Well, there was the $1.9 trillion stimulus package that included literally giving most Americans $1400 in free money. I don’t particularly have a problem with that and think the consequences of too small a stimulus would probably have been worse, but you don’t have to be an economic genius to realize that it was going to cause inflation. Attacking Biden for it is IMO unfair, but not inaccurate.
They thought they were worse off during Biden’s term, even though they objectively weren’t. So, I don’t see why they can’t think they’re better off during Trump’s term, even if they are objectively worse off.
Fatalism. I am doing my best to keep my head down.
You aren’t wrong, but – just between us Dopers (ie, forget the red hats) – it’s worth remembering that Trump disbursed more COVID relief funds ($484BN) than did Biden ($390BN):
And if you look at the money supply, we bled red first/worst during Agent Orange’s reign:
And it continued from there … with – essentially – my unqualified support.
I wish I shared that confidence. I’m sure that a few, like Liz Warren, will push against the tide. But I suspect a lot of Democrats are going to adopt socially conservative positions in a fateful attempt to appeal to ‘fence-sitters’ being drawn every rightward by a constant droning about ‘wokeness’ and fears stoked by baseless rhetoric about immigrants, Muslims, Antifa, et cetera.
The horrific terrorist events of September 11, 2001 were certainly the fulcrum that launched the American public over a wall, almost fully on board (including all Democrats save for Representative Barbara Lee) with handing plenary authority for launching the nation into war over to the President and accepting a broad array of reductions in civil liberties with barely anyone noting that the 130 page US PATRIOT ACT appeared virtually overnight in complete and detailed form, and was passed with barely any discussion (much less dissension) not even two months later. People who repeat the mantra, “…but it can’t happen here!”) need to review that bit of not-so-distant history because something outrageous did happen and anyone who spoke out against it was literally accused of aiding terrorism or being a radical left-wing nutball. We’ve gone so far down the path that started in 2001 that it is now not clear that there is any bottom where ‘checks and balances’ will halt the increasing pace of erosion of democratic norms and civil liberties.
That, and keeping your clear-headed friends and family close, is really about the most that the average person can do at this point. All of the other business of ‘writing your elected officials in protest’, making loud noises in public spaces, cancelling subscriptions and boycotting goods and services from interests fêting Trump, or trying to figure out a way to run off to another country that his hypothetically safer (as if this same trend isn’t being observed in democracies around the world) is basically a bunch of pointless churn.
And read—or at least take guidance from—historians who have studied the rise of autocracy and fascism in the past. I recommend starting here:
Stranger
Yeah, I probably oversimplified in expressing my “confidence.” I guess what I intended to convey was that I was delegating my concern to those who have consistently represented my interests, and whom I expect to continue to do so. Here in IL I’ve got a strong Dem gov, 2 very strong Dem Senators, and a strong rep (in a horribly gerrymandered district.) So I’m going to let them carry on the fight. I’m not sure what I can do to influence elections elsewhere. I’d bet any amount of money that Pritzger, Durbin, Duckworth, and Quigley aren’t going to become fence-sitters.
We’ll have to see what happens in states/districts nationwide. I would be surprised if a lot of solidly blue states turn purple/red. And I could imagine reaction to Trump to be sufficient to move things in the other direction.
But I think I’m a tad more “confident” than you. Trump won relatively narrowly this time. I’m at least willing to think things could go either way. Sure, Trump can - and likely will - break A LOT of stuff in the next 4 years. And his Supremes will be an embarrassment - and threat - for decades. And I tend to be pretty unimpressed with wide swaths of my fellow countrymen. But I’m willing to hold out hope that enough Americans are not evil and stupid enough to want to continue things Trumpward.
If an increasing majority proves me wrong in 2 and 4 years, well, I imagine at that point we’ll be well on our way towards Gilead or something different but equally horrendous. At that point, I’ll just be further circling the wagons, and trying to insulate myself in some secure space while I. live out my last couple of decades - and mourn for the future my kids and grandkids will not have.
I know the stereotype, grounded in reality but exaggerated by understandable bitterness, is that anyone who voted for Trump in 2024 is a full-blown MAGAt who will follow whatever he says.
But this or this (longer version) doesn’t sound like all his supporters are uncritically accepting whatever he says. Yes, they haven’t realized Trump actually doesn’t give a f*ck about them. And there’s definitely an element of “I deserve my benefits, go use your axe on someone else’s tree.” But they’re at least contemplating the possibility that the leopard will eat their faces. Yes, they’ll probably blame Musk and Ramaswany first if their benefits are cut, but the “Czar loves and cares for us, his evil advisers are the cause” schtick can only be pushed so far.
Pretty small beer. These dumbfucks will just believe some other lie the next time it is convenient for them.
I respectfully but firmly disagree with the pointlessness of your first item. Not angry protest letters, but messages letting an official know that a constituent who votes believes in X or opposes Y and wants their elected representative to act accordingly.
Trump didn’t win a mandate, but so many people for and against him read too much into his victory. His win doesn’t mean every American wants to deport every immigrant, or get rid of every federal regulation, or completely eliminate the safety net, or “drill baby drill” regardless of consequences.
There’s still a lot of Democrats in Congress, and moreover Republicans from purple states and districts. There’s going to be a lot of MAGA types vocally “reminding” their state legislators and members of Congress that the numbers are on their side and they’d better vote the right way. Absent feedback from their other constituents, that’s the voice they’ll hear and heed.
A lobbyist for a non-profit I’m a member of explained to the group that elected officials do pay attention to the emails, calls, and letters they receive. Not in detail, but they keep a count, or at least a sense, of which way the messages are leaning on a given subject. He jokingly called it the “cockroach theory”: that an official presumes for each message he/she receives to vote yea or nay on something, or to support or oppose a government program, that there are many more constituents who feel the same way but didn’t send a message.
