But COVID, and the ensuing chaos and trauma caused by a venal piece of shit historically unprepared for dog catcher, let alone president, was just a fever dream we all had, right? My incandescent loathing for these people continues unchecked.
This kind of denial of reality works for Republicans because of their captive media human centipede; a Democrat saying something so completely different from reality would be nitpicked into silence. That's one reason they all can easily keep up with the "burned down cities" line. And indeed some of them like that dingbat from Colorado still go to the obviously not-burned down cities, to enjoy plays like Beetlejuice.
Probably one of the most evil things President Klan Robe and his brain trust did was to decide to give up taking things seriously and let the virus run wild in blue states. After all they typically had the large cities with international airports. But even more inhumane was that the strategy involved just blaming blue state governors.
I say this often, but the way President Klan Robe and his appointees played politics with public health, and then destroyed our public health legal infrastructure, will cause untold death for generations.
Remember when Trump started getting bored with it all, and handed over PPE distribution to Jared?
And then Jared hired a bunch of frat brothers to completely screw it up, because none of them understood logistics or how to help manufacturers ramp up production , so they started buying cheap crap from China and PPE and testing turned into a huge grift?
And remember Jared decided a national plan to distribute PPE wasn't necessary because the pandemic was hitting blue states the hardest, and they could blame the governors, because that would help Trump politically?
Yep that was their flawless plan but the collateral damage from that is immense. That strategy plus their defanging our response has made us completely defenseless the next time a pandemic hits. God help us.
I hope that you do not mind, Stephen, if I call attention to just how bad the Covid years were especially for minorities by linking to another Substack post. I have not done any deeper digging into what he’s written but for the Trump administration it’s totally in their wheelhouse. It was NOT better 4 years ago and it certainly won’t get better a second time around.
By most measures, the country was on a gradual, continual upward trajectory under Obama's eight years. Somehow people didn't see it, and bought Trump's rhetoric about how bad things were.
Today, again, that rhetoric seems to be working. But perhaps for a different reason. Prices remain high, interesr rates remain high. The cost of doing things is high. And since most Americans don't pay attention to global issues, they don't realize how much stronger was our recovery than most of the rest of the world.
COVID was traumatic, as was the aftermath. And I think people are still feeling that trauma, subconsciously. At the same time, the prevailing narrative(s) seem to pretend COVID never happened, leaving just an empty years-long void in our historical memory.
“There are many ways that the years 2017 through 2019 were preferable to 2021 through 2024.”
This seems off to me. During the ‘reign of error’ that was Trump in the years 2017 through 2019, every news notification and item, along with his constant shouting over helicopters was a living nightmare. I personally preferred the recovery years of 2021 through 2024.
I think some could argue that prices relative to wages were better in 2017-19 compared to now, but then a lot fewer people were employed, and wages at the bottom were worse in real dollar terms compared to now (but "vibes" aren't created by low-wage earners, who rarely vote and don't dominate media, so they don't count I guess?). I think one reason the pre-pandemic Trump economy gets considered better in hindsight is right wingers for partisan reasons talked it up, while liberals often grudgingly accepted the economy was good (if just a continuation of the Obama years), while now right wingers will convince themselves we are in 1933 again and a lot of liberals are so wired to complain about the economy (because some people are still hurting, which is true, but was also true before) that they undermine any normie liberal argument that Biden is presiding over a solid recovery. Basically, "vibes" comes down to media message discipline.
Also, the economy is very different from what we consider the worst aspects of Trump’s first term. A President Pence governing like an otherwise normal terrible Republican would not have triggered the same level of “resistance” (for good or for ill)
We also don’t discuss enough how so many white moderates (even liberals) completely checked out from the Trump years. They said it was too exhausting. However, if you weren’t closely following politics (the chaos of the Trump administration, the horrible things he said and did, etc) and weren’t a direct target of his policies, 2017 to 2019 weren’t terrible. That’s why even the leftists that Brando alludes to will grumble about the high cost of DoorDash or how it was harder to find someone to do a kitchen remodel in 2021 than in 2018, etc.
