It's only Day One and we already have the new Democratic agenda. It's a doozy.
● Impeach Trump
● Force candidates to release their income taxes (so they can get Trump's)
● Stop any attempt to stop illegal immigration
● Make leftist Washington, D.C. the 51st state
● Replace the electoral college with the popular vote
● Impose a 70% tax rate on "the rich" (that's you, if you have a job)
That is the agenda of an America-hating asshole if you ask me.
● Impeach Trump
● Force candidates to release their income taxes (so they can get Trump's)
● Stop any attempt to stop illegal immigration
● Make leftist Washington, D.C. the 51st state
● Replace the electoral college with the popular vote
● Impose a 70% tax rate on "the rich" (that's you, if you have a job)
That is the agenda of an America-hating asshole if you ask me.
It looks like Democrats are trying to copy Trump but doing it badly. These are wild campaign promises, not an agenda. "Impeach Trump" is equivalent to "Lock Her Up," which Trump dropped the week he was elected. The rest are a combination of trying to fight old battles and big asks that we know they won't back down from.
ReplyDeleteOn a related subject, I've seen a handful of outlets reporting that blue states and Democrat constituencies are hurt more by the government shutdown than red states and Republicans. (Duh.) Democrats won't cave until their journalists give them cover to do so, but it may be coming.
tryanmax, Yahoo seems to think that the red states get it worse, so they're going with the "look! Trump is hurting his own people!"
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, they are also saying that the "motherf*cker Muslim" was "rebuked by her own party." Uh, not really.
As an aside, I will be curious to see how long the left waits to start screaming that they were betrayed because Trump hasn't been impeached yet.
ReplyDeleteTwo days?
... a week?
.... two weeks?
I can't see anything longer than that.
1) If Dems are smart they will stop short of impeachment but that would require ignoring the caterwauling of the most vocal part of their base so the possibility of stupidity is high.
ReplyDelete2) Taxes is a thing which I can't see doing any damage to Trump. Like Bill Clinton personal misconduct (tax fraud or whatever in this case) won't damage his relationship with his base.
3) Dems and the media were pretty quiet about Obama's similar efforts to discourage crossings, but they clearly see no percentage in backing anything Trump does.
4) DC statehood is never going to happen just due to the political concerns but even if those magically disappeared I doubt MD and VA would consent to lose a big chunk of people so DC would have the mass needed to be a state.
5) To hear him tell it Trump won the popular vote so surely he will have no issue with that movement :).
6) OCJ's tax is really insane. Nobody promises pain and wins. Dems who want to borrow from Trump will promise to wildly expand government but do so without pain to voters. They will promise something impossible but which sounds attractive 'Mexico will fully pay for the wall and unlike every other tax/tariff ever instituted costs won't rise for consumers!'. In this case I'd guess 'big pollution' will be the ones Dems swear will pay the costs.
7) It will be interesting to see how (if?) the shutoff ends. Maybe something horrible (deaths) or even just really annoying (national parks and other public spaces overflowing with sewage, tax returns not happening) successfully gets tied to one side or the other and they decide to end the damage by capitulating though such an act would destroy them will their fringe.
Or maybe Trump declares a national emergency and does whatever he wants to do. That would work out great for both sides politically.
Anthony, it’s true what they say: people who don’t like a Trump don’t listen to him. (And why would they?)
ReplyDeleteHe has acknowledged the Electoral College for his victory, while adding that he could win the popular vote if that were the contest.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/26/trump-electoral-college-popular-vote-555148
And he was among the first to predict that tariffs on China could produce pain at home.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/04/06/china-trade-war-trump-pain-stock-markets/493052002/
Tryanmax,
ReplyDeleteIts true that I don't hang onto Trump's every word. That is also true of his followers. Trump has repeatedly and subsequently to your link claimed he won the popular vote.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/399082-trump-inaccurately-claims-he-won-the-female-vote-in-2016-election
“But I did win that women’s vote, didn’t I?” Trump said. “Remember, they said, ‘Why would women vote for Trump?’ Well, I don’t know but I got more than she did. That’s pretty good.”
In fact, Trump received 41 percent of the female vote in the 2016 election. He did receive a majority of the vote, 52 percent, among white women. His numbers were much lower among women of color.
2) I talked about trade in the context of Mexico and how Trump has abandoned his nonsensical for tough sounding promise that Mexico will fully fund the wall and is now fighting to get American taxpayers to pay the cost but I don't mind discussing China.
I don't see why you think Trump's March 2018 acknowledgement that a trade war would produce pain at home is an early prediction. 'Made in China' is a very common label nowadays and has been for many years. For that period of time it has been clear a trade war would be painful for both sides.
In the context of China my big issue with Trump isn't the trade war (there are real issues with China), its his claim that the manufacturing jobs that are now in China can be brought back to the US by government action. For a lot of reasons (most of which predate the rise of China) those jobs are not coming back to us.
Here is a quote of something I posted here last year.
http://commentaramapolitics.blogspot.com/2018/03/quite-weekend.html
QUOTE
Trump's tariffs are silly but they might pay off for an election. I doubt they will pay off for long because it will quickly become clear that the jobs aren't coming back.
There is a lot of government meddling around the world in the steel industry but the biggest problem of steel workers has been increased efficiency. The industry needs far, far fewer workers than it used to.
https://www.marketplace.org/2016/08/09/world/steels-decline-was-about-technology-not-trade-0
In the four decades beginning in the early 1960s, the steel sector lost 400,000 jobs — a five-fold drop, according to Allan Collard-Wexler, assistant professor at Duke, who examined the history of the industry using detailed census data.
Initially, “we thought this was going to be all about trade,” he said. He was in for a surprise.
Even though jobs disappeared, actual steel output declined by a small amount, roughly 20 percent — nowhere near accounting for the loss in jobs. Steel production wasn’t leaving the United States as much as it was just requiring fewer workers.
“It was increases in the productivity of the steel industry that are generating this huge drop in employment,” said Collard-Wexler.
Specifically, something came along called the minimill – essentially a process for recycling scrap steel and turning it into higher quality steel.
"Listening" to Trump is "hanging on his every word." That's, um, quite the rationalization. I stopped reading after that.
ReplyDelete