I almost never cite The New Republic and mostly avoid anything written by Michael Tomasky. Today is a rare exception, only the third time in 17 years. One supposes Biden's disastrous poll numbers are what has brought Tomasky up short.
Here is the subhead to his column, which isn't a bad brief abstract of his argument.
For liberals and Democrats, Trump’s presidency was a moral hellscape. But swing voters have a very different view. Accepting this is absolutely vital.
Tomasky describes the liberal "bubble" inside which he and fellow Democrats live, and then moves on to those who are neither progressive nor in the MAGA "bubble."
I’m talking about the people in between. They’re the people who’ll decide this election. And this election year, those of us inside our bubble need to go put our heads inside theirs. Because where they live, incredible as this may seem to you and me, the Trump years were good, and he was a pretty capable president.
For these voters, Donald Trump is not a moral monster. He’s just not. He’s embarrassing. He’s a little wild with his rhetoric at times. They wouldn’t necessarily want their sons to be like him. But they think he ran the country pretty well. It may be hard to believe, but this opinion is widely shared.
Tomasky gets that voters in the middle don't share progressives' twin obsessions with racism and sexism. What I noticed is that he compares Trump's performance with Obama's but only rarely with Biden's, probably because the latter has been a shambles.
However, a comparison of Biden and Trump is what will likely face voters in November. More years of Trump or more of Biden. That isn't a tough choice for Joe and Jane Sixpack.
