His mind did what?

Thanks, Michael Bender, I needed a laugh.

In "Frankly We Did Win This Election":  The Inside Story of How Trump Lost, Bender of the Wall Street Journal shares the amusing theory that Trump's misogyny handcuffed his own effort to evade prosecution by hiding in the White House until 2025 (or until a lifetime of drug abuse and poor eating habits took its inevitable toll).  Advised by such shrewd political thinkers as Dick Morris and Sean Hannity, Trump became convinced that Joe Biden was the perfect opponent, too old and decrepit to represent a serious threat.  Morris evidently persuaded him that the Democratic National Committee would ignore all the primaries Biden won and summarily replace him with either Hillary Clinton or Michelle Obama.  The Stable Genius therefore "took it easy" on Biden.  How do you smear a white Christian heterosexual man who's only four years older than you?  You're pretty much reduced to smearing his son for making some poor decisions.

Trump, Bender writes, "had often complained that his early attack on [Elizabeth] Warren had damaged her presidential bid, which he regretted because he viewed her as an easier opponent.  Now he worried that a heavy blitz of attack ads would hasten the secret plot [my italics] being hatched by Democrats, and his mind raced with who they might select in Biden's place."

His mind raced.  Mr. Bender, you can't write things like that without warning.  What if I was drinking liquid?  You would owe me a keyboard.  Trump's mind can no more race than it can do a double-backward twist like Simone Biles.  I won't deny there's a certain low cunning at work there, but all his "mind" did was regurgitate the bullshit Morris was feeding it.  Then he remembered that he trailed in every reputable poll and panicked at the thought of losing to a woman.  (Michelle Obama didn't even want to be First Lady much less run for office, and Hillary Clinton is entitled to enjoy herself now.  It's just possible Trump could have defeated Tulsi Gabbard.)

More people voted last November than in any previous presidential election in spite of a pandemic, a postal system on life support and the Jim Crow laws already on the books.  Trump did that.  Eighty-one million Americans said, "This must stop."  Or "I can't listen to that whining voice or look at that face like an old catcher's mitt dipped in marmalade one more time."  Or even "Hey, I like Joe Biden."  It's his one positive achievement in 74 years.  Just don't use phrases like "his mind raced," even if you're accustomed to writing for the Wall Street Journal.  Snopes.com just had to deny the rumor that he put his baggy pants on backwards for the North Carolina hate rally last Saturday.  I can't watch it but I've seen the pictures, and I think it could go either way.