Wager for Trump Supporters

[_EAllusion]

You nailed it.

Meh. Looking back on my posts, Trump wasn't able to get Republican legislation passed on protectionism, but was able to have his trade war policies anyway due to an abuse of statutory authority that a Republican friendly court system and a sufficiently divided Congress would not stop. Non-partisan economic analysis consistently estimates that this cost the economy some growth, but it did not lead to a technical recession. Instead, we had a few years of continued modest growth carrying over from the same pattern in the Obama years that was a little worse than it should have been. That's all shot to hell now for other reasons.

My opinion on the upcoming elections still seems spot-on. Democrats winning a commanding landslide in 2018 to keep their Senate losses to only a modest defeat in particular seems on target. It was and is fairly conventional political science wisdom stuff, but I'm still gonna pat myself on the back there.

*pats self*

[_Icarus]

Official unemployment rate: 14.7%
U6 unemployment rate: 22.8%
Labor Participation Rate: 60.2%
Federal debt: $25+ trillion
Federal deficit: $984 billion (2019) $3+ trillion (2020)

how ignorant for you to post pandemic statistics in the context of this thread.
Thanks for stopping by!

You're going to blame COVID for the trillions Trump added to the debt? He's been doing this for years with nary a complaint from the GOP.

If this were Obama there is no doubt in anyone's mind you'd be using these same numbers against him. But you're ignorant for pretending these numbers have nothing to do with Trump. In any other administration we'd likely be heading towards a recession but that has been predicted for years anyway. But there is no denying the economic situation is infinitely worse when we have no leadership coming from the White House. As far as you know, had Obama been President this thing would have been adequately mitigated within the first couple of months and there would have been no need to shut down state economies.

[Vēritās]

Remember this thread?

[Chap]

And this was the first post.

Discuss ...

OK my fellow Trump supporters. This is your glorious moment and you are in a unique position to prove to the world you were right all along. So in four years we'll know for certain if Trump has the faintest clue about how to run a country. All we have to do is take the numbers from today and compare them to those in 2020. Here are some that come to mind, though I'm sure we could add to the list:

Official unemployment rate: 4.7%
U6 unemployment rate: 9.0%
Labor Participation Rate: 63.0%
Federal debt: $19.8 trillion
Federal deficit: $500 billion
Federal Revenues: $3.34 Trillion
Trade deficit: $40 billion
Social Security Trust Fund: $27 trillion
Manufacturing jobs: 12.33 million
Percentage of Americans without Insurance: 9%
Rate of Home Ownership: 63%
Inflation: < 2%
Cop killings: 46 in 2016
Avg gasoline price:$ 2.15

So unlike Obama, Trump enters office with a Republican Congress at his back willing to pass anything he proposes, so come 2020 there will be no excuse for any of those statistics heading in the wrong direction. I'll frame this post and we'll revisit it in 2020, and if Trump was able to improve on even half of those numbers then I will gladly eat crow. But if they're all worse in 2020 and you still support him, will you then admit that your support for him has nothing to do with a sincere belief that he is a better leader? Sounds like a fair wager to me, so what do you say?

[Moksha]

We now know that Trump was the worst and most dishonest President. I hope his record is never topped.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

I always wonder why gas prices are attached to a President. Fed gas taxes, and anyone can correct me if I’m wrong, haven’t increased since the 90’s. Tapping the strategic petroleum reserve can have short-term impacts, but is a pretty poor measure over the course of a year or so. Shutting down a pipeline seems like it’d be a disaster, but oil companies have thousands of wells and permits they’re not using in order to pump up the price of oil, so that’s on them. State gas taxes surpass that of the federal tax by, well, a lot. Here in Utah it’s ~35 cents/gallon, and that’s a Republican-led initiative (the fed tax is ~18 cents/gallon). In other words, for the most part, gas prices are really dependent on futures trading, refining, and tapping into permitted reserves.

- Doc

[Vēritās]

I always wonder why gas prices are attached to a President. Fed gas taxes, and anyone can correct me if I’m wrong, haven’t increased since the 90’s. Tapping the strategic petroleum reserve can have short-term impacts, but is a pretty poor measure over the course of a year or so. Shutting down a pipeline seems like it’d be a disaster, but oil companies have thousands of wells and permits they’re not using in order to pump up the price of oil, so that’s on them. State gas taxes surpass that of the federal tax by, well, a lot. Here in Utah it’s ~35 cents/gallon, and that’s a Republican-led initiative (the fed tax is ~18 cents/gallon). In other words, for the most part, gas prices are really dependent on futures trading, refining, and tapping into permitted reserves.

- Doc

This became a thing only after Obama got elected. Never once was it a thing even months prior when gasoline was at its highest months before the election. Throughout his first four years in office all we heard from the media was how Obama's "socialist policies" were causing high gas prices. Yet they couldn't name a single policy with any degree of relevance. But when gasoline prices plummeted during Obama's second term the matter quietly went away. And then when gasoline prices jumped 50% in Trump's second year in office, still nothing but crickets. The media is predisposed to thinking this is only something worthy of connecting political dots whenever there is a Democrat in office. I mean just look at these idiots trying to to spit up all that crow after insisting gas would only keep going up after Biden's election. Right now it is cheaper than it was in 2018 and that's not even accounting for inflation. But they will only attribute it to a President under two conditions: Prices go up, and President has a (D) after his name.

[Res Ipsa]

I always wonder why gas prices are attached to a President. Fed gas taxes, and anyone can correct me if I’m wrong, haven’t increased since the 90’s. Tapping the strategic petroleum reserve can have short-term impacts, but is a pretty poor measure over the course of a year or so. Shutting down a pipeline seems like it’d be a disaster, but oil companies have thousands of wells and permits they’re not using in order to pump up the price of oil, so that’s on them. State gas taxes surpass that of the federal tax by, well, a lot. Here in Utah it’s ~35 cents/gallon, and that’s a Republican-led initiative (the fed tax is ~18 cents/gallon). In other words, for the most part, gas prices are really dependent on futures trading, refining, and tapping into permitted reserves.

- Doc

This became a thing only after Obama got elected. Never once was it a thing even months prior when gasoline was at its highest months before the election. Throughout his first four years in office all we heard from the media was how Obama's "socialist policies" were causing high gas prices. Yet they couldn't name a single policy with any degree of relevance. But when gasoline prices plummeted during Obama's second term the matter quietly went away. And then when gasoline prices jumped 50% in Trump's second year in office, still nothing but crickets. The media is predisposed to thinking this is only something worthy of connecting political dots whenever there is a Democrat in office. I mean just look at these idiots trying to to spit up all that crow after insisting gas would only keep going up after Biden's election. Right now it is cheaper than it was in 2018 and that's not even accounting for inflation. But they will only attribute it to a President under two conditions: Prices go up, and the President has a (D) after his name.

I suggest that Jimmy Carter would have an opinion on the subject.

[Vēritās]

Well I think it is safe to say Trump failed the test. He came in with a booming economy and gave us a recession through his mishandling of the pandemic.

As one commentator put it, a house was being built throughout the Obama administration and then Trump walks in and turns on the lights and says, "Hey look what I just built."