You're Trump, it's looking bad

Put yourself in the shoes of Donald Trump. The world is sick and getting sicker, now officially suffering from a pandemic, the stock market has sunk into bear territory, experts increasingly see us in a recession and most polls are discouraging.

Meanwhile, the Democrats have all but settled upon their nominee and their apparent choice, Joe Biden, happens to be the very candidate you were discussing on that perfect call with the Ukrainian president, whose meaning your enemies twisted to impeach you.

You need to win a second term. Not only do we know you were sent from heaven to lead the United States. There's also the matter that, like anyone else, and perfectly legitimately, you have some secrets that should be none of anyone else's business, but you know you wouldn't be able to keep them locked up for long after leaving the Oval Office.

What do you do? Perhaps unite the American public behind you by starting a war that, while punishing some foreigners you very justifiably dislike, would also move voter attention away from what a majority may foolishly imagine to be presidential shortcomings? I referred to that possibility in an Asia Times piece published January 3, "Is Trump wagging the dog in the Middle East?"

Things look even worse for you now than they were then, which explains how Democrats on Wednesday evening managed to persuade more than a handful of disloyal Republican members of Congress to cross over and join them in passing an insulting resolution that's intended to restrain you if you should see the need to go to war with Iran.

In a totally unconstitutional attempt to limit God-given presidential powers, the resolution says you can't take military action against Iran without explicit approval by Congress.

Certainly, you will veto that impertinent measure in short order. Your pathetic enemies weren't able to come up with enough votes to override your veto.

Of course, it would be irresponsible of you to fail to keep alive the possibility of attacking Iran. It's your main responsibility to fulfill your divine destiny by becoming re-elected, as anyone should be able to see and as your loyal admirers have never doubted. You are a man who takes his responsibilities seriously.

You'll need a bit of a policy workaround, of course, since you ran in 2016 on a platform of avoiding endless wars - and you've surprised and embarrassed the purveyors of Fake News with the extent to which you've stuck to that policy up to now. Now you may even be close to leaving Afghan urbanites, who lack the will to protect themselves, to a spell of discipline under the Taliban. Why, indeed, should Americans prop up shithole countries?

If you debate Biden you'll certainly differentiate yourself from him by confronting him again with his 2002 Senate vote to authorize the George W Bush administration to use military force in Iraq. So what if you were on record as favoring that war six months before it started and no proof has surfaced that you changed your mind. You know you opposed it before it started. Those of us who love you will believe you.

But you have to take account of the possibility that the recent Democratic surge for Biden is an indicator that a majority of voters are confused enough that they will reject your account and believe

Biden when he says his own 2002 vote was a mistake that he's learned from.

You also know a problem exists in the fact that Barack Obama, who had opposed the Iraq War, was sufficiently satisfied with Biden's stance that he chose him as running mate in 2008 and stuck with him in 2012. Unfortunately, that's likely to be good enough for most of the shallow-minded liberal voters who wish the Kenyan were still president and who in lieu of that have been voting in droves in the primaries for his loyal vicepresident.

Of course, you're not going to give Sleepy Joe a pass on Huntergate. You have invested a lot in trying to make voters see that Ukrainian affair - a posh job for the evidently weak son who had chosen a lobbyist career and sold the family name - as corruption on the part of the father.

You'll keep trying, in debates among other venues, and well you should. But you can sense that voters by now have stupidly put that episode down to bad optics that don't reveal much of anything if you focus in on the real picture.