COVID was a perverse blessing for Democrats because it forced white moderates (esp. swing voters) to confront Trump’s policies. Now, they were *directly* impacted in a negative sense. They also couldn’t ignore Trump. They were tuning in daily to his deranged press briefings because they wanted to know when their life could return to normal, etc.
Indeed--the pre-pandemic Trump years also involved the combination of negligence and intentional cruelty at the border, which for many Americans was something they could ignore (though it would contribute to our later labor shortage), and his idiotic tariff policies contributed to later inflation, but most people didn't notice it at the time. A person not directly affected and who did not follow politics that closely could probably have thought those years were ok!
But the key now is for Democrats to dredge up everyone's memories of 2020 (remember wiping down your groceries? Having to visit several stores, only allowed a few customers at a time, to find basic staples like milk thanks to supply chain issues?) and remind them not only that Trump was in charge, but how he was actively making things worse. Make Republicans own that awful year.
OMG I actually forgot about that with all the other horrors. I recall some friggin' 007 missions some governors had to do - I think J.B. Pritzker, if I'm remembering correctly, had to send someone in a car to an airport to receive/pay for a shipment.
President Klan Robe is a complete monster and anyone supporting him should be shunned.
One final thing about Biden's economic performance--considering that so much of it is based on liberal policy (pro-union administration, direct payments to poor and middle class families, expanded health care coverage, industrial policy like IRA/infrastructure) it is politically suicidal for anyone on the Left to "talk down" this economy, and asinine to complain about the cost of services like fast food (what happened to "oh, I don't mind paying a few dollars more for Big Macs, if it means a living wage for the guy making them"--we now have higher relative wages for fast food workers and yep, higher fast food prices, so why complain now?). If the political signal is "do liberal policy, and when it brings economic gains you'll still get no credit (and maybe no votes) from the left" then guess what, no future president is going to stick their neck out to deliver liberal policy. You're literally telling them that it doesn't work and gets no payoff.
Presidents usually don't get re-elected solely because the economy is "good" but rather based on perceptions for the direction the economy is going in--1984 still had high unemployment and high inflation compared to what we've seen in the 1990s onward, but the trend was a lot better compared with the recession that had ended the year prior, so Reagan could run on an optimistic message--people believed (rightly, it turned out) that the next few years would be even better than 1984.
With that in mind, Biden should do quite well this year, barring a sudden recession (fingers crossed it doesn't happen), because 2024 is so far looking a lot rosier than even 2023. Democrats absolutely have to drive home that (1) inflation is continuing to drop, wages are outpacing it, and the job market is better than ever for workers at all levels, and (2) remember who was running the show in 2020 and don't memory-hole it. Sure, die hard MAGAs don't care, but the real problem is swing voters who are seeing a lot of noise right now and polling indicates that their own personal situations are great but they think the economy as a whole is awful (which speaks to the power of media-spurred bullshit and propaganda). (It's also not helpful that so many Leftists are just wired to say an economy is terrible, even when it is doing better relatively).
There is always a way for Republicans to do something to crash the economy just in time, because Americans keep electing enough of these bombthrowers to cause trouble.
I also note that crime spiked in 2020, and has been steeply dropping ever since. So Mr. "Law and Order" is, like Nixon, completely inept at the very thing he ran on.
Democrats are still getting hammered for the rise in crime that occurred on *Trump’s watch.* (I’d predicted in March that turning cities into ghost towns — even if necessary — would inevitably lead to crime.)
Yep--unfortunately voters associate Democrats with lenience on criminals, and Republicans with "toughness" even though the former increased policing budgets and the latter cut them. It takes a lot to undo that assumption.
The amnesia is staggering, and I think the reason why is that people DON’T want to remember what a terrible year it was. I’m amazed Trump didn’t postpone the elections…amazed except for the knowledge of his unconquerable laziness.
In a bittersweet way, though, it did give us the Sorry Antivaxxer website.
He's no King Richard, but he is definitely the King of Dicks.
But COVID, and the ensuing chaos and trauma caused by a venal piece of shit historically unprepared for dog catcher, let alone president, was just a fever dream we all had, right? My incandescent loathing for these people continues unchecked.
