In six months we’ll have the death tolls. And the numbers will show that more people died of Covid19 in the United States than in any other country on Earth. Of the two hundred or so heads of state in the world, Donald Trump did the worst job.
Yes, but Hillary would have killed TWICE as many people!
Sigh.
I have a relative who is a big trumper and hated Hillary with the fury of a thousand suns. We aren’t in touch much and only talked on the phone occasionally in the past. After trump was elected, we could NEVER talk politics. Not one word.
The other day I got a text from him about how everything has been shut down in his city (in California), and I replied with something sympathetic and neutral. But I am SOOOO dying to ask him, “You REALLY think Hillary would have done a worse job than this??” but I can’t. Because I have a feeling he would immediately launch into some over-the-top conspiracy theory or bullshit explanation of how trump is trying to do his best but the libruls are sabotaging him blahblahblah. 
Biden has had some recent ads, this one hits Trump for his feuds with the various governors.
From Politico: Could Trump Use the Virus to Stay in Power?
It wouldn’t be easy. A constitutional scholar games out the scenarios.
His actions will determine whether he dies in Bethesda or Leavenworth.
Sure, Trump supporters can say that. And they can say that Obama would have killed three times as many people.
But the political ads will be comparing Trump to other national leaders who are in office now and showing that he did a worse job than they did. That’s going to make it obvious that he’s wrong when he says he did the best possible job.
Will FOX run those ads?
That’s pretty awful. It’s not surprising, though. Liberals are haters. Liberal Democrats are haters.
Trump has given this country the greatest economy of all time, with ZERO help from the Democrats. He is going to be reelected in a landslide. Even if the Democrats had someone who was electable, it’s not going to be even close.
You know that. It’s why you hate him and you’re glad those people are dead.
Awful.
WHOA!
In case people think we’re making this up.
Trump does not have a time machine, nor does he have the power of mind control. And, I’ll note, neither does Hilary Clinton. He did not jump back to the Obama Administration (2010), brainwash Barack Obama into following his commands, and start the unemployment rate on a steady decline. Likewise, she didn’t lose the election, jump back a year, and brainwash Trump into hiring Paul Manafort and Carter Page.
Magic ain’t real. Some things we can rule out.
And in the case of unemployment, we can also rule out the idea that Barack Obama or anyone in government is to thank for that. England, Germany, and many other nations have had a similar, extreme low unemployment rate following the Great Recession. My personal bet would be that it’s an artifact of the gig economy. But, definitely, we can be certain that Barack Obama didn’t fly around the world taking over the minds of Angela Merkel and David Cameron, and implement a policy that lead to wondrous unemployment across the globe.
Given that Trump has a hatred for the tech industry, and the tech industry is what brought you the gig economy, it’s pretty unreasonable to thank him for it. And again, that all started from before he was in office or had the power to do diddly squat but use his position on The Apprentice to try and force women to sleep with him. He didn’t do it.
Now as to things like the stock market and the continuing direction of the economy upwards, post-Obama, if there is anything to thank for those, it would be 1) cutting taxes, and 2) dumping money into the economy.
The Republicans in Congress cut taxes, that is certainly true. And they almost failed - like they actually did fail with revoking ObamaCare - at accomplishing that, because of Trump’s tweets about his wall funding and various other inanities that destroyed the coalitions being built inside of Congress. Tax cuts almost didn’t pass, because of Donald Trump, and that’s when he had the benefit of having a Republican majority in every single branch and arm of government. I wouldn’t be surprised if we got a less-extreme cut because of Trump’s disruptions and that stretching out the process, so that cooler heads could push moderation into the matter.
And, I’ll note, there is very little reason to think that he was the progenitor of the idea of a tax cut nor the driving force for one. Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell were ready to go, the instant a Republican president was in the White House, and they would have done the same had it been Mike Pence or John McCain who got the seat.
