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Trump’s SOTU Triumph, Democrats’ Defeat
At 5,100 words, President Trump’s first State of the Union address was one of the longest on record. But that’s not the only reason Democrats were checking their watches. Trump set aside his bombastic communications style to solemnly deliver the most conservative SOTU since the Reagan era. And it put Dems in an awful pickle.
Trump used the hour and 20 minutes of spin-free airtime to report a year of news that the mainstream media never quite got around to telling. “Since the election, we have created 2.4 million new jobs, including 200,000 new jobs in manufacturing alone.” As Trump spoke, Nancy Pelosi sucked her teeth.
“Unemployment claims have hit a 45-year low. African-American unemployment stands at the lowest rate ever recorded, and Hispanic-American unemployment has also reached the lowest levels in history.” The Congressional Black Caucus glared at Trump with their arms folded.
Whether Trump heralded the stock market, employee bonuses, or the destruction of ISIS, glowering Democrats remained the evening’s most consistent theme. It’s understandable for progressives to sit on their hands for conservative jurists, the Second Amendment, and cutting regulations, but again and again they fumed at America’s very success. Let a thousand midterm campaign ads bloom.
The emotional highpoints were generated by the many guests in the gallery: The grieving families who lost their daughters to violent gang members; the parents of Otto Warmbier; a policeman who adopted the child of a homeless addict. The most powerful moment belonged to Ji Seong-ho, a man who escaped North Korea on ragged crutches to find freedom in the South.
But the speech focused primarily on the American people. Instead of promising all the wonderful things the government would do, Trump underlined that its citizens were her salvation.
“[T]hey are Americans. And this Capitol, this city, and this nation belong to them,” he concluded. “Our task is to respect them, to listen to them, to serve them, to protect them, and to always be worthy of them.”
The modern Democratic Party believes that the American people belong to the government — and fervently wish the rabble won’t embarrass them so. We’ll find out in November which message is more attractive.
Published in Politics
The Democratic Party used to be the working class average America party – but they lost that vision years ago – there was nothing not to like in last night’s speech, unless you aren’t really for people having more jobs to choose from, job training, more money in their paychecks, less regulation and taxation, deporting gangs and criminals and making the country safer, creating a respectable path for Dreamers, standing up to bullying dictators who threaten our shores and those of our allies, standing with our allies, abiding by our current laws, supporting military, law enforcement and electing judges that respect the Constitution, taking off the glasses that divide people into rivals, and putting your personal agenda aside – The Democrats aren’t offering anything new – just the tired “this isn’t who we are” lines – well, yes it is who we are.
Consider the following: Leviathan has reversed course on Trump’s watch. Executive agencies are no longer searching for still vibrant corners of the private economy to lock-down. “You didn’t build that” and “At some point you’ve made enough money” have been replaced by “In America, then you can dream anything, be anything. And together, we can achieve absolutely anything.” And the world’s most self-destructive corporate tax regime has just been replaced by something normal.
I think there were different ideas at play here.
I heard that during the Great Depression, jobs were created simply for make work. They weren’t meant to add value or make things better – just to keep people busy. I think Obama’s “infrastructure” spending was this. I mean, did that Tampa, FL railway ever complete? I don’t think it did. No value was added. I don’t know how much of Obama’s spending went to that. I do know portions of my the State Road in front of my house are much improved. I don’t know how much to credit Obama or Rick Scott for that.
I think, from Trump’s perspective, the infrastructure is meant to be an investment in future economic growth. Better roads and more roads = more businesses and faster commutes = more productivity. Better airports = faster distance travel = less time in airports = more productivity. Even in private business, some investment comes with some debt with the hope of it making up for itself.
And that does seem to be Trump’s financial outlook, for better or worse.
I think there are worse things in the Trump outlook than infrastructure spending. I would like to see a tiered resolution to Social Security, but even a tiered approach seems undoable, and I don’t understand why.
I loved the speech, I support most of his proposals, but this is spot on. My number 1 complaint about this president is exactly this. Spending and the debt. He ran on it being looming and catastrophic, and he seems to have forgotten it. A growing economy brought on by lower taxes and deregulation will help, but we have to reign in spending, and he is proposing trillions more.
I cling to my hope that it isn’t forgotten, just sidelined for some more visible campaign promises, but the time left is short and shrinking.
Both parties ignored Simpson Bowles. We are done for and Trump has zero ability to stop it.
So let’s have some pretty roads and safe bridges before the world monetary crisis has us eating our neighbors.
Yes. It was an incredible (and horrifying) look behind the curtain revealing the true and vile nature of North Korea. I thought of that book while the president talked about North Korea.
I was listening to Dave Sussman speaking with Bill Whittle yesterday. Bill is no economist, but I agree with him when he says the debt is so large that he, and most people, just can’t even conceive of its gigormity. It can never be paid off, so the theory goes, and thus, the only real concern is making the debt payment. As long as that happens…no problem. It is of course a highly risky situation, making low interest rates an imperative.I still must chuckle when I hear some Democrat suddenly turning hawkish on the debt and deficit, especially when a Republican tax law looks like it will, at first, increase that debt. It’s OK to increase the debt as long as the government gets to do it with OPM. God forbid, says the same Dems, if the people actually keep their own money, and reducing the size of government is the first measure that must be used for fiscal sanity.
I got dibs on the thigh.
Manny, I love ya!
You mean the Gorilla Channel.
Goodness, thanks so much for the reminder. Indeed I had forgotten, silly me.
