George W. Bush and Hilary Clinton were sitting next to Donald Trump’s inauguration in January of 2017.

According to Clinton and several reporters who could lip-read, the former President turned to Clinton and whispered, “this is some shit.”

I watched some of President Trump’s inaugural acceptance speech and shook my head and said the very same thing to Maria: “This is some shit.” Welcome to America in 2020.

As would be expected, Trump’s overblown celebration on the White House lawn and his dire warnings about Joe Biden and the breathless media commentary that followed triggered yet another firestorm.

Critics are screaming that Trump broke the law by bringing politics to the White House, but I thought the real problem was that he took all the life out of a presidential campaign and turned it into a grossly overdone Bar Mitzvah.

But he did frighten people. More panic, fear, and despair in the time of shit, in the vast and diverse network of resistance that is desperate to push Trump out of office.

Maybe I’m getting older, but I’ve seen this movie before. It seems that the Republicans never change and that the Democrats never learn.

For weeks now, ever since they were nominated, Bidena and Harris were sleep-walking through an utterly predictable trap that Trump eagerly sprung in his ham-handed, incoherent and often dishonest way.

He is our National Opportunist, he leaps onto anything that he thinks will work to his advantage, even if it contradicts every single other thing he has ever said. This week, he is the Martin Luter King of racial politics in America,  Emma Lazarus to the immigrants, and Susan Anthony’s best friend.

And he suddenly had a rich and timely way to define his presidency, since he never bothered to say what he planned to do over the next four years.

Almost everyone could see it coming.

Americans don’t like seeing days of violence and unrest on the news, they don’t like the idea of defunding the police  – who will protect them? – and the disturbing and increasingly violent videos from Portland, Seattle, New York City, and now, Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Tides turn quickly in politics, as they do in the age of climate change.

Biden and  Harris were all over the Black Lives Matter movement, as were most Americans after the killing of George Floyd.

Biden was salivating over all those fired-up African-Americans and progressives who sense a racial reckoning after all these years.

There are lots of signs that this moment is coming, but not so fast or so easily. Those mysterious looters, whoever they are, are making the moment much more difficult and precarious for the movement to oust Trump.

I didn’t like those videos much either. A majority of Americans say they agree that policing in America needs to be re-defined. Anybody who thinks they are about to let anyone defund their police departments is smoking something illegal.

It is a primary function of the government to protect lives and property. When it doesn’t, bad things always happen. Trump is correct about some of the Democratic governors – they do seem weak and indecisive (Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms a standout exception), they have let things go on for too long.

They have given Trump the diversion and distraction he has been desperately seeking for months, one even better than mail fraud and miracle cures for the pandemic.

The Democrats, as usual when it comes to Republican hate and race-mongering, were asleep at the switches, lulled into believing once again, bless them, that virtue always prevails.

In politics, success is what prevails, by all means, at any cost.

This is something the Republican Party knows how to do, and has been doing for generations now: persuading half of the country that the other half is a grave danger to them.

Three weeks ago, the BLM movement was one thing,  and most Americans were willing to climb on board. The movement hasn’t changed, it is just the same, and just as valid. I’m not taking my BLM bracelet off.

But the environment around it is always changing, especially in a political year. It is up to them how to respond.

There is plenty to worry American voters this year, and they want – and deserve –  a break. Burning down Target stores and smashing windows along the Michigan Mile and setting fire to police stations and murdering a New York City cop is not what they need or want.

There is nothing dearer to Republican strategists than a scenario than this, and Biden and the Democrats are somewhat trapped.  The Republicans are always prepared, the Democrats are somehow never prepared.

Biden doesn’t dare alienate this powerful new social justice movement; and he doesn’t dare let Trump steal those “frightened” suburban “housewives” from them.

But some things need to be challenged just because they are wrong.

Endless rioting and violence are wrong in a democracy that depends on civil disagreement and protest. Like racism, it is simply wrong and needs to be confronted, not tolerated.

Joe Biden may be a lot of good things, but bold is not one of them.

His response to Trump is still fuddled, predictable, and nowhere near as exciting as Trump knows how to be.

Trump is master of hogging the spotlight.  Biden still has his head in the 1950s, as if giving earnest interviews to MSNBC will do the trick.

That doesn’t work in 2020. It isn’t just who has the right ideas. It’s who has the right ideas and expresses them in the loudest and boldest and most dramatic way.

Instead of rushing to Wisconsin to talk to police officers and protesters and families and showing us how it ought to be done, Biden’s mumbling but truthful platitudes about disapproving of violence are stale, they don’t cut through the fog. That’s the challenge of being the “nice” guy.

It’s great that he’s wearing a mask. It’s not enough.

What people want is a nice guy who can turn ruthless and get things done.

