Former President Donald Trump's United States of America

[kEiThZ]

My friend who lives in California tells me about this. It was the beginning of the end for the GOP in the state. Once they lost the LA area to the Democrats, it was over. Now they have lost the OC to them as well.

Trump sounds like Pete Wilson — and that scares Calif. GOP

As Gov. Pete Wilson (R) plotted his reelection bid nearly a quarter-century ago, he turned to a secret weapon that would mobilize his core voters: a ballot measure to bar undocumented immigrants from accessing state services like nonemergency healthcare and public schools.

thehill.com

Ask anybody who lived in California through the 90s and they'll tell you they've seen this movie before.

Are you sure about that?

Indeed. This is a President who has told sitting Congresswoman to go back to where they came from and suggested an Indiana born judge was unfit to try a case against him because of his Mexican heritage.

Anybody who thinks regular middle class immigrants haven't read through the lines, is dreaming. And now that white supremacists are executing minorities (not just immigrants) simply going about their daily business (what could be more American than shopping at Walmart on a Saturday), the line that Trump's rhetoric only targets illegals is getting more tenuous and indefensible.

Will add, the FBI is already warning of copycat attacks. White nationalists are jubilant and calling for more. If we start seeing monthly or even weekly attacks on concentrations of minorities, to argue that this won't have any political ramifications is laughable. And after the Trump administration defunded the office reponsible for combatting domestic terrorism, law enforcement are now likely operating from behind the curve and we should all expect more attacks:

The Department of Homeland Security quietly dismantled the intelligence group that was responsible for catching domestic terrorists

The group created reports about domestic terrorist groups and violent extremists, and helped local law enforcement handle those threats.

www.insider.com

 

[jje1000]

Trump sounds like Pete Wilson — and that scares Calif. GOP

As Gov. Pete Wilson (R) plotted his reelection bid nearly a quarter-century ago, he turned to a secret weapon that would mobilize his core voters: a ballot measure to bar undocumented immigrants from accessing state services like nonemergency healthcare and public schools.

thehill.com

Ask anybody who lived in California through the 90s and they'll tell you they've seen this movie before.

It's not a single act responsible, it's the net result of widespread demographic change, bumped off first by the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, then normalized by Reagan in 1987 (in an attempt to resolve the illegal migrant issue- that didn't work, illegal immigration continued irregardless).

Whether one thinks that California has improved or not, demographics are destiny, and Proposition 187 was just window dressing against the deep-set ascendancy of the Hispanic population.

California State Demographics

California's Population

Growth in the nation’s most populous state has slowed notably in the 21st century, with recent years bringing a drop in population due to higher deaths, lower births, and changes in migration. More than half of Californians under 24 are Latino while more than half of Californians 65 and older...

www.ppic.org

 

[doady]

Republican idealogy is all about self-gain over the greater good. By their nature, they avoid the big picture, and that also means short-term gain no matter the long term consequences. You can see that with the way with the way they are dealing with Trump too. That's why I didn't mind Trump winning so much. One or two terms of President Donald Trump is a very small price to pay for destroying the Republican chances elsewhere in the country and in future elections.

 

[AlbertC]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1158446513304956928

 

[Northern Light]

Never said that. But the year in which Texas flips a Senate seat or the Electoral College will be a political earthquake. Really, if Democrats were to take any major state-wide office, I think you'd see Republicans actually get serious about reforming their party after that.



Have you lived in the US? In my experience, Canadians just don't understand what US political culture is like. And watching through a left-leaning Canadian lens makes that viewpoint even more skewed.

Until very recently, the parties were big tent parties, with wide variation on policy preferences inside the same party. Just because they achieved control of Congress does not mean, they had agreement across the board.

No, I have no lived in the United States; yes, I am familiar w/their political culture, it was a minor in 1st degree

Also, the only time Democrats had full Control of Congress was the 110th and 111th Congresses. And only in the latter, did they have a Democratic President to pass their policies. That's 2 years of full control in the last few decades. Having the House (like Dems do today) is not all that valuable legislatively. And not having the Presidency means constantly having to override the veto.

