opportunities. What worry. Yet, now, alive, mostly free of the uncertainty and dread of a mysterious disease, I feel relief. Relief is a happier emotion to associate with Covid than is fear.
The points of crisis in past years which should define an era -- the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and Martin Luther King, the Vietnam War, the 9/11 attack, the Great Financial Crisis, the January 6 attack -- fade a little in emotional intensity. Our minds reflect on the aftermaths and how we coped. Again, we feel relief.
We saw January 6 revisionism in real time. When the memory was fresh, Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham, and Kevin McCarthy were furious with Trump, and they publicly blamed him with clarity and certainty. Lindsay Graham said he was done with Trump. McConnell and McCarthy said he was responsible. Then they recanted and began defending Trump. They forgave. They forgot.
Trump says things were wonderful when he was president and that they are terrible now. His narrative benefits from our selective forgetting. Trump is a high pressure salesman with a story. At his inauguration, he defined the immediate past as "carnage," then in three months he said we are in a golden era of prosperity. He talked up the country throughout his presidency. As soon as Biden was inaugurated, Trump said things are terrible, a disaster, the worst ever, and he has said that relentlessly. Trump gave us a roadmap.
Biden is not a strong communicator by presidential standards, and no one is as omnipresent and relentless as Trump. Trump is the voice-over narrator for this era, telling us what we are seeing. Even people who dislike Trump and disagree vehemently cannot help but hear him.
All this is an electoral headwind for Joe Biden, but it is not hopeless for him. Trump is not just the moonlit past because he never became the past. The all-too-present Trump is a manic, increasingly dangerous-sounding and desperate politician in deep legal and political trouble. The present-daylight-Biden does not compete with moon-glow Trump. Trump is on center stage today for having falsified business records to mischaracterize as a legitimate business expense his payments to quiet a porn star in order to suppress yet another revelation of sexual misconduct just prior to the 2016 election.
That sounds bad for Trump, but he may survive it and be stronger because of it. The problem for Biden with the Stormy Daniels trial is that everyone knows that this is the sort of thing Trump has done for decades. Some people admire his rascally audacity. Most other people don't care. The only people who care a lot already dislike him anyway.
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16 comments:
Memories
Light the corners of my mind
Misty water-colored memories
Of the way we were
That’s funny. Other than his penchant for calling people stupid names, my strongest memory is of Trump peddling hydroxychloroquine and suggesting we ingest antiseptics for COVID as our world fell apart around us. And, of course, his coup attempt – the sooner he's put on trial for it the better.
It’s worse than that.
Trump is going to be in the news 24/7 as long as this trial keeps going on. At the moment, the Democrats are way ahead in fundraising, but as usual Trump is way ahead in free, unearned media.
How many men are there in this country who have ever wanted to screw a porn star? How is it helpful for the Democrats to be spending the next month or two with the message constantly going out that Trump actually got to do it?
“No, you’ve got it all wrong” the Democrats will say, “it’s really about election interference,” as their message fades into the background and comes across as nothing more than, “Blah blah blah.”
If Trump wins in November, he should retroactively appoint Alvin Bragg as the head of his campaign.
Sounds like someone doesn’t think Trump should be tried for his crimes. I guess “justice for all” is just one of those woke notions harbored by social justice warriors.
“Someone” seems to think that pragmatic political concerns, like keeping Trump from winning in November, should not take precedence over enforcing abstract principles that won’t matter anyway if Trump gets elected.
“Someone” seems to think that pragmatic political concerns, like keeping Trump from winning in November, should not take precedence over enforcing abstract principles that won’t matter anyway if Trump gets elected.
It's hard for too many to NOT talk about Trump everyday. Perhaps too much?
The chart above does fail to indicate President Biden's current approval rating.
In any case, here is a preview of what might be the October surprise:
This is about the Trump-Putin meeting in 2018...
The US translator present during the private meeting between Trump and Putin in Helsinki on July 16, 2018, was Marina Gross; she was the only person in the meeting room with Trump and Putin, other than Putin's translator. As per Business Insider, she has been a translator for the State Department for years. Gross was the only other American in the room when Trump spoke privately with Putin. Trump has reportedly gone to extreme lengths to hide the details of his conversations with Putin from senior administration officials.
“Trump’s secrecy surrounding Putin “is not only unusual by historical standards, it is outrageous, said Strobe Talbott, a former deputy secretary of state now at the Brookings Institution, who participated in more than a dozen meetings between President Bill Clinton and then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s. “It handicaps the U.S. government — the experts and advisers and Cabinet officers who are there to serve [the president] — and it certainly gives Putin much more scope to manipulate Trump,” reported the Washington Post.
At the time, although Democrats in Congress wanted to subpoena the White House for the meeting transcripts, they didn't. However, when President Biden took the oath of office, he took possession of all the records of the U.S. government and included the notes of that meeting. Since Biden or his staff has likely read the transcripts and said nothing more about it, it may be safe to assume the notes revealed that the discussion between Trump and Putin was less than Earth-shattering.
“In March [2021], White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters she was "not aware" of any "deep dive" into finding out what Trump and Putin discussed during their one-on-one meetings. The White House declined to comment on whether the topic was revisited before Wednesday’s summit,” ABC News reported.
That said, if Biden wanted to know what was said during the meeting and could not access Gross’ notes, he could have called or met with her face to face as she is still a State Department employee.
---
Perhaps we will all learn during the final days of the Biden vs. Trump election campaign this fall.
This week's problem seems to be finding enough impartial people to serve as a juror or an alternate.
Michael -
The only people who will be impressed by TFG being in court are the deplorables.
Otherwise, Charles Manson would have been elected.
Independents/NAVs are turned off. TFG is not doing well there.
I think you forgot to mention something: TFG PAID to screw a porn star.
Paying for sex isn't something I would brag about, but maybe you think it's an accomplishment.
What? No mention of another big check being written because of peddling election lies?
I'm glad I'm younger and healthier than TFG, so I can celebrate once he's taken his final breath.
Yes, I do find satisfaction in bad people dying.
At last count they have six, so they are halfway there.
TFG is meeting his judge and jury.
“Someone” seems to think that putting Trump on trial for trying to overthrow the government and stealing top secret government documents would be “enforcing abstract principles” and would improve his chances of being elected. Not only is it untrue, but it’s no excuse for putting Trump above the law.
I realize that many think the Pledge of Allegiance with its "justice for all" is just supposed to be parroted like an oath of office, not taken seriously. We'll see in 2024 how many agree.
Mc,
As I recollect it, Trump paid to keep the porn star’s mouth shut, not open. 😱🤫🤔
We can learn a lot here. Until M2inFLA revealed it, I had no idea notes taken by Marina Gross might reveal something that could affect the Trump campaign. Anyway, regardless of what they said in private, we saw Trump grovel before Putin in Helsinki on live television and take Putin’s word over that of his own intelligence agencies – not that Trump’s chumps give a rip. Nor does any of it affect his 91 felony counts. The best way to defeat Trump would be to put him on trial ASAP.
TFG paid six figures for sex.
Now he's paying a lot more.
That's who you support.
TFG's work for Putin isn't a suprise.
Even a GOPee-led Senate committee found he had Russia's help in 2016.
Unfortunately, his supporters in the US and in Russia don't care.
It must be a lonely world for Michael Trigoboff, since he gets to debate with a bunch of uneducated morons.
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