It’s one thing to argue *that is what parts of the right thinks*, it’s another to argue it is an actual fact!
How did that black Econ prof put it? Something like: The Data supports that police view shooting someone as a life altering event that should be avoided if at all possible.
Imho BLM is focused on symptoms. We'll spend 10 years installing bodycams and we won't move the needle.
The only thing that can be pointed to as an exception, where the left is ‘more violent’ is *anything that involves law enforcement*, like protests, where the left somehow tends to have more violence, or, least, more people unable to deal with absurd police demands and eventually start yelling, whereas the right can act like goddamn lunatics and the police smile and put up with it.
I think not setting fires is a reasonable demand. I even think not blocking traffic is too.
The game is unwinnable. It doesn’t matter how far the left backs off, they will *always* be a bunch of extremist communist agitators that want to ship all white men off to reeducation camps, no matter what events are happening the state goals of the left. There will always be something that can be used as evidence for that sort of thing.
Your above paragraph disagrees with this one. If the left would back off to the point where they don't engage in violent confrontations with the police, they'd lose the rep for being violent.
That includes dealing with your anarchists, who despite what you said about them being neither left nor right, appear to believe that they're left, i.e. they're the modern day bombers of the 70's.
Trump’s policies... have very little chance of leading to 4% growth.
I still have hope. Totally eliminating FreeTrade+Immigration would be nuking the economy. But some political posturing in combo with tax reform and regulation reform might be a net gain.
there is an alternate timeline in which Obama comes into office in 2009 and makes the economy his top priority...
:Flinches: Obama tries to redistribute, tax/stim, and regulate our way to growth? That probably goes even worse than it did.
there is an alternate timeline
Let's try a very different alternate timeline (which requires restructuring Obama's personality and core beliefs but whatever).
Obama comes into office in 2009 and makes the economy his top priority.
Banks are forced to eat some (not all) of their mortgage losses, they're also recapitalized but the top two or three levels of management are fired without golden parachutes. (The tea party never forms).
The Stim is directed towards infrastructure (which takes advantage of the unemployed construction workers). Tax reform is implemented (and yes, corp taxes are lowered so they stop fleeing the country), which shifts Trillions of dollars of money parked overseas to the US (so we have a 2nd Stim of business spending their own money).
The great recession still ends 6 months into 2009, but we get a Reagan style bounce after that instead of 2% growth. Obama implements the ACA in the context of an expanding economy.
The Trump voters stays Blue. Hillary is a shoo in.
The only straight line connecting his policy to his voters is identity politics.
This leads to you claiming that it's a White thing, fueled by racism, even though a lot of these people voted for Obama.
That's a big enough problem that the underlying assumptions should be doubted.
His support doesn’t correlate with economic distress...
Eh? His "new" base is voters are not non-college educated, which stacks up well with people not doing well in the modern economy. He kept most of the traditional GOP crew but not all.
his applause lines were never economic populist ones.
Who is taking your jobs? What is preventing your pay from increasing? Free Trade and Immigration.
Note his "anti-elite" message also gets in there, i.e. the "elites" are enriching themselves at the expense of the hard-working lower-middle class (or something like that).
I’m not sure why we should stop at promising the tax cut fairy will deliver 4% growth.
If you don't like the idea of tax cuts then I've got a long list of pro-growth reforms we could do, some of which Dems claim to favor.
The problem hasn't been a lack of way to increase growth and get companies to stop wanting to flee the US. The problem has been "growth" policies has been so far down the list of priorities it hasn't happened.
Everyone in Washington earns AT LEAST 6 figures, that growth *shouldn't* be sacrificed for some other policy choice isn't on their person radar.
In Trump-speak The "elites" don't need growth, nor do the people that pay them, everyone else does.
You’re wasting your time. Trump MUST be a clever man baiting the left with obfuscating stupidity…..or else people elected an incompetent President.
@DavidTC
I think the best measuring stick is whether or not he gets stuff done and not personal popularity.
If in four years he's talking about the economic mess the previous guy left him and how it's the opposition's fault that he can't do anything, then no matter what his personal pop rating are, "incompetent" will be a good word.
Ah, I see. The main problem with how liberals make the white working class dislike them is that they sometimes say mean things about white people when they’re alone. well, not *mean* thing, but saying that white people often ignore the concerns of people of color, and they’re not going to stand for that.
Perspective and assumptions matters a lot here.
Assume Trump's supporters view BLM as basically insane. That BLM concerns are a fantasy which they're using to ignore their own behavior and that their problems are mostly self inflicted.
Trump's supporters are worrying about the gov deliberately taking away their jobs, and here we have the Dems boldly proclaiming that BLM fantasies are way more important because BLM is Black and Trump's supporters are White.
