Plus, reader Ron Pevey offers a historical analogy to the general that I hadn’t considered:
Here is a question I have been wondering about lately concerning the presidential battle that is shaping up. I have read several columns drawing the analogy to the 1980 election, but have yet to read one with the parallel that seems most appropriate to me: Give-‘em-hell Harry against the smooth Wall-Street-backed New Yorker in 1948. Truman’s famous coarseness, his popularity in fly-over country, even the parallels between Trump’s bankruptcies and the “failed haberdasher”.
Has it faded too far into our collective memory? Is everybody waiting for the general election? It would seem to me that, since the tables are turned (party-wise), it would make an interesting analogy that might even appeal to traditional non-elite Democrats. (The fact that both the 1948 and 1980 traumatic elections were harbingers of go-go decades for the country might even relieve some people’s anxiety a tad.)
Well, that’s a cheerful thought.