Trump got one big thing right.
Timing.
Pundits are piling onto Trump and his announcement speech.
He rambled. Yes.His extravagant lies. Yes.
His went on too long. Yes.
He rehashed old complaints. Yes.
It was low energy. Yes.
It was tiresome. Yes.
Trump: Everything was wonderful when I was president. Everything is terrible now. Biden is senile. Foreigners laugh at America. When I was president foreigners respected us. Everyone was happy and prosperous when I was president. People are miserable now. I unified America and people loved me. Now we are divided. I was strong. America was strong. America was safe. America was glorious. America was great.
The audience got bored with it and tried to leave. Even Fox News cut away from the speech after 35 minutes to tell us what he had said even as he kept talking and talking. Fox's loyalties are switching. This morning the Fox News webpage did not open to Trump. An article on Trump is well down the page. It opened to this. Fox could not be more obvious. Fox praises Trump extravagantly, but they have moved on.
A Republican--maybe not Trump--has a great shot at winning in 2024. Amid all the tiresome crazy of his speech, Trump said one true thing:
Click: 41 seconds
"The citizens of our country have not yet realized the full extent and gravity of the pain our nation is going through and the total effect of the suffering is just starting to take hold. They don't quite feel it yet, but they will very soon. I have no doubt that by 2024 it will sadly be much worse and they will see much more clearly what happened and what is happening to our country, and the voting will be much different. 2024."
I, too, predict a painful 2024. The Fed is giving the U.S. economy the strong chemotherapy it thinks we need to cure inflation. It injures the patient to cure them. Raise interest rates enough and people get poorer, unemployment rises, overall demand is lower, businesses slow down. Central banks cure inflation by creating a recession.
The economy is still strong--so strong that unemployment is officially 3.5%. This is, in effect, zero, since there is always some churn from people moving, starting or stopping school, or seeking something new. The Fed cannot push this economy into recession with a weak dose of interest rate chemo. It is doing "whatever it takes." We are getting set up for a dramatic slowdown in 2023 and 2024.
Democrats have time to adjust their message, but it may not matter. "It's the economy, stupid." The economy itself. It is not the message about the economy. No president or presidential party can talk their way out of a serious recession.
It is a bad break for Democrats, but all is not lost. The one thing that can save "bad" is "worse." This is how Biden won in 2020. A Republican majority in the House has endless ways to seize defeat. Possibly the House will go ahead with its threat to freeze on the debt ceiling and create a panic or debt default. Possibly they will pass extreme abortion bills. Possibly they will undermine the defense of Ukraine with spending freezes.
Their most likely, and most popular, error will be to go on an impeachment frenzy. I expect it. GOP voters may demand it. [Update: a comment today from a Trump-ish Republican cheers that very thing. The House may follow that lead.] Trump rally crowds chant it now. Impeach Biden. Impeach Fauci. Impeach Garland. There is still a lot of Trump-ism in the GOP. Republicans risk hardening their brand as disrupters. Trump is a burn it down candidate. He and his supporters spread that brand to the GOP. It will change the election frame from Democrats-as-incompetent into Republicans-as-agents-of-chaos.
I think Trump's prediction of a grim 2024 is likely. What is not clear yet is which party will get the blame.
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10 comments:
Saturday Night Live did a great parody of Fox & Friends explaining to Trump why they can’t have him on the show anymore. They’re moving on. “What? What did I do?” Trump asked them. “Was it the insurrection?” No. “Blackmailing Ukraine?” No. “The impeachment?” No. “The unbuilt wall?” No. It was because he lost.
It looks like Trump, “the Chosen One,” and DeSanctimonious, “sent by God,” will spend the next two years tearing each other apart and I have no doubt that everything they say about each other will be true.
Jeez, take the win for once, can'tya?
Another way to see this as it unfolds is that a celebrity grifter captured a political party and since there was no meat on the bone it now has run its course. A blip. One of our political parties has attracted a large proportion of opportunistic sleazeballs who will ultimately put it irretrievably in the ditch.
Another way to look at this is that the American economy runs on greed and sometimes it overreaches. We are experiencing a climate crisis, a war and the aftermath of a pandemic. I see gouging all around us. Price fixing. Nobody minding the store. Consumers will balk and wait for it to pass. Politicians will react also.
Let's not lose sight, however, that we still have half the electorate in the sway of Republican con artists, and it was only women and young voters who pulled this out of the you know what. They deserve all the credit and will need to be rewarded or we won't be able to count on them again.
Pelosi impeached Trump for a telephone call, so expect Biden, Harris, Mayorkas, and Garland to be impeached in the coming year. Biden will be impeached twice, first for taking bribes from China (Hunter's laptop), and second for his open borders policy. Biden has allowed a 5 million-person invasion of illegals into America. That's treasonous.
