This time let's not let Trump get away with saying he is inheriting "carnage."
Donald Trump fills it.
Trump will take office and start off with an inauguration speech that once again will accentuate the negative. Remember: He did that last time. He declared that he inherited carnage. Then, three months later, he cited economic statistics saying things were great and that the credit is his. He narrated this story with straight-faced conviction. He is a great salesman. A great many people bought the idea that Trump fixed a bad economy.
Here is a chart of the unemployment rate going back 20 years.
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| Bureau of Labor Statistics |
Note that back in George W. Bush's presidency the economy went into recession and the unemployment rate soared to 10 percent amid the mortgage debacle and Great Financial Crisis. Obama took office. The economy began recovering, and unemployment fell in a long steady trend for seven years. Trump took office inheriting that trend, a rising stock market, and rising GDP. Trump neither accelerated nor wrecked that trend line -- until Covid. Then Biden took office and once again unemployment fell, this time sharply, back to the best of the pre-Covid Trump years. This isn't carnage.
Lets look at how the world's investors consider the USA today.
Again, let me narrate. On the right is a pie chart showing the sized of the global GDP. The USA is 26 percent of the world's GDP. Now look at the left pie chart. The USA is 65.4 percent of the world's stock market capitalization. Investors around the world are putting their money here in the USA. This is where they made money and think they can make more of it. This isn't carnage.
We have had the fastest GDP growth:
The fastest labor productivity growth:
Energy production is well above its level during the Trump era:
Income inequality is a problem, but progress is underway. Wages have grown faster than inflation while Biden has been president:
But what about inflation? What about groceries? Let's get real with this 40-year chart.
The price of groceries rose in the first two years of Biden's presidency as the Covid disruptions worked themselves out. Relative to the hours of work it took to earn a week's groceries it briefly spiked back to the level at the beginning of Trump's term, a level far below prior decades. Prices didn't go to the moon. They went back to prices during Trump's first two years in office. They are falling again now.
But consumers and voters don't feel and believe it. This is the power of narrative. Trump is the dominant voice describing what is going on. He says things are terrible and that we need a swashbuckling rule-breaker to fix the current misery. Biden and Harris never presented a powerful counter-narrative.
A Democrat -- or better, a half dozen of them -- needs to emerge to fill the void left by Biden and Harris. Don't wait until 2027. Do it now. There is a story to tell. If Democrats don't step up, Trump will be the one telling the story, and he will be loud and at center stage. Democrats don't need a pundit. They need a leader.
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2 comments:
“[Trump] is a great salesman.” Really? Or are the people who buy his BS just a bunch of chumps who believe what they want regardless of the facts? Whether it’s his claim that climate change is a hoax, that he won the 2020 election or that immigrants are eating our pets, his cult laps it up like divine revelation.
There’s a great scene in Steve Martin’s “The Jerk” where he’s in the field with his father who points to some cow patties and tells him, “That’s shit.” Then he takes a can of shoe polish out of his pocket and says: “That’s Shinola. You now know shit from Shinola. You’re ready to go out in the world.” Steve Martin’s character sort of gets it. Trump’s followers don’t.
So we are going to a president who's good at Bluster and Communication, and losing a president who, because of his relationships and long career in Washington, knows how to actually accomplish something within the system. Why can't we have both? Total leadership would assume a president who "gets things done" while insuring that the voters know what's really going on. Who, in either party, could that be?
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