This kind of denial of reality works for Republicans because of their captive media human centipede; a Democrat saying something so completely different from reality would be nitpicked into silence. That's one reason they all can easily keep up with the "burned down cities" line. And indeed some of them like that dingbat from Colorado still go to the obviously not-burned down cities, to enjoy plays like Beetlejuice.
Probably one of the most evil things President Klan Robe and his brain trust did was to decide to give up taking things seriously and let the virus run wild in blue states. After all they typically had the large cities with international airports. But even more inhumane was that the strategy involved just blaming blue state governors.
I say this often, but the way President Klan Robe and his appointees played politics with public health, and then destroyed our public health legal infrastructure, will cause untold death for generations.
All Republicans offer you are dead bodies.
Remember when Trump started getting bored with it all, and handed over PPE distribution to Jared?
And then Jared hired a bunch of frat brothers to completely screw it up, because none of them understood logistics or how to help manufacturers ramp up production , so they started buying cheap crap from China and PPE and testing turned into a huge grift?
And remember Jared decided a national plan to distribute PPE wasn't necessary because the pandemic was hitting blue states the hardest, and they could blame the governors, because that would help Trump politically?
Yep that was their flawless plan but the collateral damage from that is immense. That strategy plus their defanging our response has made us completely defenseless the next time a pandemic hits. God help us.
I hope that you do not mind, Stephen, if I call attention to just how bad the Covid years were especially for minorities by linking to another Substack post. I have not done any deeper digging into what he’s written but for the Trump administration it’s totally in their wheelhouse. It was NOT better 4 years ago and it certainly won’t get better a second time around.
https://hartmannreport.com/p/covid-this-month-4-years-ago-trump-73b
Yeah, it’s one of the reasons that MAGA revolted so quickly against any Covid restrictions.
As always, racism is a major self-own.
By most measures, the country was on a gradual, continual upward trajectory under Obama's eight years. Somehow people didn't see it, and bought Trump's rhetoric about how bad things were.
Today, again, that rhetoric seems to be working. But perhaps for a different reason. Prices remain high, interesr rates remain high. The cost of doing things is high. And since most Americans don't pay attention to global issues, they don't realize how much stronger was our recovery than most of the rest of the world.
COVID was traumatic, as was the aftermath. And I think people are still feeling that trauma, subconsciously. At the same time, the prevailing narrative(s) seem to pretend COVID never happened, leaving just an empty years-long void in our historical memory.
“There are many ways that the years 2017 through 2019 were preferable to 2021 through 2024.”
This seems off to me. During the ‘reign of error’ that was Trump in the years 2017 through 2019, every news notification and item, along with his constant shouting over helicopters was a living nightmare. I personally preferred the recovery years of 2021 through 2024.
I think some could argue that prices relative to wages were better in 2017-19 compared to now, but then a lot fewer people were employed, and wages at the bottom were worse in real dollar terms compared to now (but "vibes" aren't created by low-wage earners, who rarely vote and don't dominate media, so they don't count I guess?). I think one reason the pre-pandemic Trump economy gets considered better in hindsight is right wingers for partisan reasons talked it up, while liberals often grudgingly accepted the economy was good (if just a continuation of the Obama years), while now right wingers will convince themselves we are in 1933 again and a lot of liberals are so wired to complain about the economy (because some people are still hurting, which is true, but was also true before) that they undermine any normie liberal argument that Biden is presiding over a solid recovery. Basically, "vibes" comes down to media message discipline.
Also, the economy is very different from what we consider the worst aspects of Trump’s first term. A President Pence governing like an otherwise normal terrible Republican would not have triggered the same level of “resistance” (for good or for ill)
We also don’t discuss enough how so many white moderates (even liberals) completely checked out from the Trump years. They said it was too exhausting. However, if you weren’t closely following politics (the chaos of the Trump administration, the horrible things he said and did, etc) and weren’t a direct target of his policies, 2017 to 2019 weren’t terrible. That’s why even the leftists that Brando alludes to will grumble about the high cost of DoorDash or how it was harder to find someone to do a kitchen remodel in 2021 than in 2018, etc.
COVID was a perverse blessing for Democrats because it forced white moderates (esp. swing voters) to confront Trump’s policies. Now, they were *directly* impacted in a negative sense. They also couldn’t ignore Trump. They were tuning in daily to his deranged press briefings because they wanted to know when their life could return to normal, etc.