Since the GOP now controls the House of Representatives, then expect Biden to be a lame-duck for the next two years, and he'll be fighting criminal charges.
Biden is dreaming if he thinks he'll be able to run again in 2024.
My money is on Ron DeSantis.
Trump is speaking about HIS situation when he announced in presidential bid in 2024 where he will most probably be losing in the courts and possibly facing jail or ruin financially. He realizes the crimes he's committed will be charged and he will be convicted (The appeals will take him into a never-neverland paranoid rant.). I can see why he perceives HIS future to be dark.
The economy is still strong. However when Fed looks at the unemployment figures now developing as Big Tech and Megamergers and forth quarter layoffs loom. Forth quarter results on consumer spending may also appear sluggish. Other factors will force a recalibration by the Fed as a Republican Congressional delegation will pull the budget strings tight. The voters must be reminded that it's congress that holds the keys to prosperity and growth. The sorting will affect social media to a greater degree as funding for these platforms begins to shrink. Much depends on how the Democratically controlled Senate moves to address the problems. I suggest the very first order of business for the Lame Duck session is to at least attempt to protect nationally, a woman's right to chose. I predict the Republicans will react (not govern) with tax cuts for the rich, attacks on safety net programs, regulations affecting big donors and, of course brinksmanship over paying our bills by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.
Democrats have the advantage now, and should set the table legislatively to make the Republican agenda more difficult.
Comments by me are, as they say, IMHO.
Curt has a good point. The Republican Party has become so divorced from reality that it's unfit to govern, so instead they’ll spend the next two years attacking Biden. They don’t like his demeanor. Isn’t that an impeachable misdemeanor? Of course, one of the first things they’ll do is set up a permanent House select committee to investigate Hunter’s laptop. After all, who cares about climate change? That’s just a scam, like the 2020 election results.
I've been unable to find , from any reputable source, why Hunter Biden, who has never held a Government office, either Electoral or appointive,
should have a laptop of the slightest concern to any thinking individual.
An inabilityvtovrespond to Conspiracy Theory lies and pipe dreams is becoming increasinglybfrustrating.
Billionaire real estate developer Rick Caruso just lost his bid to become mayor of Los Angeles. The winner is Karen Bass, a black woman who previously served in Congress.
Caruso outspent Bass 10:1. She spent $10 million from contributions and he spent $101 million of his own money.
His attack ads ran constantly on tv. Billionaire Rick Caruso trashing a black woman who previously worked as a physician's assistant.
He was a Republican until 18 days before he announced that he was running for mayor. One could call him the Trump of LA.
He promised to end the homeless crisis in LA. As a billionaire real estate developer, we'll see what he does next, if anything, to address the issues of homelessness and affordable housing.
Excellent point about the responsible reliance upon reputable sources, such as those which dismissed without investigation claims from pro-Biden intelligence experts that the infamous laptop and its purported contents were a dangerous fabrication of Russian disinformation.
These same reputable sources—WaPo, NYT, etc—who after the election acknowledged the laptop data was authentic and Russia irrelevant should be still credited today in their principled journalistic indifference to a dozen photos of Joe Biden at dinner or golfing with Hunter and various business partners with whom Joe declared there was never one reference to business deals, especially on energy concerns, with Ukraine and China, even when the happenstance social occasions at issue occurred during foreign trips on Air Force Two with Hunter hitching a ride for, er, reasons unknown. No serious attention by smart, sophisticated folks should be devoted to the prison sentence for fraud already meted out to one such business partner of Hunter’s, Devon Archer, nor to another business partner, Tony Bobulinski, who is on record with the FBI saying that “the big guy”, whose standard 10% take per Hunter for influence-peddling was bemoaned explicitly by Hunter, referenced Joe Biden himself. There is no valid comparison to the coherent and credible news reports leaked via the Steele dossier.
It’s not that the evidence and these at least facially plausible allegations have been proven up one way or the other. They haven’t, but that’s not the point. The point is that they should not even be mentioned by decent Americans, let alone vetted conclusively either way.
Not much to address tonight other than Fox News. Amongst die hard Trump fans Fox News is called "Faux News." To them it is controlled opposition at best, and minimally deplorable. They hate it for calling Arizona early. Twice. They despise it for circular sourcing that the rest of MSM still uses to bolster credibility.
Trump fans believe Fox News only exists to pull right leaning old people back to center where they can be groomed left. Remember, every vote counts.
I'm a early 40s, socially active, conservative Republican (former Democrat) who has been in this valley for nearly 30 years. I literally only ever see Fox News in the background of a nursing home dayroom with an audience of napping seniors.
When our national politics boils down to which party will convene the next impeachment hearing, I start to agree with Russell Sadler's assessment of our Federal government: an expensive irrelevance. Forward-minded candidates could do so much more.
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