And as for dumping money into the economy, the White House has consistently pushed for a laughably minimalist budget. Granted, I don’t believe that they had any particular expectation that it would be considered by anyone in Congress, so it was purely a vehicle for wooing some libertarian voters, but the very first budget under Trump was basically just a rubber stamp to everyone on both sides of the fence. Democrats want to give caviar to all the homeless? Great! They can do it! Republicans want to buy some robot sharks for the US military? Great! Go ahead!
The budgets under Trump have all been fairly blatant attempts to buy off the public by boosting the economy through government money.
I mean take, for example, the case of George. George decides that he wants to enjoy life, so he goes to a bank and takes out a loan for $1m. Feeling happy about this, he goes to his employer and says, “Hey, you know what, I came into some money, I don’t want to hurt you guys, why don’t you cut my wage by half?” For the next four years, George goes on to live a life of luxury, getting a fast car, installing a pool in his backyard, etc. Great economy!
Despite the car and the pool, the luxury dinners, is George actually in a good place, economically? Or is he just self-deluded and ignoring the future, blinded by the $1m he gave himself?
Taking out some loans and lowering taxes, to propel yourself out of a recession, is probably reasonable. If you let the economy stay in a recession, it’s liable to become chronic. Doing the same, when everything is good, rather than switching around to paying down the loans and getting a better money supply, is stupid and grossly financially irresponsible.
Great for getting votes, though.
Personally, I don’t like Trump because I don’t want my kids to have to learn Chinese.
Let’s say, for example, that McDonalds saw that Burger King was finally catching up and is liable to take over the fast food industry. So McDonalds forms this clever plan:
- Raise their prices. Hey, if the customer is paying more money, we’re making more money, and Burger King will be making less per customer!
- Charge franchise owners for use of the corporate producers. I mean, right now they’re all able to get bottom dollar on beef, flour, lettuce, etc. That’s money lost to the core company, and we’re the ones that got all the producers assembled and willing to go bottom dollar. We deserve our 5%!
Now, what do you think, does this great plan help or hurt in McDonald’s mission to fight against the encroaching financial might of Burger King?
I don’t want Trump because, for as much as he’s working on the things that I might want a President to work on, there is such a thing as, “Please stop helping”. Competence matters.
Add if you add incompetent to criminal and liable to pack the government with a bunch of slimeballs who are going to suck away at the might and fortunes of our government for the next few decades, I’m not seeing anything good on the horizon.
Trump took millions of dollars from his dad and created a $1.25b hole. His dad died and left him a business empire of hundreds of buildings in New York City - some of the most valuable land on the planet - and he turned it into about 7 buildings, most on cheap land in the countryside.
The man is not good at business. His dad was amazing. If you compare their wealth, baby Trump is laughably horrible and appears to have shrunk dad’s business to about 1/20th of its former size.
He was, it seems, good at being a TV show host. And he is good at self-promotion and making suckers think that he’s good at things.
But, personally, I look at hard numbers. And the real numbers are that the number of people taking Chinese aptitude tests has curved upwards under Trump, the bank of Mexico is seeing more money sent back from abroad than ever before, and the time until the US budget makes a sound like the last bit of Jello getting pulled through a dime-sized hole into a vacuum has moved from being something like 30 years in the future to something more like 10.
Cites available (except for the last - I’m not sure of the exact predictions, though I do know that the timeline has shrunk).
I know which post I’m going to link to on November 4.
I still find the confidence levels of Trump voters to be mystifying. All the data is telling me the opposite and I’m still unable to be even the tiniest bit confident of a Biden victory.
Americans are dying at a rate of about 2000 per day and Trump spends his time bragging about ratings and shouting at the press. Christ.
That’s a good ad. I don’t know what it will actually take to reach the morons who put Trump in office. That one is an appeal to common sense and concsience, an uncertain way to have an effect on a Trump supporter.
