Irony: Trump the liberal

[EconProf]

In terms of accomplishing liberals’ goals, Trump should be applauded. On many fronts–not all–he is succeeding. A booming economy, record low unemployment, wages picking up steam, state tax revenues exceeding all predictions. These are priorities liberals say they want. Perhaps that’s why his popularity is climbing.
Overseas he is bringing North Koreas to the negotiating table, convinced NATO “allies” to up their defense budget, and stood up to Syria and ISIS.
Is all this why the Blue Wave in the upcoming midterm election is looking more like a ripple?

[FlyerInHi]

With Trump, the only liberal thing is the protectionism. That was a democratic issue of the 1980s. Definitely not conservative and something an economist, other than Peter Navarro, would support.

Not sure how other people feel, but my liberal issues are immigration and legalization of long time residents, women’s right, gay rights, sex descrimination, environmental protection, food health, universal healthcare, college education,….all the urban cosmopolitan priorities,

I have written off the deplorables as not part of my “family”. I reject their culture. One of my friends has deplorable parents and he doesn’t like my use of the term. He said it’s not a noun. I responded that if deplorables don’t exist, neither do illegals. Off course, deplorables would never give up the noun “illegal”.

[The-Shoveler]

IMO the two biggest issues most voters will focus on are:

1) The Economy (the vast majority will vote their pocket book)

2) Health-Care.

Everything else is more on the fringe than some want to believe.

[svelte]

[quote=EconProf]In terms of accomplishing liberals’ goals, Trump should be applauded. On many fronts–not all–he is succeeding. A booming economy, record low unemployment, wages picking up steam, state tax revenues exceeding all predictions. These are priorities liberals say they want. Perhaps that’s why his popularity is climbing.
[/quote]

Well, you’re giving him a bit more credit than he deserves. The economy was improving every day when he took office, which brings lower unemployment and higher wages with it. Unless you can show me a definite spike in those figures after he took office, tend not to credit him with those.

There have been a few things I’ve liked that he has done, but he seems to have always screwed them up in the end. A small tax cut would have been great, but the over-the-top cut he implemented increased the deficit. Funny how Republicans are anti-deficit until they control the government…

I also liked his states-rights stance when he was first elected, but he seems to have jettisoned that also. Witness his desire to take away California’s right for strict car emission standards.

Finally, the stock market has certainly improved under his watch, no doubt about it. Which I’m fine with, as long as he doesn’t undo so many financial safeguards that we go right back into another financial crisis.

I’m an undeclared, neither Dem nor Rep, so I can pick and choose the best from both sides. I’ve liked both Bushes, Clinton, and Obama. Though mostly in retrospect – I was much more critical of them while in office. But I’ll tell you this: Trump will easily go down as the worst president in my lifetime and probably all the way back to 1900. Worse than even Nixon and Carter. Just horrific.

[EconProf]

[quote=svelte][quote=EconProf]In terms of accomplishing liberals’ goals, Trump should be applauded. On many fronts–not all–he is succeeding. A booming economy, record low unemployment, wages picking up steam, state tax revenues exceeding all predictions. These are priorities liberals say they want. Perhaps that’s why his popularity is climbing.
[/quote]

Well, you’re giving him a bit more credit than he deserves. The economy was improving every day when he took office, which brings lower unemployment and higher wages with it. Unless you can show me a definite spike in those figures after he took office, tend not to credit him with those.

There have been a few things I’ve liked that he has done, but he seems to have always screwed them up in the end. A small tax cut would have been great, but the over-the-top cut he implemented increased the deficit. Funny how Republicans are anti-deficit until they control the government…

I also liked his states-rights stance when he was first elected, but he seems to have jettisoned that also. Witness his desire to take away California’s right for strict car emission standards.

Finally, the stock market has certainly improved under his watch, no doubt about it. Which I’m fine with, as long as he doesn’t undo so many financial safeguards that we go right back into another financial crisis.

I’m an undeclared, neither Dem nor Rep, so I can pick and choose the best from both sides. I’ve liked both Bushes, Clinton, and Obama. Though mostly in retrospect – I was much more critical of them while in office. But I’ll tell you this: Trump will easily go down as the worst president in my lifetime and probably all the way back to 1900. Worse than even Nixon and Carter. Just horrific.[/quote]
OK, here’s the spike: The growth rate during Obama’s 8 years averaged under 2%. This despite the historical tendency for deep recessions to be followed by strong recoveries. Under Trump the annual growth rate is approximately 3% per year, a difference that has a big long run impact over time.
BTW, I’m not saying Trump is a nice guy. His tweets are adolescent, his comments gross, his personal history shameful, and his tweets damaging even to his supporters. But ironically, by doing the opposite of what Obama did for 8 years, he is accomplishing some surprisingly good things.

[FlyerInHi]

[quote=The-Shoveler]IMO the two biggest issues most voters will focus on are:

1) The Economy (the vast majority will vote their pocket book)

2) Health-Care.