And then along comes Trump saying he'll pay attention to them, and the Dems are basically doubling down on saying they won't. That violent criminals being shot because they're violent criminals is a much more important issue than their jobs being destroyed, and you have to be a racist to even consider thinking otherwise.
Yes, Trump's people (and Trump) are incoherent and economically ignorant. But all this emotion is the symptom, not the cause.
Follow the money and things make sense. The recovery started almost 8 years ago, and it hasn't delivered growth. Much of the benefits of the recovery has flowed to the coasts, which implies the non-coasts have suffered.
From that point of view:
Obama has been trying to regulate the economy into prosperity when he doesn't go off on tangents like claiming the ACA would create jobs, or fighting with the GOP on how much of a tax increase is needed to continue to grow the gov.
Dems have been talking about how bad jobs need to be destroyed, oil, coal, and low wage. But "the fight for $15" looks very different in a low-cost-of-living county where the median wage is $30k, and destroying coal/oil looks very different in Texas or coal country.
Return the country to 4% growth and all this angst goes away.
The guy isn’t, like, some sort of fantasy creature that feeds off our anger. He doesn’t get more powerful because we *dis*like him.
Yeah, actually he does. He's this massive disruptive force on the Left, causing them to channel their anger unproductively into shadows and straw men while Trump's minions actually get things done.
You're playing the bull to his matador, and he doesn't care how many times you charge him as long as you're focused where he wants you to be focused.
Not all white people are attracted to the White Christian Identity party Trump/Bannon are creating.
This line of thought spares you the burden of saying anything but "all members of the GOP are racists". The Dems don't need to change. Next election, you won't need to do anything other than scream "racist" loud enough and everyone will rally to your side.
I don't think screaming "racist" will be enough, by then we'll have four years of Trump NOT building death camps and putting people like his daughter and grandchildren in them.
Trump is a clown, I'm going to ignore a lot of what he does and everything he says, and look at what he's done to the economy. Clowns are fun (or scary) but Money! is important. I think for lots of people ideology comes down to voting their wallet.
That's one way to interpret it, but imho that's through the Dem lens of "everyone plays identity politics" and competes to be the biggest victim with the whites as the designated losers.
I don't think you beat him by doubling down on what didn't work before and giving him all the white voters because they're not black/brown/whatever. I also think White Guilt just hit a wall.
Trump is probably best viewed as a "strong man" politician, in the mold of Putin or various others like him. He defeats the "victim" game by attacking his attacker.
Here’s something I’m going to ask you to do: Try to think of something that Clinton could have criticized Bush for.
Just off hand (without the internet):
1) 911
2) Torture
3) Not killing BL.
4) Firing up a 2nd war before winning the first.
5) Not vetting the intel for the Iraqi war (this can be spun as "Bush lied").
6) Gross incompetence for what happened after the war.
7) Bush basically ran the post-war via what was politically convenient in the US and not what was realistic on the ground.
8) The Iraqi war when it was expensive and unpopular (although I think Hillary voted for it so maybe not).
9) Not firing Rummy (early enough).
10) The Housing bubble (or credit bubble).
11) Trying to put an obviously unqualified Supreme on the Court.
12) Not paying for his tax cuts or his expansion(s) of gov.
A dozen is probably enough.
Some of these things are fair, some of them not fair, some are cheap shots but whatever.
However what stands out is this sort of criticism, even when deserved, typically does not happen. Old Presidents don't normally try to undermine current ones, especially right after power switches and things are unsettled.
But I do think that we should dramatically cut immigration, and now. If in 20 years we won’t be able to feed our current population, why are we letting more people in?
Here is a graph of world wide food production: https://suyts.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/image_thumb26.png?w=661&h=341
GW should be making it's effects known on the rest of the world right now (it's clearly not). Adjusted for global population, we're still increasing food production. https://suyts.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/image27.png
I think we need more immigration, not less. I want to brain drain the rest of the world, we should have policies which openly promote that.
For the illegals, give the bulk of them green cards and stop wasting resources trying to rip apart families. Most of them would become productive citizens, we should let them try.
However there's a lot of truth in that "caricature".
The words of "experts" are often misused to justify what politicians want to do anyway. Worse, there's a lot of bad science out there which we're supposed to treat seriously. And worse yet, good science is often misused.
I very strongly want good science to be treated seriously. However our "government filled with experts" makes that impossible with claims we need to treat all college men as rapists, and that the world is ending but only for funding green boondoggles.
The GOP has staked its soul on the identity politics of white Christian dominion, and cast the rest of us as outsiders.
Sounds a lot like you're headed back to "vote Dem or you're a racist".
