Sound The TRUMPets! A Thread for Presidential Pondering 2016-2020(?)

[Herman]

Don't read too much into anything I wrote. Simply pointing out the failures and mistakes in NY. Certainly not advocating the notion "they deserved it" and it's asinine you allege that.

"I shouldn't have to tell you the mayor and governor's party affiliation, either, but suffice to say it's bluer than the sea" is what you wrote about the nr of deaths in NY.

Add to this that you've been writing about the blessings of the GOP obsessively since 2012 and the picture is clear.

[Daverz]

Pointing out facts, Herman, shouldn't offend you so much.

I wouldn't bother with this guy, he's not capable of arguing in good faith.

[JBS]

Ironic that his first post on this thread came just after 71dB posted this

This thread isn't that bad because most members here agree about Trump being incompetent as the president. Almost a safespace for me! 

[71 dB]

Ironic that his first post on this thread came just after 71dB posted this

This thread isn't that bad because most members here agree about Trump being incompetent as the president. Almost a safespace for me!

I don't mind one or two "MAGA" nutjobs if everyone else are on my side.

[71 dB]

Lol, Trump has made his fair share of mistakes. Never said he hadn't. I do hope you can acknowledge the shortcomings and mistakes from your party/ideological perspective.

To me corporate Dems are beyond hopeless! Utterly spineless, out-of-touch* and corrupt. Marginally better than the Republicans, mainly on social issues, but on economic issues almost as bad. Of the American political map the progressive wing of the Democrats + The Green Party are those close to my ideological perspective. Pretty much the only shortcoming these groups have is not getting more political power, Bernie losing the primary second time etc. but then again what do you expect when the system is totally rigged against them?

* Nancy Pelosi showing her luxury home and ice cream selection while millions of Americans lost their job.

[Karl Henning]

Ironic that his first post on this thread came just after 71dB posted this

(* chortle *)

[SimonNZ]

To me corporate Dems are beyond hopeless! Utterly spineless, out-of-touch* and corrupt. Marginally better than the Republicans, mainly on social issues, but on economic issues almost as bad. Of the American political map the progressive wing of the Democrats + The Green Party are those close to my ideological perspective. Pretty much the only shortcoming these groups have is not getting more political power, Bernie losing the primary second time etc. but then again what do you expect when the system is totally rigged against them?

* Nancy Pelosi showing her luxury home and ice cream selection while millions of Americans lost their job.

I had to google this.

So you're posting about your lefty credentials while repeating a Trump attack ad and a Fox News talking point?

[Karl Henning]

Not that Poju is interested in the facts:

Trump vs. Pelosi: What happened in Chinatown

[71 dB]

I had to google this.

Really? I didn't have to. TYT and Kyle Kulinski informed me about this.

So you're posting about your lefty credentials while repeating a Trump attack ad and a Fox News talking point?

Of course Trump/the Republicans use Nancy Pelosi's tone deaf act against the Dems! TYT and Kyle Kulinski warned about this before it happened and it happened! Nancy Pelosi is hopeless! Hopefully Shahid Buttar beats her. Now you need to Google who Shahid Buttar is, right? 

[ritter]

Oh ciel! Che noia!

[Karl Henning]

The Post reports: "More than 4.4 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week, according to the Labor Department, a signal the tidal wave of job losses continues to grow during the coronavirus pandemic." With mammoth job losses since March 15, new claims now stand at 26.5 million. "The number of jobs lost in that brief span effectively erased all jobs created after the 2008 financial crisis. Jobless figures on this scale haven't been seen since the Great Depression."

Not only is the economy under President Trump indisputably worse than it was under President Barack Obama, it is worse than every other president's economy since the 1930s. And while many hope for a swift, steep recovery (a so-called V-curve), the reality may look quite different.

The recession is likely to last longer than the stay-at-home orders. As Steven Rattner, former auto-industry czar during the Obama administration, explains: "We will almost certainly be looking at long-term damage, including double digit unemployment until at least the latter part of this year." Rattner reports that retail in-store spending has dropped by 98 percent and airline travel by 70 percent. He warns that bankruptcies will follow. ("Many retailers, from the largest malls to the smallest mom-and-pop stores, are likely to never reopen.")

The federal government has already funneled trillions of dollars into the economy in four separate stimulus bills, but few expect these to be the last. That means "the deficit for the current fiscal year is now estimated to reach $3.8 trillion, almost four times larger than what was projected just a couple of months ago." We will see trillion-dollar deficits for the foreseeable future. (It is unclear whether the appetite for United States debt is unlimited, especially in light of the end of China's growth spurt.)

