Forgetfulness
The current political wisdom among Republicans – or what passes for wisdom in some circles – is that voters have a short attention span, and therefore will have forgotten Trump’s misdeeds by the time they go to the polls in November. And in the past, that has sadly often been the case.
However, we are now living in the ‘new normal’, a place where such political wisdom has little relevance.
Come November 3rd, many voters will indeed have forgotten that Mexico never paid for The Wall, that the promised middle-class tax relief wound up being tax cuts for the wealthy, and that a much-touted Obamacare replacement plan that would cover everyone never materialized. Many will even have forgotten that Trump stood on that stage in Helsinki and chose to side with Putin over the intelligence community of his own country.
But there are some things that no one ever forgets, and there are memories that will be uppermost in many voters’ minds as they cast their ballots this fall.
No one forgets the day their thirty-year-old family business went bankrupt, while emergency funds to keep them afloat went to billionaires’ businesses instead.
No one forgets the day they got an eviction notice due to missed rent payments, and suddenly had to face homelessness as a real possibility. No one forgets the day the bank informed them that their home will be repossessed because they can’t pay their mortgage.
No one forgets the first time they had to line-up for hours at a food bank in order to feed their kids – or the subsequent times they had to do so, because they had no income through no fault of their own.
No one forgets the middle-of-the-night phone call informing them that a loved one had passed in a hospital ward – alone and afraid – because Covid-19 precluded any family members or friends from comforting them in their final moments.
No one forgets burying a much-loved spouse, a beloved relative, a friend, a neighbour, a co-worker, after they’ve succumbed to a disease that could have been surpressed by leadership that acknowledged its impact, instead of calling it a hoax.
To all of those PTB in the GOP who think these things will be conveniently ‘forgotten’ by the GE in November, I can assure you that there are certain things that no one forgets – including the fact that when a nation looked to its “pResident” for leadership in the midst of the worst pandemic in a century and the ensuing economic crisis to follow, what they got was a golf-playing, cofveve-spewing idiot tweeting about preserving Confederate statues and how well he scored on a cognitive test that any six-year-old could have aced.
Yes, many of us are guilty of forgetfulness – and in the case of the Trump “pResidency”, it is easy to forget a half-dozen or so scandals when faced with hundreds of them.
But the fact remains that no one forgets losing a loved one because the “pResident” insisted on re-opening businesses before it was safe to do so, or because the “pResident” chose to ignore a pandemic because it was considered politically advantageous to pretend it didn’t exist.
There may be some truth to the concept that voters are quick to forget. But assuming that voters will simply forget what is happening right now a mere four months from now is absurd – especially considering that things will probably be much worse by then.
If the GOP is hoping that ‘forgetfulness’ will serve them well in November, I can only point out that given how many voters will most likely still be burying their dead relatives within hours before heading to the polls, ‘forgetfulness’ won’t be something any intelligent human being would count on.
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