What say you about my concerns put forth upthread?
1 Like
Social justice warrior. I probably shouldn’t use the term but it’s a handy shorthand for people whose demands of society seem unrealistic in the short term, people who say there’s no difference between the two parties, all that.
2 Likes
And the band played on!
DRIP, DRIP, DRIP. I have a feeling this is what the rest of the months left are going to look like. You can bet oppo research by HC’s camp is burning up the internets and all other sources. Trump will come unglued every time a new negative story about him comes out.
5 Likes
Great term…especially for those intent on electing Trump in a different way.
1 Like
With all due respect to Josh, Donald Trump is not a maleable candidate and it sounds like a fantasy to me.
His own party is already saying he is going to lose. He cannot win with 42% of the republican party. He is offering nothing even realistic and our side will knock his ass down
5 Likes
Para mi, es una bendicion si Trump sigue actuando como un joven con diez anos. El miedo mio es la posibilidad de Trump comportandose como un adulto.
1 Like
De todos modos, los democratas deben montar una barrera de fuego llena de criticas contra Trump (por si acaso 
)
1 Like
No una oportunidad. Que es y no creo que él tiene que no puede cambiar.
2 Likes
Y van y son. No subestime lo que tenemos en el almacén para él Relajarse
2 Likes
Concur with all your points.
If the NY Post is saying Hillary’s a hypocrite because she’s rich and dresses well, that she then can’t renounce income inequality, that’s absurd. Prime example was a certain Lion of the Senate who roared mightily on behalf of the lower classes, though he himself, was born into posh circumstances.
I believe the Republican base is especially angry at Government because of the tactics employed by their party officials. Bait and switch. Pander to them, then legislate directly against their interests-for the benefit of major corporations and the one-percenters
At least most Dem officials’ hearts are where their mouth are…ineffectual though they may be.
5 Likes
I see we are changing the topic to Armani jackets. What’s next $400 haircuts?
America’s economic system is doing a poor job responding to outsourcing. We talk about improving education and the quality of our workers to better compete on the world stage but we don’t really do it. My company is in the software business. For a lot of reasons, some patriotic and others hardheaded business, we have resisted shipping jobs overseas but it becomes harder and harder to find quality American programmers (and all the other high priced labor associated with creating and manufacturing software.) As a result we have found ourselves bringing in a lot of highly educated foreign workers. A typical staff meeting will include people from Mexico, Russia, Pakistan, India, Argentina, Ireland and several Eastern European countries. They are all here legally and most are now US citizens (we had a party for our newest citizen just three weeks ago) but they are only here because we can’t find all the creative and support staff we need in America. We would love to hire American, but our colleges aren’t producing the people we need. Don’t believe me, just ask my HR department.
Free college education isn’t a gift to our high school students, it is a rational response to the globalization of intellectual work.
You can now return to your previously scheduled discussion of Armani jackets.
5 Likes
Emilio, I agree that Trump has the potential to make headway among disenchanted and alienated working class whites with his professed support for infrastructure spending.
His thin economic “plans” seem designed to appeal to their economic anxiety.
But Hillary also supports infrastructure spending, and will have a more credible way to get it through and pay for it.
Infrastructure spending is nothing new. Fifty years ago, about four percent of our GNP went to infrastructure spending. That’s how we built public facilities that were the envy of the world.
Infrastructure spending was also part of the reason we scrapped the Articles of Confederation and opted for crafting the Constitution and a stronger central government, as I wrote in a lengthy post I moved here.
President Obama’s 2009 stimulus program helped prevent a Great Depression, but it was not big enough to sustain a massive recovery. Some have presented various reasons for not demanding a bigger stimulus. One reason offered was the Obama team was being assured by Republicans that they would support a package with significant tax cuts.
Also, there was the matter of sticker shock. The economy was circling the drain, millions of jobs were being lost, a $700 billion bank bailout had recently been enacted, Republicans opposed to massive government intervention were screaming, “We’re broke!” and many moderate and conservative Congressional Democrats were uncomfortable with a price tag of $1 trillion or more.
Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, herself, a very shrewd evaluator of her caucus, expressed doubts at the time that Congress would approve a package of more than $200 billion in direct government spending.
As it turned out the stimulus comprised about $300 billion in direct government spending.
There were other hidden “stealth” stimulus measures: the payroll tax cut, items included in the 2010 tax cut extension, etc. and it is also apparent that Obama realized that a one-time stimulus of the size approved would not be enough. However, once Republicans retook the House, further progress was blocked.
And despite their cries of fiscal responsibility, the real reason Republicans opposed more stimulus in the form of Obama’s American Jobs Act was political – they want to prevent a Democratic president from getting a political victory, the republic be damned.
And the only thing preventing further stimulus measures are political will. Since 2009, our country’s financial balance sheet is vastly improved: the deficit, as a percentage of the total economy, has been sharply reduced (by 70 percent), the unemployment rate has been cut in half, corporate profits are up, etc.
And because of our nation’s economic over-performance relative to he rest of the developed world, the US has emerged as the top destination for foreign investment. And as we can see with the interest rates paid for US Treasury bills at historic lows, people are begging us to borrow money. People are begging us to sell them our debt.
FACT: the debt of the United States government is the safest investment in the world!
7 Likes
Thanks, I’ve seen the term before and have googled it, but have gotten several possible answers and that left me wondering.
And with all due respect to Josh, that article in the Editor’s Blog was written by John Judis.
3 Likes
This is the kind of thing I love about this site. I’m not in manufacturing, know nothing about it, so this is very revealing. In general I’ve accepted that we need to up our game educationally for everyone, including creating high-end trade-type schools like they have in Europe, if we’re going to get the middle class back to where it was in the pre-post-industrial world. There aren’t well-paying factory jobs for high-school grads any more. But if you get people trained, they can go into medical tech or installing solar panels or engine diagnostics or what have you and they’re back leading comfortable lives again. Seems like a winning idea to me.
3 Likes
WTF is wrong with you people? Hillary should shop at Goodwill to satisfy your ‘outrage’ about what she allegedly spends for clothes? Clearly, she can afford it and/or she is gifted them by women designers that support her. Men wear suits (POWER suits, doncha’ know) that cost the same but shhhhh we are only going to bash Hillary…our candidates don’t release their tax returns (looking at YOU Bernie and Donald) but HILLARY! should release her transcripts of speeches because HOT DAMN it’s ‘exacty’ the same. This is about convention hosts that work for The Donald that have ties to corporations he, Trump pretends to be outraged about. Hillary and Donald are NOT two sides of the same coin and if you don’t GET that why the hell do you pretend to CARE?
4 Likes
Judis is such a worrywart.
One speech does not a campaign make. Moreover, we know Trump has no discipline to stay on any message,nor does he have any inclination to listen to anyone else’s opinion.
The clearest sign of the unimaginable circumstances he’s in is, as you’ve pointed out, the way other Republicans are headed for the doors.
I’m more concerned he somehow won’t be their nominee than I am that he’ll be President. Having said that, Dems still need to work hard and go all out.
2 Likes
Speaking in part to bernie voters…
1 Like
I not concerned that Donald Trump will stay on message, because he won’t. What does worry me a bit is how the rest of the GOP will handle it. Rep. Tom Cole had an interview on NPR this morning and he was asked specifically why he says “nominee” instead of “Trump” and blathered that he’s always done that because he didn’t want to alienate any had good friends among the running candidates. But then he admitted he’d support Trump as the nominee in spite of him being so “naive” and “untested”. Okaaaay, then.
Every question, though, he’d briefly mention Trump if he had to, but excitedly list about 15-20 times as much material on Hillary’s purported scandals.
His plan obviously is to ignore Trump and only talk about Hillary’s negatives.
1 Like