BIDEN VS. TRUMP, NOT A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD

By Ruth A. Sheets

This morning, Robert Reich wrote a piece “What Do Americans Know About Trump and Biden?”  That is a great question and I guess the answer depends in which part of the country the people live, what they watch or listen to, how tech-savvy they are, their gender, and their age. It also depends on how much they let fear, anger, resentment, and hatred (to me, the new 4 horsemen of the apocalypse) rule their lives.  In short, He says we as a people know very little about them, or at least most of us do.  I think Prof. Reich is correct.

Our media has portrayed Biden as that boring old man who can't do anything and just wanders around with no direction.   Trump has been portrayed as the fiery orator who will stand up for the working people and fix everything (although he has never really fixed anything to benefit anyone but himself). Those who have propagated the images of Biden and Trump knew what they were doing, lying to and cheating the American people and it was done by the same guys, the ones who own our media and need the fiery rhetoric of Donald Trump to spice things up for them.  The media certainly have kept the social media “likes” coming and the TVs of too many Americans tuned permanently to Fox “News,” which employs pundits trained well in audience manipulation, lying, and presenting half-truths.  Then, there’s the social media platforms that are now mostly OK with the lying, denigrating, and hateful speech Trump fans are spewing regularly.

Nearly a quarter of a century ago, Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore was portrayed by our media as boring even though he had a lot of experience, understood many of the challenges our nation would be facing, and had an awareness of how we could get through them together. Boring was the only thing people thought about and being boring was the worst thing a person could be, even worse than inexperience, ineptness, and leaning heavily on a family name as with George Bush.

That pathetic attitude about “boring” has persisted and Biden is now the victim of its ridiculousness. In reality, boring often means someone who actually knows their job, does it well, and does not feel the need to yell and scream about something while insulting and blaming others if things don’t work out perfectly.  “Boring” people often know how to find experts in their fields who can figure out how to make things happen, to get work done.

Trump on the other hand wouldn’t be called “boring.”  He is pure entertainment!  He has proven over and over he is incompetent, a terrible businessman as well as a bad actor, a serial liar (lying more than 30,000 times in public during the 4 years he was in office, something his cult must value highly), a sex-offender, and an indicted fraudster and insurrectionist. He tosses out phrases that mean nothing, does live test-ballooning to see the kinds of lies and insults his cult members like or at least don't mind, and whines constantly like a toddler. None of that matters if he is portrayed by the media the cult watches as a strong leader who will "fight for them." It matters little that he doesn’t know and does not want to know anything about his cult members beyond that they can be easily manipulated. He even speaks treason in public at his rallies and tells us how he is going to destroy our democracy and the cult is on board, or at least cheer as though they are.  The problem, despite all of that, Trump is supposedly leading in most polls. Something is very wrong with this picture?

Biden is a proven competent president with a staff that gets positive things done for this nation, definitely not perfect, and a bit “old-school,” but doing the job pretty well.  Trump was a lazy president (he often had empty folders around pretending to be working), ignorant (he knows very little about anything beyond the few business “rules” he follows and how to commit fraud), and a toddler-man (whining about everything and everyone that displeases him,  lying with a straight face, and not particularly wanting anything to improve for anyone, well, maybe just himself).  Trump surrounds himself with sycophants who will do what he orders when he is not being manipulated by them to do their bidding.

Looking at the two men, it is hard to see that they can be tied in the polls or rather Trump being ahead in many states.  Something is clearly wrong with the Democratic message.  Maybe the problem is that Democrats don’t believe in our own candidate.  Now, why would that be.  Biden has been enormously successful this past 3+ years in moving our nation forward.  He helped us get through a devastating pandemic.  There are a lot of revisionist history guys trying to claim the pandemic really wasn’t so bad and that we really didn’t lose over a million Americans to it and well, those who died were old and would have died anyway even if COVID had not gotten them.  It is clear those revisionists did not lose loved ones to the disease or pretended it was not really  COVID.  Several people I knew died of COVID and not all of them over 60.  My students lost family members and had to experience the grief nearly alone since being together in school was dangerous for households with 3+ generations living together in the same home.  Trump’s policies up to and including the actual pandemic hindered care and put a lot of health workers and others at risk.  He did push a vaccine, which was great, but he pretended it came from nowhere and it was he that got it made (the vaccine had been in the works for more than 15 years).  Then, when Trump got sick with COVID, he received the benefits of his position and was given all the latest treatments even though he had pushed garbage treatments on his followers, and maligned those health care leaders who did try to keep people safe.    

One difficulty we face is that people have very short memories.  Many now claim they were better off four years ago under Trump than now, under Biden.  That may be true for a tiny fraction of the population, but not for the vast majority of Americans.  Short memories let people believe the fantasy they are being fed, just as they believe so many lies about Trump and Biden. 

We are also not a people that likes to examine our beliefs and convictions very deeply.  If we did, it would be easier for people to see the truth more often.  It does not mean we wouldn’t be bamboozled now and then because con artists are quite skilled, but we would not be constantly vulnerable to the Donald Trumps of the world who plan to use us for their own power and to gain as much money and prestige at our expense as possible.  We wouldn’t let those con artists rise to high office in our nation.

This is going to be a hard 5 months ahead and if Toddler Trump wins, a terrible future for all but the very richest, white men. We who care need to work together to stop the Trump steal of our American democracy.  And, it is going to take all of us to do it!