Not long ago, many Americans spent hours a day following then-President Donald J. Trump's every move. Then, sometime after the US Capitol riots on January 6, 2021, and before his first indictment, they largely stopped.
They are having trouble remembering everything.
Americans' memories of events that once seemed searing have now faded, changed and, in some cases, warped. Polls suggest that voters' opinions of Trump's policies and his presidency have improved in the rearview mirror. In interviews, voters often have a vague memory of one of the most unsettling periods in modern politics. Social scientists say this is not surprising. In an era of hyperpartisanship, there is little agreed upon collective memory.
As Trump seeks to return to power and bases his campaign on nostalgia for a time not long ago, President Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s campaign is counting on voters to refocus on Trump, hoping they will remember why they denied him a second term.
“Remember how you felt the day after Donald Trump was elected President in 2016,” the Biden campaign wrote in a fundraising appeal. “He remembers feeling disbelief and fear of what was to come.”
For now, the erosion of time appears to be working in Trump's favor. A New York Times/Siena College poll from late February found that 10 percent of Biden's 2020 voters now say they support Trump, while virtually none of Trump's voters had swung toward Biden.
Many conservative and undecided voters know “what they don't like about Biden and have forgotten what they don't like about Trump,” said Sarah Longwell, a Republican consultant who opposes Trump.
Polls suggest that Trump has also made gains among voters who may have been too young to remember his first term well. The nearly 4.2 million 18-year-olds now eligible to vote were in high school when Trump was first elected.
A Gallup analysis in June found that 46 percent of adults approved of Trump's handling of the Presidency, based on what they “heard or remembered.” Trump's approval rating when he left office was 34 percent.
When Ross Kuehne, an independent from New Hampshire, was asked what he remembers now, Kuehne, who plans to vote for Biden, cited what he considered low points: Trump noting that he had a “great friendship” with the North Korean dictator. A government shutdown. That Mexico would not pay for a border wall. Trump describing there were “very fine people on both sides” at a white supremacist rally in Virginia. That his supporters wanted to take over the Capitol on January 6, 2021. And there were many dramas missing.
James W. Pennebaker, who researches collective memory at the University of Texas at Austin, noted that polarization and a fractured media environment meant that Americans were less likely to agree on given facts, preventing the country from creating a collective memory and shared.
Democrats say that if they tell enough people about Trump's record, Biden's skeptical voters will vote for him.
“You can look back and have this kind of collective amnesia about how bad and harmful the policies were,” said Lori Lodes, executive director of Climate Power, a liberal advocacy group whose surveys found that 52 percent of likely voters Now they approve of Trump's mandate. That support for Trump, she said, “is based on this false illusion of looking back.”
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