Everything else is more on the fringe than some want to believe.[/quote]

I agree. The average American is not aware of details.
But I believe that the economy is only benefiting urban areas. And health care is not looking good across the board. Substance addiction is getting worse.

Trump is accelerating American decline and in decades to come we will be worse off relative to the rest of the world.

New book about the wealth of nations. its all about education. I’ve been saying so all along.

Zk, you should watch this video…. it has to do with sexual equality also and how men will have less power and potentially getting less sex in the future.

[spdrun]

A lot of the so called ecahhhhnamy in the US now involves destruction of health and privacy…

Either murder of the environment via resource extraction, or murder of personal privacy via technology/I.T. Electric cars are great, self-driving/connected cars stink for privacy. And a “smart TV” aka telescreen and an Amazon/Google blabber-box. Not in my fucking home.

The only good news is that the candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long. Hope the hangover will be long, hard, and painful, setting dirty energy and privacy-stealing technologies back by a few decades.

[The-Shoveler]

I will add one more thing here on the Health-care issue.

A Republican who would support universal healthcare may actually be be hard to beat (as really secretly even most republican voters would like to see this happen), but do not support things like the high speed rail etc…

The democrats record on this issue is spotty at best, it has been voted down several times in the mostly democratic California congress.

[FlyerInHi]

Silicon Valley is doing well, but Sears and Toy R Us ar closing down. Not good for the local malls and psychology of many towns. Unless you’re in a desirable urban area like UTC or Irvine Spectrum.

[spdrun]

Shoveler, you mean the Kaiser-kontrolled Kalifornia Kongress?

[The-Shoveler]

[quote=spdrun]Shoveler, you mean the Kaiser-kontrolled Kalifornia Kongress?[/quote]

LOL yea that would be the one.

[FlyerInHi]

Shoveler, ironically, universal health care would be great for business because it would be one huge burden they could offload. Plus tech workers especially could be more productive and become free agents without worrying about health care.

But Republicans have boxed themselves in on the issue.

Spdrun, I don’t care about privacy. The new IOT techs have allowed me to manage my properties better, at very low cost. Easy to spot intruders on property and get rid of the homeless and vagrants so I can charge more rent.

Don’t be so ideological. Go with what works. And success is the best evidence of righteousness.

[spdrun]

FIH – the homeless have a hard enough life without “people” like you snitching them out to the cops.

Agreed about healthcare — but US tech corepirations don’t want tech workers to become “free agents.” They want it to be easy to keep ’em working 75 hours a week with a weeks of vacay per year.

[zk]

Most of the OP is complete nonsense. (Trump isn’t responsible for what’s happening in the economy, his rise in popularity probably is due to the economy (falsely attributed to him), ISIS is on the upswing, he’s done very little in Syria, and he hasn’t accomplished jack shit in Korea). Somebody’s been watching too much fox propaganda.

As for the blue wave, you’ll be eating those words come November.

[svelte]

[quote=EconProf]
[quote=svelte][quote=EconProf]In terms of accomplishing liberals’ goals, Trump should be applauded. On many fronts–not all–he is succeeding. A booming economy, record low unemployment, wages picking up steam, state tax revenues exceeding all predictions…
[/quote]

Well, you’re giving him a bit more credit than he deserves. The economy was improving every day when he took office, which brings lower unemployment and higher wages with it. Unless you can show me a definite spike in those figures after he took office, tend not to credit him with those.
[/quote]
OK, here’s the spike: The growth rate during Obama’s 8 years averaged under 2%. This despite the historical tendency for deep recessions to be followed by strong recoveries. Under Trump the annual growth rate is approximately 3% per year, a difference that has a big long run impact over time. [/quote]

I notice you switched horses from unemployment, wages, etc to growth rate. Seemed to me that might indicate those numbers don’t tell the story you wanted to tell, so I checked. They don’t.
[img_assist|nid=26645|title=2017 US Unemployment Rate|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=399|height=180]

[img_assist|nid=26646|title=2017 US Wage Growth|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=400|height=280]

Even the growth rate story doesn’t really pan out so far. If you look at this graph, Obama’s first year growth rate is roughly equivalent to Obama’s. If you want to compare Obama’s best growth rate year to Trumps, Obama wins. I think it only fair that we wait a few years before we declare victory/failure on Trump’s policies.

[img_assist|nid=26647|title=US Growth Rate 2017|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=400|height=302]

[quote=EconProf]
BTW, I’m not saying Trump is a nice guy. His tweets are adolescent, his comments gross, his personal history shameful, and his tweets damaging even to his supporters. But ironically, by doing the opposite of what Obama did for 8 years, he is accomplishing some surprisingly good things.[/quote]

I think his unpredictability may have a good side too…we all know the bad side of it. The good side is it keeps other countries on edge…what tariff / embargo will he implement next? That gives them motivation to give us a great deal that he’ll like.

I still wish he wasn’t our president.

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