Congress has no choice but to spend generously while we are in a recession. In the long term, according to U.S. News & World Report, economists believe "the country's creditworthiness and ability to provide services may be challenged as interest payments spike. Tax increases may be unavoidable, and a reduced demand for Treasury notes could send interest rates higher, impacting not only U.S. economic growth but also consumers' ability to borrow money." (This is one of many reasons the debt-producing tax cuts were unwise.)

As a political matter, the unemployment numbers are disastrous for Republicans who were banking on a strong economy to pull them through the election with an unpopular president at the top of the ticket. Democrats argue that Trump is still not doing enough.

Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, put out a statement on Thursday excoriating Trump: "Congress gave President Trump the tools to keep people on payroll in the CARES Act, but he hasn't fully used them," Biden argued. "Instead of standing by while the economy sheds millions of jobs each week during this pandemic, Trump should be working around the clock to keep as many people as possible attached to their jobs." Biden explained he would be implementing "employment insurance" to encourage employers to avoid layoffs and instead reduce wages, with the federal government paying the difference to make workers whole.

The Democratic Party, as the party that believes in active government, will likely run rings around Republicans who remain wary if not downright hostile toward further government action. (Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already insisted that Congress forgo future spending.) As evident from Biden's statement, the former vice president and his advisers can readily come up with creative policy solutions to ease economic pain. It is rare that the challenger in a presidential election can advertise himself as more sophisticated, knowledgeable and experienced than a sitting president when it comes to the inner workings of the federal government. Here, however, Biden unquestionably has the advantage.

[SimonNZ]

^ The perfect example of someone arguing in bad faith.

Do some of you want a global economic depression in order to see Trump voted out of office?

Nobody wants that. What do you mean by this? Please expand.

[Karl Henning]

^ The perfect example of someone arguing in bad faith.

Do some of you want a global economic depression in order to see Trump voted out of office?

^ The perfect example of someone evading the point.

[Karl Henning]

The GOP has reached its sad, inevitable destination

By
Michael Gerson
Columnist
April 23, 2020 at 2:34 p.m. EDT
When I think I have reached the bottom of my dejection about the state of public health and of the economy, I can always turn to the state of the Republican Party and go lower still.

The Trump captivity of the GOP has reached its sad, inevitable destination: a failed presidency defended by a cowed party. As President Trump's malignant narcissism and incompetence have been fully revealed — and can be objectively measured by the level of needless death — his approval among Republicans has remained strong. Across a continent filled with elected Republicans, only a few have taken a stand for sanity and effective governance.

Trump is, no doubt, in a perilous political situation. The activist right wing of his party has seized on social distancing as the health-care equivalent of socialism. The tea party fundraising machine has lurched into loud, clanking motion, trying to manufacture outrage against epidemiology. Some pro-life and pro-family groups have joined in the ill-timed promotion of social anarchy.

The president seldom defies the right-wing populists, and his immediate response was to identify with their anger. But this is a different political circumstance than any Trump has faced. In this case, pleasing the most vocal portion of his base puts another important constituency — older voters — at additional risk of painful, suffocating death. It is difficult to play both sides of this issue. And there are indications in recent polling that seniors have grown increasingly critical of Trump's pandemic response.

Yet none of this is likely to change the minds of partisan Republicans. Some ignore or dismiss Trump's cruelty and deception because conservative judges need to be appointed and the culture war needs to be fought. Some embrace his cruelty and deception because conservative judges need to be appointed and the culture war needs to be fought. And Trump naturally takes continued Republican job approval as an endorsement for his handling of the coronavirus crisis. In this way, Republican tolerance for Trump's ineptitude and ignorance has made these traits more lethal.

It is sometimes useful to stare the worst possible political outcome full in the face. If Trump were reelected in November, he would place his stamp on Republican identity for a generation. The purges of dissidents would accelerate. Resistance within the party would dwindle from rare to vanishingly rare. A party of angry white people would head toward its demographic doom. And even then, Trump acolytes would probably reject ideological and racial outreach, preferring their resentments to the possibility of deliverance.

A reelection defeat for Trump would open up a small space for ideological reconsideration and renovation. Trump and his clan would not disappear. They would do anything they could to claw their way back to power. But if Trump loses, it will be because he alienated the suburban Republicans and independents that his party lost in the 2016 midterm elections. This would provide a window of opportunity for Republican leaders to combine a concern for the legitimate needs of rural and working-class whites with an agenda of upward economic mobility and minority outreach — and to do this while embracing the high cause of effective governance, capable of acting boldly to defend the health and security of the country.

For the past 150 years in American politics, ideological renewal has come through party factions. In the 1990s, center-left Democrats such as Bill Clinton did not found a third-way party. They created a New Democrat identity within the Democratic Party. Center-right Republicans are in desperate need of a similar effort.

