Donald J Trump: Rip Van Winkle edition

Pretty much no one likes Biden and his term has largely been a failure. He didn’t do any of the things he campaigned on even the things he had unilateral control over. He wasted a trifecta getting very little done. He oversaw the end of Roe v. Wade and did nothing. The economy is teetering and the impact of interest rate hikes and inflation is a much worse overall economic situation than we had before Biden. If we don’t see a major rebound soon I could easily see Trump winning.

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Perhaps, but it’s an apples/oranges comparison.

In your hypo, you are choosing between a sexual predator and the the very real possibility of the end of democracy, or at the very least the end of democracy for a significant subset of the population.

Here, we have people willingly choosing BOTH.

wat? biden took office in the middle of the pandemic, and we are now at higher employment than prior to pandemic. All Employees, Total Nonfarm (PAYEMS) | FRED | St. Louis Fed yes inflation hurts, but it has already been trending down to where it was in the spring of 2021. United States Inflation Rate - August 2023 Data - 1914-2022 Historical combination of fed policy and pandemic relief payments has kept the economy pretty damn hot.

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Inflation and higher interest rates make people effectively poorer. Especially the working class and below. During covid we had some unemployment but the government made it rain free money as well.

One piece of non-anecdotal evidence people aren’t better off(or at least are becoming less well off) is bankruptcy filings surging this year.

https://www.abi.org/newsroom/bankruptcy-statistics

your link doesn’t prove that it’s worse than before the pandemic.

in general we can cherry pick any number of indicators that will either show that economy is hot or surging to a bad place. both of our analyses will ignore the other, and proclaim that we are right. but reality is closer to the middle. there are smaller economic crises happening all the time, on average we are not at 2020, or 2008, or 2001. at least not yet.

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It’s an indicator that things are getting worse economically for Americans. Bankruptcy filings were actually at recent historic lows during the pandemic.

Do you think the economy is better in 2023 than in 2022? 2021?

right, so the bankruptcy rate surge is regressing to historic means, not going to financial crisis times.

i’m not an economist. i can only tell you what i read. the fed rate hike seemed to have worked for inflationary pressure, without depressing employment. that’s what everyone was afraid of, and perhaps didn’t think the soft landing would happen.

Employment is a lagging indicator. You have no idea how the employment will shake out as we progress through this cycle. It’s also being helped artificially by boomers retiring and/or dying from Covid.

No one is voting based on the unemployment rate anyways. They are voting on what they experience. Which is inflation, higher interest rates, a stagnant stock market, constant news stories of bank failures and national and consumer debt levels through the roof, etc. Even if the economy was objectively better now than 2022 or 2019 (it isn’t) that doesn’t matter much if your average person is worse off.

Why do you think Trump is polling 7 points ahead of Biden? Because everyone thinks things are grand?

It’s also an ‘all adults’ instead of RV or LV poll, which isn’t particularly worthwhile.

I think a big part of it is exactly what was mentioned in that article: the Dems suck at communicating what accomplishments they have made. I mean, they managed to get a bunch done during the first two years in spite of Synema and Manchin and still hung on to the Senate when they shouldn’t have. And I’m legit surprised that the economy isn’t in the toilet already, between rampant inflation, the Fed doing its best to wreck the economy in response, and two historic bank failures.

“And I’ll vote for him”

https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1656062159934181377?s=46&t=XGja5BtSraUljl_WWUrIUg

https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1656063130127020032?s=46&t=XGja5BtSraUljl_WWUrIUg

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Get ‘em Claudia

https://twitter.com/claudiamconwayy/status/1656025891917447174?s=46&t=XGja5BtSraUljl_WWUrIUg

https://twitter.com/claudiamconwayy/status/1641512767227060240?s=46&t=XGja5BtSraUljl_WWUrIUg

https://twitter.com/claudiamconwayy/status/1656025339930263573?s=46&t=XGja5BtSraUljl_WWUrIUg

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This is a joke, right?

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Not sure I’d tell the same story from the data.

Bankruptcies don’t often happen overnight or even the first year of a person’s or family’s financial catastrophe.

They weather the storm before they can see how bad it will be and what will be needed to survive and recover.

Indeed, while a bankruptcy can signal a rock bottom, for other people it signals the first in many tough decisions OUT of the hole.

But they were only able to do that with clarity and stability. It was easier and maybe smarter during the pandemic to wait and see what the new normal would be. Now we know.

So from another POV, the rise in bankruptcies is a sign of recovery and optimism for what’s to come while acknowledging the awfulness of the present moment.

Depends on a sense of optimism vs cynicism, I guess, but I think the facts support that story too no?

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Americans need to stop crediting or blaming the president for the economy. He has basically zero influence on it.

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or, and hear me out, the average voter you are describing has a poor point of view of aspects that even so-called experts make big errors on, and are not correctly judging overall situation. which is by the way orders of magnitude better than a real inflationary crisis like turkey. and turkey itself is orders of magnitude better than economies that are in real trouble like, i dunno, russia.

I think Biden has done a pretty masterful job with the economy and reducing inflation.

And had Trump won vs. Biden, he would have made the economy better by doing what?