If you can't pass any minimum wage hike in 2 full years, that is a lack of ideological coherence on a grand scale; or complete indifference to your own publicly stated agenda.

That's hardly a radical idea.

We're your contention about healthcare I would have more room to agree, as that is a contentious issue, with a variety of policy choices/preferences etc.

But a modest minimum wage hike should be safe, core-Democractic territory; the only disputes being how much and how fast.

But they also passed on a variety of other issues during that time, including immigration reform, paid parental leave, paid sick days and a slew of other things Obama and/or Pelosi promised.

There was plenty of room, on most of those issues, for compromise or 1/2 measure and yet they were all zeros across the board in 2 years.

That's not to suggest I wouldn't prefer a Democratic regime to a Republican one; rather, that federally, it hasn't made as much difference as one would hope, in the past.

There are a multitude of reasons for this, I listed some which I believe are contributing factors.

 

[BurlOak]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1158446513304956928

It closed down 767.
That means since Trump's election victory, the DOW is up only 38%, while the TSX is up a whopping 11% in the same time.
Another way of looking at is that under Trump, the DOW is only up an average of 12.6% per year, while Canada is up a massive 3.9%. For reference, the DOW was up an average of 8.6% under Obama.

 

[kEiThZ]

It closed down 767.
That means since Trump's election victory, the DOW is up only 38%, while the TSX is up a whopping 11% in the same time.
Another way of looking at is that under Trump, the DOW is only up an average of 12.6% per year, while Canada is up a massive 3.9%. For reference, the DOW was up an average of 8.6% under Obama.

It's hard to take people who ignore the crater that was the GFC and great recession seriously. Like everything else in life, the Black guy had to start from the bottom and Trump started on third base but he'll get all the credit.

 

[BurlOak]

It's hard to take people who ignore the crater that was the GFC and great recession seriously. Like everything else in life, the Black guy had to start from the bottom and Trump started on third base but he'll get all the credit.

The other way of looking at it is that it's easiest to start at the bottom, because there is nowhere to go but up.
It's extending a typical 8 year recession cycle to 10 or more years that's harder.
Trudeau also benefited from this after 2015, and some of his numbers looked reasonable for a couple of years.

 

[jje1000]

It's hard to take people who ignore the crater that was the GFC and great recession seriously. Like everything else in life, the Black guy had to start from the bottom and Trump started on third base but he'll get all the credit.

TBH Obama benefited from an essentially zero-percent interest rate + 3/4 of a trillion stimulus dollars pumped in to stabilize the economy, while plenty of pundits said that the economy was going to collapse if Trump was elected.

Manufacturers Added 6 Times More Jobs Under Trump Than Under Obama's Last 2 Years

The federal government released its first jobs report of 2019, showing that nonfarm payroll grew by 304,000 in January, far above economists’ consensus estimate of 170,000... Trump’s deregulatory and tax policies have confounded his critics and benefited the American worker.

www.forbes.com

Now, with the ongoing trade war with China, let's see if that continues, or if it foreshadows larger problems to come...

 

[kEiThZ]

The other way of looking at it is that it's easiest to start at the bottom, because there is nowhere to go but up.
It's extending a typical 8 year recession cycle to 10 or more years that's harder.

TBH Obama benefited from an essentially zero-percent interest rate + 3/4 of a trillion stimulus dollars pumped in to stabilize the economy,

It's like neither of you has read a basic business newspaper from that time period and was aware of how bad things were when he took office. Losing several hundred thousand jobs per month is not a bottom. And ZIRP is not some great benefit if all it can do is stabilize the economy. Heck, most of the middle class is still not back to 2006 levels of financial stability. It blows my mind how ignorant people are to how close we came to the brink.

Like I said it's hard to take Kool Aid drinkers seriously. It's one thing to be economically conservative. It's another to constantly trash or minimize the other side while promoting incompetence as virtue. Do either of you genuinely believe that if a real economic crisis struck tomorrow, this administration would be as competent as their predecessors (Republican or Democrat)?