There’s only three ways out of the debt problem: growth, inflation, or repudiation. Trump hasn’t got much choice but to plunk on the first, and that’s what he’s doing. I’m not a fan of the infrastructure thing, but at least he’s likely to actually get something built – most of the Obama ‘stimulus’ was spent to keep privileged state and local bureaucrats on the job longer, until fiscal reality caught up.
I just hope images of the congressional black caucus and congressional Hispanic caucus members sitting on their hands when POTUS heralded record low black and Hispanic unemployment are in every campaign ad this year. That was shameful. If the hated-one Obama had been able to (truthfully) say the same thing, Republicans would have largely stood and applauded too. Why wouldn’t you? (Of course, if Obama achieved it, it would have been at the expense of white americans after some coercive government policy of quotas, rather than through a rising tide of general prosperity, so maybe not)
I guess the CBC is unhappy, because low unemployment for black America comes at the terrible cost of general prosperity for all. This they cannot abide.
Fair points, and I agree on the merits.
On timing and prioritization, however, the long-term health of the economy is not foremost among my concerns right now. Hopefully, the cliff can be postponed until after 2020 (regardless of who wins), so that America can survive Constitutionally and culturally, areas that are more difficult to rebuild than the economy.
We will make the payment as long as the Federal Reserve is able to keep interest rates at historic lows. Which shows you where the real power is. The Federal Reserve could torpedo the GOP and Trump’s Presidency tomorrow by announcing a 2% hike in interest rates – a minor adjustment in historical terms, but catastrophic at current levels of debt. At some point the Fed is either going to have to defend the dollar by raising rates significantly, or continue to watch it slide into worthlessness. But lets not kid ourselves about the dire times we are in.
I get why the powers-that-be no longer talk about debt. We are past the point where we have any hope of drawing down the debt in an orderly manner, and there is no political will to do anything about it anyway (the Tea Party was the last gasp of fiscal sanity). So you might as well go on as though everything were fine until the party is over. Hopefully you are out of office before the roof caves in.
LOL, I don’t know if you’re male or female, but hopefully female. :-)
Nothing Trump’s program exacerbates my fears of our deficits and debt. The debt is a threat because much of it is held abroad. The deficit matters primarily because some or all of it spills into International debt. The reason it spills into external debt is because we do not save enough to cover our own government spending and private investment so we borrow foreign savings and import foreign goods with it. Therefore a cut in corporate taxes means we’ve increased private savings. That’s good and helps pay for investment and deficits. When foreigners invest in US treasuries or interest bearing paper it’s an inflow paid for by an export of paper or T-bills. Those holdings will be dumped if there is a threat to the dollar and inflation and financial chaos will ensue. If a foreigner or returning American company makes a long term investment in some productive activity that may show up as an addition to our current account deficit, as it probably will lead to imports paid for by their own savings or borrowings, but it isn’t going to be dumped in a panic. So the Balance of Payments can deteriorate without adding to the threat. In other words a deterioration of the external accounts can and will occur because of strong growth or because of inept public finances and distorting taxes. We’re fixing the deterioration in the external accounts through tax reform and improved investment incentives. So the deficit and debt matters indeed, but the issue is spending both by citizens and the government. Infrastructure is spending but Trump said that we can improve infrastructure by reducing the cost of building it, i.e. eliminate paperwork and needless regulations that drive up the costs. Building infrastructure that has a high economic return impacts spending and deficits but unless it’s boondoggle like Democrats trains and bridges to nowhere and bi partisan show places and conventions systems and redundant stadiums, Keynesian idiocies, it simply not a problem. The problem is and will always be non productive spending and taxes on work savings and investment.
This moment was simply astounding.
So… who’s toolin’ who? Trump merely declared the lowest ever recorded. There’s facts, and there’s narrative.
Sure enough, CNN: “Trump didn’t address Russian collusion.” Really.
Did the Onion buy CNN?
As it turns out, not just the modern Democratic Party. The years since the beginning of 2016 have proved most revealing.
And what he presented was solid and facts-based.
Was that what that was? I merely attributed it to Nancy Pelosi trying to game her face to some irrational virtue-signalling end-goal. What it was, was schadenfreude-delicious.
There’s also the token Lefty on Michael Graham’s show this morning who complained that he talked about all those people who died but didn’t mention the lady who was run over in Charlottesville.
That Vox headline…
In fairness to her, I’ve never heard of it either.
Is that really what they call themselves? Whatever happened to cool gang names like “Bloods” and “Crips?” MS13 sounds like a Microsoft product, or a vitamin supplement.
MS = Mara Salvatrucha, 13 is the number of seconds you have to be beaten in the initiation. Most members are from El Salvador.
Good answer. But if that is the case then why be so passionately supportive of that which you can not demonstrate to be true? Its all just feelings and confirmation bias then.
Unemployment numbers were low under Obama as well, so conservatives started complaining that these numbers didn’t represent reality since government unemployment figures only count people who are actively looking for work. People who have given up entirely and dropped out of the workforce aren’t counted as “unemployed.”
Has the government changed how these numbers are computed? If not, how do we know if minority unemployment figures are accurate? Or do we simply accept those numbers now because it’s “our guy” in the White House?
Well, you’re luck just ran out. Oh, and that is platonic love , btw.
Or our policies? Fewer regulations, halt on new regulations, and a lowered corporate tax.
It isn’t just our guy we are riding this on. Its our policies. That’s a big deal.