Indeed--the pre-pandemic Trump years also involved the combination of negligence and intentional cruelty at the border, which for many Americans was something they could ignore (though it would contribute to our later labor shortage), and his idiotic tariff policies contributed to later inflation, but most people didn't notice it at the time. A person not directly affected and who did not follow politics that closely could probably have thought those years were ok!
But the key now is for Democrats to dredge up everyone's memories of 2020 (remember wiping down your groceries? Having to visit several stores, only allowed a few customers at a time, to find basic staples like milk thanks to supply chain issues?) and remind them not only that Trump was in charge, but how he was actively making things worse. Make Republicans own that awful year.
I remember when we had to friggin' kitbash masks in order to not die, and we had "Defense Production Act" in our minds all the time!
And states were left to fend for scarce PPE on their own, with Trump steering more towards the states he considered politically useful to him.
Don't let people forget!
OMG I actually forgot about that with all the other horrors. I recall some friggin' 007 missions some governors had to do - I think J.B. Pritzker, if I'm remembering correctly, had to send someone in a car to an airport to receive/pay for a shipment.
President Klan Robe is a complete monster and anyone supporting him should be shunned.
One final thing about Biden's economic performance--considering that so much of it is based on liberal policy (pro-union administration, direct payments to poor and middle class families, expanded health care coverage, industrial policy like IRA/infrastructure) it is politically suicidal for anyone on the Left to "talk down" this economy, and asinine to complain about the cost of services like fast food (what happened to "oh, I don't mind paying a few dollars more for Big Macs, if it means a living wage for the guy making them"--we now have higher relative wages for fast food workers and yep, higher fast food prices, so why complain now?). If the political signal is "do liberal policy, and when it brings economic gains you'll still get no credit (and maybe no votes) from the left" then guess what, no future president is going to stick their neck out to deliver liberal policy. You're literally telling them that it doesn't work and gets no payoff.
Presidents usually don't get re-elected solely because the economy is "good" but rather based on perceptions for the direction the economy is going in--1984 still had high unemployment and high inflation compared to what we've seen in the 1990s onward, but the trend was a lot better compared with the recession that had ended the year prior, so Reagan could run on an optimistic message--people believed (rightly, it turned out) that the next few years would be even better than 1984.
With that in mind, Biden should do quite well this year, barring a sudden recession (fingers crossed it doesn't happen), because 2024 is so far looking a lot rosier than even 2023. Democrats absolutely have to drive home that (1) inflation is continuing to drop, wages are outpacing it, and the job market is better than ever for workers at all levels, and (2) remember who was running the show in 2020 and don't memory-hole it. Sure, die hard MAGAs don't care, but the real problem is swing voters who are seeing a lot of noise right now and polling indicates that their own personal situations are great but they think the economy as a whole is awful (which speaks to the power of media-spurred bullshit and propaganda). (It's also not helpful that so many Leftists are just wired to say an economy is terrible, even when it is doing better relatively).
There is always a way for Republicans to do something to crash the economy just in time, because Americans keep electing enough of these bombthrowers to cause trouble.
They'll certainly try! They don't even hide it.
I also note that crime spiked in 2020, and has been steeply dropping ever since. So Mr. "Law and Order" is, like Nixon, completely inept at the very thing he ran on.
Democrats are still getting hammered for the rise in crime that occurred on *Trump’s watch.* (I’d predicted in March that turning cities into ghost towns — even if necessary — would inevitably lead to crime.)
Yep--unfortunately voters associate Democrats with lenience on criminals, and Republicans with "toughness" even though the former increased policing budgets and the latter cut them. It takes a lot to undo that assumption.
It’s a branding issue for Democrats that policies alone won’t fix. Yet they keep trying with the latter and think the former is beneath them.
Yep--"we shouldn't have to sell ourselves like a Madison Avenue product" and all that. And so we are stuck wondering why we can't break through.
The amnesia is staggering, and I think the reason why is that people DON’T want to remember what a terrible year it was. I’m amazed Trump didn’t postpone the elections…amazed except for the knowledge of his unconquerable laziness.