It'd be far easier to take conservatives seriously if they called a spade a spade. Most of us non-partisan normies can see the difference in competence between Obama and Trump. Why can't you? Is it really that fucking hard to say, "This guy is a moron. He's not a real conservative. He's a grifter."

I'm honestly torn on the coming election here. I detest Trudeau's pandering and inability to lead. But what honestly has me doubting Scheer is how much sycophancy I see from conservatives to the mess to the South. If Canadian Conservatives can't even say something as basic as, "That's a hot mess. We don't want that.", how are voters like me supposed to be reassured Scheer won't import that here? I'm actually wishing Harper was back. He'd have the sense to keep his distance from the mess to the South.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

People who compare 2007/8 to 2016 and think that it is easier to climb up from the former is on some special Kool-Aid. It isn't a 8 year recession cycle - it is a bona-fide depression, the last one didn't even get fully resolved until the Second World War.

AoD

 

[kEiThZ]

Ben Bernanke said the GFC of 2008 was as bad or worse than the Great Depression:

“September and October of 2008 was the worst financial crisis in global history, including the Great Depression,” Mr. Bernanke is quoted as saying in the document filed with the court. Of the 13 “most important financial institutions in the United States, 12 were at risk of failure within a period of a week or two.”

(credit to Bush who prevented a total banking collapse here)

Obama's first month in office saw the US economy lose nearly 600 00 jobs. Here's a CNN headline from 6th Feb 2009:

January job loss: Worst in 34 years - Feb. 6, 2009

After shedding 2.6 million jobs in 2008:

Total 2008 job loss: 2.6 million - Jan. 9, 2009

You read all that and then hear some partisan hack tell you that Obama could have done better. I am honestly disgusted by people who are so partisan that they can look at how bad the GFC was and then simply say that Obama underperformed. My only confusion about this comes at whether I should wretch at that kind of partisan hackery or laugh at the ignorance on display.

The telling part is that such folks would have failed Obama either way. If more banks actually collapsed, Obama would have been blamed. He saved America from literal economic collapse that would have seen people starving in the streets. He achieved the near impossible and rebounded from an almost total collapse and yet people still have the gall to say, "Well Trump added a few more jobs...."

Nothing speaks to the double standards faced by minorities then saddling the first Black President with near impossible expectations and demanding that he be impeccable, while giving a white guy born a millionaire, who literally shits on a golden toilet, a pass because, "he's still learning." The Black guy had to be a Harvard educated lawyer with an impeccable family to get into that office. The white guy gets to bankrupt multiple businesses and have five different kids with three different women and still waltz in thanks to a crappy TV show.

This is not a left/right thing for me. I actually like the Bush administration (in the beginning at least). I was even somewhat sympathetic to McCain and thought Obama lacked experience in 2008. Trump is a special breed of incompetence and ignorance. And it's really sad to see so many conservatives follow him into the abyss of stupidity.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

And it's really sad to see so many conservatives follow him into the abyss of stupidity.

Stupidity is a forgiveable (though not necessarily at that level) sin - utter moral/ethical vaucousness (nay, make that depravity) on the other than is pure damnation - e.g.

(ABC News)

And you want someone like that with a finger on the red button?

AoD

 

[jje1000]

So when does a president get credit for the economy?

The press was quick to assign the economic blame to Bush- but as mentioned- Bush's policies during his last days in office seem to have staved off total economic collapse?

The day after Lehman Brothers failed, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke went to President George W. Bush with bad news. Insurer American International Group Inc. needed $85 billion or it, too, would collapse.

Though unhappy and frustrated, Mr. Bush approved the loan, saying, “If we suffer political damage, so be it,” Mr. Paulson later wrote.

Still, for all the credit Mr. Obama is given for turning the economy around, the toughest decisions were made by Mr. Bush.

Why Bush’s Quiet Role in Financial Crisis Deserves Attention Now

Political polarization, populism and protectionism suggest the next crisis will be met with far less political will than the last.

www.wsj.com

It’s not just the cause of the crisis that people to continue to misunderstand but also the response. The financial crisis had ended by the time Obama took office in January 2009, a fact largely obscured by the Obama team’s rhetorical blurring of the late-2008 financial shock and the ensuing macroeconomic recession. Almost all policies enacted to stem the financial crisis occurred during the autumn of 2008, while Bush was still president.

