I can’t speak for Sherrerd but it’s unlikely that Trump’s economic policies are sustainable. He might be able to ignite short-term growth, and it’s policies that the market has reacted to the early part of his term with enthusiasm, welcoming the deregulatory tendencies of this administration. But the debts, the capriciousness with which he operates, and the glaring lack of competence will eventually catch up to him (and us). It’s just a question of whether that happens within the next 2 years, or the next 5. I don’t have a crystal ball, unfortunately.
I suspect that Trump’s voters and those who were just somewhere in the political center probably don’t care that much about corruption, and they knew he was at least a little shady when they voted for him. For most voters in American democracy, it’s simply a matter of results, and the report card is the economy. To a lesser degree, we judge the state or the mood of the nation, largely according to how strong we perceive ourselves to be relative to the outside world. For people generally, it’s important to have confidence that we’ll be able to pay the rent. For Americans, it’s also important that we see ourselves as powerful. Presidents who pass both tests usually get re-elected.
That’s a good guess at what I’d have said. I’ll go on to add that the “this isn’t working” that brought Trump the Presidency was NOT “the economy is crashing and thousands of troops are dying,” either. The Obama economy was strong, and though troops were dying overseas, they weren’t doing so in large numbers.
The “this isn’t working” in November 2016 was a combination of stagnant middle-class wages (i.e. increasing income inequality), and, frankly, resentment. In this case it was the resentment that has been sold by the Right: 'those whose birthright is to be at the top of the social and economic order have been displaced by those whose birthright is to be below them: the non-white, the non-Christian, the non-straight’ etc.
No matter how hard Jeff Sessions works at his Hammer of the Non-Whites life-mission, by November 2020—and certainly by November 2018—many who’ve bought the Birthright resentment package will still be feeling disrespected by Those People. And they will be giving Trump the side-eye, because he promised that he’d put them back at the top of the heap.
Yet there those uppity blacks still are, there on CNN and MSNBC, saying that it’s wrong for god-fearing cops to shoot when they feel threatened by black or brown (unarmed) men. There those uppity women still are, all over the TV and Internet, saying that good god-fearing men are out of line, when they do what is their right. There those uppity kids are, threatening to take away the only thing that makes us feel safe.
And Trump is letting it happen!
Not every Trump voter is going to feel this way, of course. But some will. Around the margins, some will be dissatisfied with Trump’s failure to deliver what he promised.
You seem to have a very vivid imagination about what Trump promised.
I was promised a wall, paid for by Mexico. I was promised Clinton in jail. I was promised a drained swamp. I was promised 4% economic growth.
I got nuthin’.
Yeah, and I’m not tired of winning yet.
You were also promised a conservative SCOTUS justice, a tax cut, and paring back government regulation. Yes, of course Trump hasn’t accomplished everything he promised during the campaign. No president ever does. But he has accomplished some of it.
Anyways, props for having a view of promises actually based on things Trump said, not just your imagination.
were we promised a cabinet member or white house staffer fired once a week?
I don’t think it was an explicit promise, but for a guy that owes a considerable portion of his fame to saying “You’re fired!” weekly on TV, it hardly seems surprising.
It’s not surprising. But it’s also not the sign of a good leader.
Even if you believe that every person Trump has fired deserved to be fired, it’s a poor reflection on Trump that he hired so many incompetents.
There’s no tipping point, and I doubt we’ll know it when we see it, though we’ll probably have a few to recount after the fact.
The Trump administration and the GOP are cutting this country’s wealth, prosperity, standard of living, and power, mostly one small cut at a time. Progressives are probably frustrated on the one hand that the rest of the country can’t see it, but the false sense of security about our economic growth and well-being that is shared by many only increases the likelihood of our impending collapse. And when it all finally comes undone, it will crash spectacularly. And few will be spared the consequences.
You have to stop using Gorsuch as a promise that he delivered. It was a lollipop stolen from a baby, by someone else, and then handed to him.
Your point is taken, but HD also has a pretty good counter in that if the #NeverTrump movement had succeeded in getting Hillary Clinton elected by default, then Gorsuch wouldn’t be a justice today. There were even those who wondered whether Trump would really govern like a Republican or something completely different. And for the most part, he has delivered in terms of at least following through on his efforts to carry the GOP agenda into effect. There’s some disagreement between the GOP establishment on things like economic policy but he has been what a lot of Republicans had hoped he would be, at least insofar as his support for their agenda is concerned.
It seems to me he did say he would hire “only the best people”. One might assume that if he hired the best people he wouldn’t need to fire them as they are “the best”. To be fair he did say he would only hire them and not then turn around and fire them. It doesn’t say much about somebody who is firing “the best people” (assuming they were the best in the first place, which they clearly were not… see Betsy DeVos, Ben Carson and Scott Pruit as exhibits A,B and C).
He only fires the best people. That’s the only people he has there to fire. The logic is unassailable.
Promising to nominate a Supreme Court justice when there’s an open seat is like promising to wear clothes tomorrow, or that you will definitely eat food in the coming week.
I think you didn’t understand the promise. He didn’t promise just to nominate someone. He promised to pick a justice from a list of names (which were generally conservative). He followed through.
No, I really don’t.
You left out the implied: “…or else you will end up sounding ridiculous and desperate” but I got you covered. All set.
Sounds like a real maverick.