Rather than continue with identity politics, or insist that's all the other side is doing, I'd rather see ideas debated... and yeah, that might be just me.
What really happens is areas where there’s actual broad expert consensus (global warming is real, tax cuts don’t pay for themselves, GMOs are safe, vaccines are good, torture doesn’t work), politicians pander to the biases of the ignorant crowd and paint the experts as pointy-headed academics who don’t know anything and are just getting fat off the public dime.
Let me rephrase the "experts" argument as it's presented to some.
Experts agree that GW is real, therefore we need to do a lot of things which are really painful for YOU, but not for ME. Your jobs get destroyed, I don't need to sacrifice a fish. Because, um, the planet is in danger.
Oh, and the only permissible solution is command+control which is my solution for everything. And shell out some more money for my friends "studying" all this, and we're going to seriously fund those expensive only-for-the-rich electric cars. It's for the good of the planet and not because they're giving me campaign donations.
In the meantime let's listen to some experts talk about how colleges are rape centers, and women get less, and the solution is massive tax increases to "help" the people who vote for me while I destroy your jobs.
Oh, and my pet experts also say that you're a racist if you don't vote for who I tell you to. Microaggressions or something. This isn't a power grab, you're just too stupid to see the correct way to do things so you NEED me to spend your money for you.
So cough up the taxes you racist, every dollar the gov spends is important, and there's no fat at all, even though we're paid a LOT more than you are to do a lot less.
Likewise, despite the right thinking otherwise, there was no crackpot stuff from Obama for Bush to disagree with.
Giving guns to drug dealers? Using the IRS against your political rivals? Inviting a member of the Supreme Court to a speech so you can bad mouth him?
There were lots of opportunities for political cheap shots.
Similarly I can think of things Clinton tried in the early days before he found his footing and Bush #1 didn't take him to task. The Bushes put country above taking partisan shots, apparently Obama isn't going to do that.
As far as I can tell, the problem is one of implementation, not "crackpot" ideology.
A good summation of what Trump is trying to do, and why, and the disconnect between that and how the media is reporting it, is here: http://thefederalist.com/2017/01/30/why-do-we-have-refugee-crisis-because-elite-failures-foreign-policy-immigration/
He got a lot of downscale white voters that won the Rust Belt, and he hemorrhaged piles of upscale white Republicans. But if Trump is gone, or his excesses can be perceived to be contained, or if they don’t negatively impact Republicans, I think a lot of those voters will come back.
Speaking personally, yes, that exactly.
I can get used to (i.e. ignore) Trump the drama artist and Trump the bull in a china shop. He's taken a lot of steps which give me pause for hope.
That’s really all that is behind good government. Thinking. Has the applicant for a government license really proved up its case? Have we thought through the alternatives, and the risks involved? Are we sure? Is the track record reviewable?
It is reasonable to think that low growth, regulatory capture, expansion of gov, etc are not "Good", and are more "self interest" than "expert thinking".
That was during the campaign. He’s not running against HRC, in 2018 and 2020, he’s running against his record. If his intent is good and he fishes up, then he’s of no use. You may as well get the person who doesn’t care and things muddle along.
Increase economic growth and all sorts of sins are forgiven and all kinds of things forgotten.
The previous elites have left a LOT of growth enhancing things on the table because of ideology or incompetence or self interest. That *should* be disturbing to people because it's opened the door to Trump.
The Presidency, even in its imperial form, doesn’t have all that much power in terms of giving direct orders to people.
Granted, if the people he can fire disobey and refuse to carry out his orders, then the only thing he can do is fire them. However that's not much of a limitation.
Similarly, if he bypasses long standing president on the separation of the Presidency from direct law enforcement against individuals rather than setting policy, he’s going to be in a heap of trouble fast.
Jaybird: If his policies keep getting high marks but his approval rating is in the gutter, then that strikes me as something that is unlikely to hold forever.
He's a bastard. But I can dislike him but like his policies. I can even think "I'm glad he's working for me".
This is why he seriously over punches at the voting booths.
On “Morning Ed: Muslims {2017.01.30.M}”
How did that black Econ prof put it? Something like: The Data supports that police view shooting someone as a life altering event that should be avoided if at all possible.
Imho BLM is focused on symptoms. We'll spend 10 years installing bodycams and we won't move the needle.
I think not setting fires is a reasonable demand. I even think not blocking traffic is too.
Your above paragraph disagrees with this one. If the left would back off to the point where they don't engage in violent confrontations with the police, they'd lose the rep for being violent.
That includes dealing with your anarchists, who despite what you said about them being neither left nor right, appear to believe that they're left, i.e. they're the modern day bombers of the 70's.