For many, being center-right means combining a commitment to free-market economics with tolerant social values and strong national defense. That would be a large improvement over Trump's combination of populism, nativism, racism and mercantilism.

For some of us, the ideal is more on the model of Christian social teaching — solidarity with the vulnerable, respect for value-shaping institutions, care for creation, the embrace of refugees and immigrants, and support for government that seeks the common good. This was basically the ideological framework for George W. Bush's 2000 campaign (read his Philadelphia convention speech for proof). This was also once characteristic of a certain kind of Catholic Democrat.

Neither political party currently measures up to this ideal, nor cares to. But Joe Biden was shaped by it. While his policy views can be quite liberal, his political muscle memory comes from the Catholic social-justice tradition. He is, as his critics charge, a throwback. But to a saner time, with superior options. The beginning of reform for Republicans might be a vote for the Democratic candidate.

(emphasis mine.)

[Daverz]

A couple days ago I read a headline that the T. maladministration was appointing a labradoodle to lead the coranavirus task force.  Well, turns out I misread that, it as a labradoodle breeder.  I'm so disappointed; I was looking forward to the labradoodle showing what he could do.

[Karl Henning]

A couple days ago I read a headline that the T. maladministration was appointing a labradoodle to lead the coranavirus task force.  Well, turns out I misread that, it as a labradoodle breeder.  I'm so disappointed; I was looking forward to the labradoodle showing what he could do.

Pence and the labradoodle, toe-to-toe! My money's on the dog.

[Karl Henning]

I here express a lack of confidence in Pence's sunny spin:

In multiple interviews, Pence expresses confidence virus will ebb in summer

[Karl Henning]

Meanwhile, the innumerate President . . .

Misunderstanding the math, Trump embraced a coronavirus death toll we'll soon surpass

[Karl Henning]

Meanwhile, the innumerate President . . .

Misunderstanding the math, Trump embraced a coronavirus death toll we'll soon surpass

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield kicked up a storm this week when he predicted that this winter could be a bigger struggle than what we're seeing now, thanks to the combination of coronavirus (for which we'll still likely lack a vaccine) and the seasonal flu. Trump, eager to assuage concerns about the virus, brought Redfield to Wednesday's briefing to explain his comments.

"You may not even have corona coming back, just so you understand," Trump said after Redfield confirmed his comments.

"Wouldn't you say there's a good chance that covid will not come back?" Trump asked White House coronavirus task force member Deborah Birx.

"We don't know —" Birx replied with some hesitation.

"And if it does comes back, it's in a very small, confined area that we put out," Trump interjected.

That's not necessarily true. The United States will certainly be better prepared for a reemergence of the virus this fall, but the same core problems may remain: limited immunity, limited therapeutic medications, no inoculations. And that means that the death toll will likely continue to climb. As it may for months after, until there's either sufficient immunity in the population, an effective treatment, or a vaccine.

Trump at times has compared the death toll from covid-19 to the toll from the H1N1 flu pandemic in 2009. The CDC estimates that more than 12,000 people died of that virus from April 2009 to April 2010. (The comparatively low death toll is likely why Trump doesn't compare it with covid-19 anymore.) That's an estimate, based on observed illness totals and documented deaths. It's similar to the annual estimates the government compiles to determine how many people died from the seasonal flu, part of its determination of the "disease burden" that influenza exacts each winter. In the 2018-2019 flu season, for example, the CDC estimates that roughly 34,000 people died of the flu, a figure that could be as low as 26,000 or as high as nearly 53,000.

It's a scientific estimate that is higher than the observed death toll. (Only about 7,000 flu deaths were directly recorded that flu season.) Eventually, we'll get a similar estimate of how many deaths covid-19 has caused. It, too, is likely to be higher than the numbers we have now.

In that chart that the White House presented back in March, the timeline on which the number of deaths would be recorded was not identified. If the lower estimate, those 100,000 to 220,000 deaths, were only measured through July of this year, then we're on target to come in well under the lower boundary. But if it was over the entire spread of the virus's emergence, tracking from March 2020 through the summer of 2021, we can be less certain about whether 100,000 was an overestimate. Particularly once the final estimate of the virus's toll is calculated.

For Trump, the question was simple. The lower estimate said 100,000, and here was a model suddenly throwing out a figure of 60,000. Trump, in Trump fashion, embraced it, even slicing off a few thousand now and again.

Reality refuses to be so generous.

[JBS]

I here express a lack of confidence in Pence's sunny spin:

In multiple interviews, Pence expresses confidence virus will ebb in summer

There is at least some scientific chatter to base that on, even if actual scientists are less optimistic than Pence.

Nor is Pence the one who suggested that injecting oneself with bleach and isopropyl alcohol might help prevent infection. That was left to Our Glorious Leader.