Yeah, seriously. Both Democrats AND Republicans seem to be really into predicting Republican landslides regardless of what the data say, and I find it one of the most fascinating and baffling cultural differences between the parties. My only guess is that Democrats have had more snatching-defeat-from-the-jaws-of-victory moments in recent history, but you would think that 2012 and 2018 would, at least, remind Republicans that defeat is a possibility.
I guess another possibility is that it’s purely performative and Republicans, for some reason, think it’s particularly important to appear confident on the Internet, but I’m not sure I understand why one party would be more likely to think that than the other.
I think it’s part of an overall strategy by Republicans to condition voters to the inevitability of a Trump win, even if such a “win” flies in the face of significant evidence that it is not legitimate. Just like 2016. They’re big on 2016 strategies.
I’m really sick of people promoting this notion on the Democratic side. I expect it from Trump supporters. Not from non-Trump supporters. Cautious optimism is one thing. Throwing in the towel is another.
Graph in the link below.
NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll out over the weekend:
[ul]
[li]77 percent of Democratic respondents and 57 percent of independents are more worried about the coronavirus than the economy, Republicans are divided — with 48 percent expressing more concern about the economy and 39 percent more worried about the coronavirus.[/li]
[li]44 percent of voters say they approve of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus, while 52 percent disapprove.[/li]
[li]That’s essentially unchanged from March, when 45 percent gave the president a thumbs-up and 51 percent gave him a thumbs-down.[/li]
[li]In the race for the White House, the NBC News/WSJ poll shows Biden ahead of Trump by 7 points nationally among registered voters, 49 percent to 42 percent.[/li]
[li]Biden also leads Trump by 9 points on which candidate would better handle a crisis (47 percent to 38 percent) and by 9 points on who would better handle the coronavirus (45 percent to 36 percent).[/li]
[li]But Trump leads Biden by 11 points on which candidate would better handle the economy (47 percent to 36 percent).[/li][/ul]
A dilemma for Joe Biden according to that poll is while far fewer distrust him (Trump is +23 on that scale), more than 40% of responders are not aware of what he has been doing as response to Covid-19. Now obviously he does not hold office therefore has no day to day responsibility or power to do anything. He can talk in the background with experts and governors/mayors but they are the ones who are in charge, not him. But more to the point this illustrates a bubble that people like me am firmly in. I am aware that Biden has been doing frequent online live streams talking about it with healthcare experts, the ex Surgeon General, Bernie Sanders and the Obama Administration’s man in charge of the Ebola outbreak response (Ron Klain). Because I follow his page. And I’ve seen him on TV interviews. But the average person is not spending their lockdown time to seek this out because … there is more to life than politics :o. Trump’s briefings on TV however is reaching millions of people who aren’t online and who aren’t political because a) they’re daily and b) they get their own time slot because he’s the president and therefore his people orchestrate it. They have the bully pulpit. They call the shots.
Whereas when Biden is doing TV interviews he’s appearing on someone’s show. The dilemma is if Biden is still more trusted despite not being anywhere as visible, can a lengthy time slot on cable news where he can provide a shadow response to Trump’s briefings by outlining his plan of action and just talk for say, 45 minutes to an hour with questions after further extend that lead? Or is that bad politics to a) make it an election issue and b) stand on the toes of a governor or mayor who needs the air time to provide updates.
Cosigned.
He is mighty proud of his ratings, but somebody should tell him that the best ratings and biggest crowd EVER would be for his funeral. That might give him ideas. :rolleyes:
Oh dear! And I was so full of hope that somebody would pull a mighty Expelliarmus! during his usual press room Avada COVIDra ranting spell!
It’s understandable. To me, Trump’s victory in 2016 felt like 9/11. The horror may happen again, but I won’t allow myself to be shocked by it.
But you’re right, that’s no excuse for throwing in the towel.
What are you, FOX News in reverse? Trump says something and you repeat it verbatim the next day.
SAD!