This year promises to be totally unpredictable, all the way through to next Jan. 6, when Congress certifies the Presidential electoral. There will certainly be some unusual claims along the way. We begin this month with a sterling example, so often provided by Donald Trump, and cited by Paul Krugman in The New York Times. Referring to his own mental acuity, Trump declared "There is no cognitive problem. If there was, I'd know about it." (Dunning-Kruger anyone?). Millions of Americans and other people around the world already know about his mental issues, based on The Former Guy's four years in the Oval Office, followed by three years of delusional claims, covering the "stolen election,” pretensions to absolute Presidential immunity, and almost everything short of the invention of money or the hydrogen bomb.

On the highly explosive abortion issue, the NYT’s Michelle Goldberg reporting on Michigan's Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer's vigorous campaign for women's reproductive rights, quotes Trump as follows: "For 54 years they were trying to get Roe v. Wade terminated, and I did it, and I'm proud to have done it."

He certainly carries a significant share of the blame, having named three of the Supreme Court justices who voted for this travesty, and Democrats should constantly remind voters of that in this year’s campaign.

One mantra coming out of MAGA's alternative reality crowd is that Joe Biden is too old to complete a second term and that Kamala Harris would be an unsatisfactory successor. Fox News and local radio conservative boosters conveniently ignore the reality that Trump will turn 78 in June, and shows evidence of detachment from the real world, not to mention increasingly erratic speech patterns that hint at brain damage. 

In another recent piece, Paul Krugman observed: "As anyone who has recently spent time with Biden (and I have) can tell you, he is in full possession of his faculties -- completely lucid and with excellent grasp of detail....He also has a sense of humor...somehow, the lucid, well-informed candidate is getting more heat over his age than his ranting, factually challenged opponent." Krugman adds: "Biden...has pursued a pro-worker agenda -- more so, arguably, than any president since Franklin D. Roosevelt -- and has presided over a significant reduction in inequality." It would be interesting to know the details of their tête-à-tête, but Krugman has disclosed none. Presumably, it was some sort of off-the-record briefing or campaign event.

Way back in July 2014, when almost no one could have imagined (hallucinated?) Donald Trump in the Oval Office or anywhere else inside Washington's Capital Beltway, The New Yorker's Evan Osnos published a detailed profile of Joe Biden, quoting his speech to the 2008 Democratic convention as follows: "I'm running for cops, firemen, nurses, teachers and assembly-line workers. We're not talking enough about income inequality….How can we continue to say a twenty per cent tax on carried interest" (in venture capital or private equity financial deals) "is fair? Why the hell aren't we talking about earned income versus unearned income?"

Those sentences sound like That Old Time Religion of the Democratic Party, and they could make the basis of an excellent campaign speech today. 

Thomas B. Edsall writes a weekly essay on US politics for The New York Times. It always includes a wide spectrum of opinions and factual input from a range of academics, pollsters and political consultants to both parties. The caption on a recent essay posed the question: "Does Biden have to cede the white working class to Trump?"  

In reply, Robert Borosage, a founder of the Campaign for America's future, had this to say: "Where Democrats have been losing is that their economics have not worked for working people. It is far more destructive to be the party of Wall Street and multinational corporations (the neoliberalism from Carter to Clinton to Obama, with Clinton the worst offender) than to be the party defending abortion or DEI."

Edsall himself commented: "The Democratic Party as it is now constructed is backed by a network of constituencies, each determined to protect its current status in the party hierarchy. Equally important is the network of interest groups, foundations and advocacy organizations that wield power in party deliberations." He pointed to the "far more diverse working class constituency of employees in the rapidly growing service sector...a constituency of milions of men and women receptive to appeals from a party that continues to be allied to the labor movement. Unions have increasingly targeted service workers in health care, hospitality, food services and related industries." 

There are some 65 million workers in these categories. By contrast, about 30 million people work in classic industries such as car manufacturing, mining or steel mills, and their numbers are decreasing.

In 1948, President Harry Truman campaigned aboard a train, lashing "The Do-Nothing 80th Congress," where the GOP had regained control in the 1946 midterms after languishing in opposition during FDR's New Deal and Truman's Fair Deal. At one whistle stop, a supporter called out from trackside, "Give 'em hell, Harry!" Truman replied "I tell the truth, and they think it's hell." Truman trailed in the polls and was expected to lose, but held the Oval Office in a major upset, defeating Thomas Dewey.

President Biden would do well to follow a similar line, lambasting the authentically Do Nothing, MAGA Republican-controlled House of Representatives. By contrast, he can point to the following Democratic legislation, passed in 2012 and 2022:

• The $2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, funding jobs to build roads, bridges, passenger and freight rail structure, public transport, airports, and other facilities.
• The Inflation Reduction Act, with $370 million in expenditures and tax credits for low-emission, extending federal health-insurance subsidies and enabling the government to negotiate lower Medicare prescription drug prices.
• The $280 billion CHIPS and Science Act, intended to strengthen the US chip manufacturing industry.

Based on these achievements, we suggest a "Give 'em hell, Joe" campaign strategy to highlight the genuine progress of Biden's first term and to promise still further success during a well-deserved second term. Crank up Amtrak and hit the rails across Flyover Country to show working class Americans that a Democratic administration and Congress will continue to work for all US citizens.