The pain ahead is realizing China is the new superpower. Tawain won't make it to 2028.
Of course the super rich are going to get themselves tons of benefits, but that remains in the abstract for most.
Trump may get lucky for the time being on China. They are struggling economically and may not have the desire to pick a fight right now. IMO, countries bordering Russia are under a more immediate threat.
https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/biden-harris-adm...
No, look down at the bottom under "A Significant Track Record of Borrower Assistance".
> If they had the power all along, then why wait til the week before the election?
Judges blocked all the other ways they tried to do it.
This is a lot like liberals complaining about things Trump didn't do.
Obamacare was based on Romneycare, and Romney had to disown it. Let’s not have discussions on things that dont happen. There is nothing the dems can do which wont be spun into harm by the republican side of the media sphere.
The most annoying part is that almost every time with an issue that couldn't be done, it should have been clear from the beginning. The idea of the government vacuuming up all (or most) student debt seems completely untenable right out of the gate, just like the idea that we would be able to build a physical wall across out entire southern border and make Mexico pay for it.
Its lazy politics all the way around. And that lazy politics wastes plenty of tax dollars and distracts everyone from issues actually worth talking about.
Again - the Obamacare-Romneycare example. One party tried to reach across the aisle, to bend over backwards to build common ground.
The republicans refused to cross the aisle, even when their points and desires were incorporated.
From the Gingrich era, it’s been a clear goal to stop any bi-partisan behavior. That only winner takes all policies and behavior is acceptable.
That dems started to do this, for DJT, is kinda sad. They should have started a lot earlier.
I request, that when policy is brought into the picture, let’s not forget that policy is fundamentally irrelevant to the Republican Party. It’s nice to discuss policy, yes. But policy is a treatment for real world issues in a working legislature. Not one where good policy must be rejected if it’s brought up by the Dems.
At this point, the game theory solution is for Dems to respond by also rejecting bipartisan efforts, and copying the republican playbook.
https://www.scotusblog.com/2023/06/supreme-court-strikes-dow...
You forgot the part where they claimed their hands were tied, then finally did something about it 8 months before the election.
Lindsay Graham did!
"Everybody who comes on this floor and says our border is broken. We should do something about it. You're absolutely right. And unfortunately, we didn't get there. President Trump opposed the Senate bill."
This issue is a mess and has been kicked down the road for literal decades at this point. Maybe finally it will get passed…
E.g. on immigration he prevented courts from deferring certain deportation cases, which meant high-risk immigrants stayed in the country for longer.
That is because the result doesn't matter, not in "starve the beast" [1] cycle politics - it used to be mostly about money but the model can be used also for general politics. The playbook is:
1. side A rise to power claiming "issue X must be solved by doing Y" (all while knowing that doing Y is useless or counterproductive, but the voter base doesn't care - be it immigration or the defunding of healthcare or whatever)
2. The consequences hit delayed, when the term is at its end and the competitor B takes over (usually in US political cycles every 8 years, but these days it seems like the ping-pong is accelerating)
3. That leaves an opportunity for side A to constantly barge in from the side "look at issue X, vote for us next time and we'll fix it (for realsies this time!)"
4. Side A wins the next election.
When it comes to anything budget related, replace the campaigning slogan with "look at issue X, it is clear that the government is incapable of doing anything about that issue, let us privatise it".
I mean he came into power and proudly declared he had never heard of NATO before running (!!) but was brought up to speed in ~2min (!!). That’s who he is.
This is why autocracies and oligarchies are bad. Not because they're just de facto evil, but because they produce undesirable outcomes, often even undesirable by their own standards (see: Russia's ongoing 3 day special military operation in Ukraine)
Every single person around him is playing a loyalty test. Thank god Fauci was expert enough to navigate that dynamic so delicately, but most others don't have the talent or appetite for it.
Yeah, a signal of large players in economy preparing themselves for a Trump victory - the begin of which was Meta unbanning Trump and the culmination of which was Bezos banning the WaPo endorsement. Big Business doesn't care about any values, all it cares about is money, and so it prepared for Trump possibly taking over again in time and getting into good terms with him.
While the economic numbers are good, they are mainly good for people with already high economic status like existing home owners and professionals. For example, student loan forgiveness sounds great but then leaves every blue collar worker who didn't go to college wondering WTF are they doing for me? They are giving more money to people who are already ahead. When Musk says pain is coming, many of Trumps supporters are happy because they are already in pain and want to see those benefitting feel some of that pain.
Then they go and overplay their hands with social issues. I didn't see it at the time, but all of the DEI rollbacks we've been seeing over the past year or so should have been a signal. One of the middle of the road people on TV last night mentioned he had friends who tried to avoid interacting with people at work because they were afraid of saying something offensive. And these were likely center left people. I have had similar discussions with even my most progressive friends. The almost refusal to message young men is also a problem.
Most Americans want legal immigration, but the Democrats took too long to do something and then Trump was able to kill the bill last minute. It looked like the Democrats wanted to simply ignore it until they no longer could.
There are more, but I think these are some of the big Democrat self owns.