Politicians in this country ought never to forget that America is a right of the center country. Most Americans hate to see images of out-of-control young people, white or black, smashing windows and looting store windows and setting fire to police officers, and knocking them down with bricks.

It may force people to confront some truths, but it is not the way people in this country want to see us.

I don’t like to see it either, it is upsetting to me, I can only imagine how my neighbors feel. Watching those videos, I wonder if the fabric of the country isn’t coming apart.

That leaves people two choices: someone who can heal it, or someone who stops it.

As a citizen, a part of me wants somebody to stop it. Violence kills causes and changes values faster than almost anything. And then I want someone who can heal it.

Trump’s primary message now is that Biden and the Democrats are just too squishy to stop this trouble, these shootings, and bursts of destruction.  Are they making his case for him?

Personally, I thought the Mayor of Seattle was out of her mind letting protesters take over a chunk of her city and occupy a police station for weeks, while gun-toting vigilantes taunted the police and threatened residents.

How did this advance the cause of democracy,  social justice, and equality?

For perhaps the first time, Trump has a point. How often has that happened? Many Americans will ultimately more upset by the looting and violence than by the police brutality they were finally seeing for themselves. It is foolish to offer them such a choice.

The history of politics is that Republicans often overplay their hand and win. The history of Democratic politics is that they often overplay their hand and lose.

In a sense, that is the beauty of Joe Biden.

You really can’t convincingly portray him as a wild-eyed radical out to turn the country over to the dread socialists. He is the Prince of the middle, on the one hand, on the other.

He is the safe spot on the bumpy road.

That is also his weakness. Is he tough enough to bring all of this under control? Can he bring some order and coherence to our lives?

It’s a tricky line, a balancing act. The political challenge is to cross back and forth over the line, and so so in a way that re-captures the moment Trump gained this week.

Is it possible? Sure?

The people around Biden are not stupid, neither is he or his running mate.

The next few weeks will show us what they are really made of. He has to show people how he would handle this, and if he can’t, can he govern us?

Hating Trump is not enough. Biden and Harris have to be better than he is, they have to show they can deal with an unstable and troubled country and both lead it and heal it.

It is not simple. And platitudes won’t do it. But the advantage is still very much theirs.

Trump has been digging his own holes for months; now, the Democrats are digging one of their own. And it’s a big one. That’s politics.

Does this week mean Trump will win?

No, that’s silly and way premature. It’s just panic speaking.  Biden is still in a very strong position, one windy speech has not changed that. But the riots and looting have raised the specter of other times, other defeats, other disappointments.

The resistance has a strong heart but weak nerves.

There is plenty of time for Biden to define himself more clearly, and having a black women on the ticket will be a great help when racial tensions are so strong.

Biden seems to be waking up to Trump’s potent but ham-handed trap and has plenty of time to respond. Maybe he’ll go somewhere other than Delaware.

The cities and governors of trouble-wracked cities and towns are cracking down, asking for help. The cooler weather will help.

And, unaccountably and shockingly, police officers are still shooting young black men in the back. That’s a hard one for Trump to lie away. Blacks are making it clear they won’t just cool off and go away.

In politics in America right now, a week is a lifetime, and five new crises away. Trump has shown himself to be relentlessly tin-eared and self-destructive; he is his own worst enemy.

Remember, this could have been a cake-walk for the President if he hadn’t decided to run away from the pandemic and trash his economy in a process. He just can’t govern.

Speeches are not governing. Like Biden, he has to actually do something.

Mostly, and in practical terms, the convention was an expensive and boring flop. It was ponderous, windy, and way too long. It was jarringly and blatantly insincere.

We did see a new Trump: Tele-prompter Trump. He read his hour-long speech and stayed on track. His core message actually got through.  It’s’s doubtful he can stay on that course.

The Democrats actually drew higher ratings than the Republicans, and that is profoundly telling in the age of Trump. This must have made him nuts.

I am leery of accepting the premise that the convention was well done. Trump did absolutely nothing to expand his base of support. He is delusional about people loving him, and so he really can’t quite believe the trouble he is in.

By September – which is one week away – Americans will be transfixed by the catastrophe caused by the forced and premature schools’ opening across the country. Trump has given us millions of new virus carriers to move about the population.

People will start getting sick again.

Because the virus was never properly controlled, according to Dr. Fauci and others, it will just keep hopping from one place to another. Come Fall, just a few weeks away, the virus is expected to return and team up with the flu. That will further damage the economy and enrage people.

It will not be a good time for Donald Trump. His efforts to cast himself as a hero of the pandemic, a champion of immigrants, and a feminist himself were laughable; he just made himself look phonier and more dishonest.

Politics in America is dizzying right now; it is organic, intense, fast-moving, and unpredictable.

But one things is predictable and does not change. Donald Trump is uncaring, out of touch and incompetent.

Hang on; this is some shit.