Furthermore, it was Bush who decided initially, for good or ill, to save (the auto) companies — Treasury made short-term loans to Chrysler and GM that December. Obama extended those short-term loans and forced Chrysler and GM into government-dictated bankruptcies in the spring of 2009, but absent Bush’s actions, there would have been no GM or Chrysler remaining when Obama took office.

Who really fixed the financial crisis?

Opinion: Five years after Lehman Brothers’ collapse, let’s set the record straight.

www.politico.com

When did the Bush economy become an Obama economy, and when did/does the Obama economy become a Trump economy? Heck, was Bush responsible for the 2008 crisis, or was that a snowball that the previous administration had perpetuated (the CRA's a-mortgage-in-every-pot)?

Setting the Record Straight: Six Years of Unheeded Warnings for GSE Reform

Today, the Washington Times incorrectly accused the White House of ignoring warnings of trouble ahead for government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) and neglecting to "adopt any reform until this summer," when it was too late. "Neither the White House nor Congress heeded the warnings, Fannie and...

georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov

Should there be any discussion about the stagnation from 2011-16 that got to the point where Hillary Clinton herself campaigned on the point that she would do a better job? Or how Obama said that 2% growth was the new normal? Or that Bush's TARP program has been largely repaid in full with interest, while consequent stimulus (i.e. "Cash for Clunkers", HARP, Solyndra, fixing pension funds) and billions of dollars pumped into the economy via quantitative easing have had relatively little payout? Or how much Obama was responsible for growth vs the growth being a natural rebounding of the economy?

Notably, she (Hillary) also did not proclaim the greatness of the Obama-era economy and pledge continuity. That was a contrast with two other modern-era candidates who ran to succeed a two-term president from their party amid a strong economy, Al Gore in 2000 and George H.W. Bush in 1988.

This carefully rolled-out speech suggests she seeks to run not by boasting of what has gone right in the economy under President Obama, but as a fixer who can more successfully deal with the things that are still broken.

Hillary Clinton’s Message: Yes, the Economy Is Messed Up. But I Can Fix It. (Published 2016)

She embraced the economic discontent that has fueled the rise of her opponents, while presenting herself as the person most qualified to address it.

www.nytimes.com

To make matters worse, fewer and fewer people are seeing the spoils of what growth there is. According to a new analysis by the McKinsey Global Institute, 81 percent of the United States population is in an income bracket with flat or declining income over the last decade. That number was 97 percent in Italy, 70 percent in Britain, and 63 percent in France.

The unemployment rate is actually lower than the C.B.O. projected it to be a decade ago (it saw it as stable at 5.2 percent; it was 4.9 percent in July). But the unemployment rate counts only those actively seeking a job. There were five million fewer Americans in the labor force — neither working nor looking — in 2015 than projected.

We’re in a Low-Growth World. How Did We Get Here? (Published 2016)

Economic growth in advanced nations has been weaker for longer than it has been in most people’s lifetimes.

www.nytimes.com

TBH, despite kEiThZ's wonderfully florid language, I don't mind Obama like some others- but Obama's strongest legacies are primarily social- as the first African-American president of the United States and a herald for a changing cultural landscape that now emphasizes equity (i.e. the Affordable Care Act) and race relations.

Ultimately, I would say that Obama's legacy in economic policy is a continuation of Bush's, and both their successes and failures in addressing Main Street America's stagnation is what opened a path for the arrival of Trump's populism in 2016.

 

[BurlOak]

It closed down 767.
That means since Trump's election victory, the DOW is up only 38%, while the TSX is up a whopping 11% in the same time.
Another way of looking at is that under Trump, the DOW is only up an average of 12.6% per year, while Canada is up a massive 3.9%. For reference, the DOW was up an average of 8.6% under Obama.

Should I update these numbers - after reporting on the day that was most negative to Trump?