If you’re still undecided in the presidential election, you’re not alone: ​​up to 13 percent of voters could be in the same boat, according to to change the search: having doubts, or consulting a third party, or simply not being sold yet.

To get unstuck, try this short exercise. These are three simple steps that can make things much clearer.

First, let’s remember what the situation was like in the late 2010s. It’s difficult, because it was 6 or 7 years ago and a pandemic, but think about it. Donald Trump was president. He came from a company that looked glitzy and successful, but turned out to be mostly compound by Hollywood and based on a ton of fraud. Many of his key political allies were actually sketchy crooks who eventually surrendered to prison. Trump ended up filling his administration with without reservation crooks who didn’t know how to handle things, like him.

The result was week after week of relentless effort tormented it caused the collapse of many functions of the U.S. government that Americans rely on. To cite just one example, Trump delayed Puerto Rico desperately needed aid after Hurricane Maria, in part because it insisted on longest government close Never. And that was just one of his three stops.

During Trump’s term, a lot of things started to go off the rails. The crime was dopingincluding the largest one-year increase in the murder rate ever recorded. Jobs were gaining outsourced abroad even more quickly than under the Obama presidency. Costs were increasing due to Trump’s trade war with China. The national debt was explode. And Everything People Hate About Politics Has Been On Steroids: After Trump abused his power, work on everything productive outside Washington ground off. Trump has a glass jaw and thin skin, so he attacks everyone. He spent most of his term angry tweet instead of accomplishing anything for the people who elected him. This is why historians rank him the worst president ever and Americans gave him one of the lowest approval ratings Never.

Second, move forward a little from what you were going through four years ago. It was the end of Trump’s term. Covid was raging. American deaths already stood at nearly 200,000. Eleven million were out of work. Crushing stress for parents trying to manage their children’s “remote school”. I couldn’t get any toilet paper. Difficult to buy groceries. It was awkward and uncomfortable if you wore a mask and distanced yourself, but pretty anxiety-inducing if you were in a place that didn’t do those things (who the hell was coughing on you anyway?). The grind of Zoom. The claustrophobia of being alone. The boredom of exhausting your binge watch list. And what about dating? The gym? Your immunocompromised grandmother?

Try to remember why things went so wrong. Trump actually had known how big is the threat Covid poses. But he ignored that and lied about this. He already had dismantled the government apparatus for fighting pandemics, then it thrown away the game plan to fight new diseases. So, we missed the window to limit the damage. Once, our best and only remaining weapon against the pandemic was smart, coherent public health strategies, he said. confused, mine, politicizedand downright arrested any measures that could help. Its own lead coordinator on Covid said that Trump single-handedly caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans (he certainly caused the deaths of many more people) die In Republican zones). His incompetence and destructive decisions do the economic and social suffering of the pandemic is much worse.

Fast forward one last step. Remember what happened to our economy as the pandemic ebbed and flowed (you can read this for yourself in the Congressional Journal). testimony by Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics). Covid forced stores, schools, restaurants and factories to close, people to stop driving and products to stop shipping. So demand fell for everything.

Once Joe Biden became president, he executed the most successful American vaccination program in history. This allowed us to get everything back up and running at full capacity (for example, under Biden we went from less than half of schools open to almost all of them). Demand has therefore returned in force. But the supply of most of our goods and services had been seriously disrupted. More demand and less supply led to higher prices. Then Russia’s invasion of Ukraine restricted energy supplies and pushed prices up further.

So, what can we learn from this mental refreshment? The most important point – and if you remember just one thing, remember this – is that Donald Trump has more to do with rising costs than anyone else: The reason prices have risen so much is because cause of Covid and the economic effects of Covid. were much more serious because of Trump.

Trump tries to shift the blame. He argues that it was all government spending under Biden that made inflation worse. This is BS. Trump actually spent path more than Biden, both on Covid and in general. And if it was Biden’s spending here in the United States, why did inflation spike around the world? world? And why did the United States do better than any other advanced economy to bring down inflation? And while we’re at it, why is Trump now proposing a plan that would make inflation soar Again? Trump is an arsonist trying to blame the firefighters.

There are a lot of things like this with Trump, there is a lot of hope that we will forget the critical things. Take a question that undecided voters say makes them hesitate about the vice president Kamala Harris: Concern about the Biden administration’s approach to the war in Gaza. Remember Trump was one of Israel’s prime ministers Benjamin NetanyahuTrump’s closest friends and gave him everything he wanted, which is part of the reason why former Trump officials believe that “compared to the Biden administration, a second Trump administration would likely be more permissive toward Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and less inclined to bring U.S. influence over Israel’s conduct.” Trump hopes we forget this.

If you’re undecided, no one should tell you how to vote. But before you do that, just try to remember accurately what happened before. And based on that, think about what is likely to happen in the future.