If you’ve got a solid-blue congressional delegation that doesn’t need to be told when to fight and when to extract bargains from the other side, great! Still can’t hurt to remind them about something you feel particularly strongly about. If you’ve got a full-blown MAGA congresscritter who will only laugh at your liberal tears if you tell them how to vote, then don’t feel you have to waste time smacking your head into that wall.
But there’s a lot of members of Congress who don’t fall into either of those camps. And with the margins in Congress being as slim as they are, if you’ve got a light blue or purple Senator or Representative, letting them know how you feel about a contentious issue in front of Congress is not even remotely pointless.
I almost sympathize with those who pick Trump for some “reason” but haven’t gone full MAGA… but…
We saw in 2016, 2020, and almost certainly in 2025 that those who do pick him for whatever reason are if anything, going to be more fervent going forwards. If Trump, as many expect, screws up life for the nation, they’ll be in that situation where they have to justify their support of a provable felon, OR they have to find someone else to blame for their actions.
Sure, there’ll be a few who come to their senses - we have a LOT of people on this very board who questioned the direction of the (R) and changed their minds as they looked at the underpinnings, but the second scenario seems more probably based on the trends.
I have seen at least a dozen mentions or threads about friends and family members who’ve gone full Trump after cautious beginnings, because the cognitive dissonance is too high to endure, or because once they drift into the MAGA (dis)information sphere, they become detached from any efforts to reach them.
Trump supporters live in a different reality from the rest of us. I do not believe most of them have the introspection to admit to themselves Trump duped them. They will find someone, anyone, to blame. People who were suckered often have a hard time admitting they were fooled.
You could make the argument that the stimulus had some inflationary impact. I would argue that it was the Congress that rushed through the program without proper thought and Biden merely signed it. The pandemic was an extraordinary event and I believe that putting too much money out there too fast was better than putting not enough out there too slowly. At least Biden didn’t make the people wait for their money so that he could put his name on the checks.
Biden personally negotiated with Manchin to grt it passed. At that point it’s hard to believe that the president, whose veto essentially accounts for dozens of senate votes and the senator most positioned as a kingmaker couldn’t have made shrunk the bill if they wanted.
I personally still support the relief bill including the checks, the CTC, as I think it wasn’t too big with the state of the economy at the time and my only real opposition is that we didn’t recover the revenue later on (IRA was pretty small by comparison). However of course there are always tradeoffs and of course the president who signed it into law bears responsibility.
Yes, I agree, it was an entirely reasonable decision based on the information available to him. The inflation ended up being worse than they’d anticipated, but economics is hard.
So, I don’t think the Biden stimulus package had much to do with the inflation. I don’t think we should cede that point to MAGA-world either, because the economists who appear to have been vindicated by how things played out are on the side of “supply shocks” and “sectoral demand”, not overheating from Stimulus.
This write-up from Brookings lays the main cause of the inflation at the feet of supply-chain shocks, not fiscal stimulus.
COVID-19 inflation was a supply shock
Stiglitz weighs in, too, on the side of supply-chain & sectoral demand shocks (not 2021 stimulus):
A Victory Lap for the Transitory Inflation Team by Joseph E. Stiglitz - Project Syndicate
Krugman weighs in on it, too. He gives the Biden stimulus a small amount of credit for the inflation (he calls it a small transitory “burst”), but he also comes down on the side of supply shocks, pointing out that the inflation happened worldwide, not just in the US.
The Democratic party is dead, they lost everything. The Republican party died in 2016 with the first election of Trump. The people that are taking over the government now are not Republicans. The United States of America died on 9-11-2001.
I had hope for a few days about the midterms, but now I see it’s over.
I don’t think that people that once were Democrats are comfortable with Trump’s second term. I think is more of a case of the Democratic party does not understand how to fight what is happening due to the current leaders of the Democratic party that are used to the status quo, which is to bow down to power.
So there is no leader, no message of hope to the more than 50% of voters that did not vote for Trump.
So Maga can do whatever it wants but the Democratic party still wants to move to the so called center, when that is the exact opposite of what they should do.
The United States is done as a country, it’s over. There will be no coming back from this.
It’s hard to “pick one.”
Inflation, at its simplest, is too many dollars chasing too few goods. The supply chain disruptions coupled with a significant amount of government spending seems the likeliest explanation to me.
Lets not let corporate profit seeking of the hook.
Corporations saw that people were still spending even as prices rose due to the real-world problems caused by COVID, and decided to stack a quick profit-grab on top of that. They knew the politicians would get the blame from most people.
I wouldn’t argue with that, though I would guess that small/independent/local businesses played a similar game, if not to the same degree.
I also like the balance of this article that helps us gauge the culpability of The Usual Suspects and arrives at a conclusion that makes sense, but isn’t your textbook media darling:
Seems to me they’re reaching the same conclusions, just trying to spin it in more corporate-friendly terms. Prices went up due to pandemic shocks on supply chains, but people kept buying. The corporations noticed this, and thought, “I wonder how high this can go?”, and found out it was pretty darn high.
But they’re also ignoring one major factor:
That is powerful evidence that a lot of the higher prices we are paying in the store are just the higher cost of raw materials being passed along by manufacturers and retailers.
This ignores the reality of vertical integration in modern corporate structure. From the outside, it looks like Company A sells to Company B who sells to Company C who sells to the consumer, but in reality, A, B and C are all subsidiaries of Holding Company D. D builds profits into each step in the supply chain, and each of those profit steps have increased in the last few years. A, B and C keep saying, “Oh, it’s not me, I’m just taking a small 1% extra profit, go bother the other guys!”, and no one notices that all of that ends up in D’s coffers at the end of the day.