"
I still have hope. Totally eliminating FreeTrade+Immigration would be nuking the economy. But some political posturing in combo with tax reform and regulation reform might be a net gain.
:Flinches: Obama tries to redistribute, tax/stim, and regulate our way to growth? That probably goes even worse than it did.
Let's try a very different alternate timeline (which requires restructuring Obama's personality and core beliefs but whatever).
Obama comes into office in 2009 and makes the economy his top priority.
Banks are forced to eat some (not all) of their mortgage losses, they're also recapitalized but the top two or three levels of management are fired without golden parachutes. (The tea party never forms).
The Stim is directed towards infrastructure (which takes advantage of the unemployed construction workers). Tax reform is implemented (and yes, corp taxes are lowered so they stop fleeing the country), which shifts Trillions of dollars of money parked overseas to the US (so we have a 2nd Stim of business spending their own money).
The great recession still ends 6 months into 2009, but we get a Reagan style bounce after that instead of 2% growth. Obama implements the ACA in the context of an expanding economy.
The Trump voters stays Blue. Hillary is a shoo in.
"
This leads to you claiming that it's a White thing, fueled by racism, even though a lot of these people voted for Obama.
That's a big enough problem that the underlying assumptions should be doubted.
Eh? His "new" base is voters are not non-college educated, which stacks up well with people not doing well in the modern economy. He kept most of the traditional GOP crew but not all.
Who is taking your jobs? What is preventing your pay from increasing? Free Trade and Immigration.
Note his "anti-elite" message also gets in there, i.e. the "elites" are enriching themselves at the expense of the hard-working lower-middle class (or something like that).
"
If you don't like the idea of tax cuts then I've got a long list of pro-growth reforms we could do, some of which Dems claim to favor.
The problem hasn't been a lack of way to increase growth and get companies to stop wanting to flee the US. The problem has been "growth" policies has been so far down the list of priorities it hasn't happened.
Everyone in Washington earns AT LEAST 6 figures, that growth *shouldn't* be sacrificed for some other policy choice isn't on their person radar.
In Trump-speak The "elites" don't need growth, nor do the people that pay them, everyone else does.
"
@DavidTC
I think the best measuring stick is whether or not he gets stuff done and not personal popularity.
If in four years he's talking about the economic mess the previous guy left him and how it's the opposition's fault that he can't do anything, then no matter what his personal pop rating are, "incompetent" will be a good word.
I've no clue what odds to put on that.
"
Here's a picture of Trump at one of his rallies, waving the rainbow flag.
http://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/2000_1000/581778b9190000a304c2fff1.jpeg?cache=j56clae2e7
"
Perspective and assumptions matters a lot here.
Assume Trump's supporters view BLM as basically insane. That BLM concerns are a fantasy which they're using to ignore their own behavior and that their problems are mostly self inflicted.
Trump's supporters are worrying about the gov deliberately taking away their jobs, and here we have the Dems boldly proclaiming that BLM fantasies are way more important because BLM is Black and Trump's supporters are White.
And then along comes Trump saying he'll pay attention to them, and the Dems are basically doubling down on saying they won't. That violent criminals being shot because they're violent criminals is a much more important issue than their jobs being destroyed, and you have to be a racist to even consider thinking otherwise.
"
Yes, Trump's people (and Trump) are incoherent and economically ignorant. But all this emotion is the symptom, not the cause.
Follow the money and things make sense. The recovery started almost 8 years ago, and it hasn't delivered growth. Much of the benefits of the recovery has flowed to the coasts, which implies the non-coasts have suffered.
From that point of view:
Obama has been trying to regulate the economy into prosperity when he doesn't go off on tangents like claiming the ACA would create jobs, or fighting with the GOP on how much of a tax increase is needed to continue to grow the gov.
Dems have been talking about how bad jobs need to be destroyed, oil, coal, and low wage. But "the fight for $15" looks very different in a low-cost-of-living county where the median wage is $30k, and destroying coal/oil looks very different in Texas or coal country.
Return the country to 4% growth and all this angst goes away.
"
Yeah, actually he does. He's this massive disruptive force on the Left, causing them to channel their anger unproductively into shadows and straw men while Trump's minions actually get things done.
You're playing the bull to his matador, and he doesn't care how many times you charge him as long as you're focused where he wants you to be focused.
"
This line of thought spares you the burden of saying anything but "all members of the GOP are racists". The Dems don't need to change. Next election, you won't need to do anything other than scream "racist" loud enough and everyone will rally to your side.
I don't think screaming "racist" will be enough, by then we'll have four years of Trump NOT building death camps and putting people like his daughter and grandchildren in them.
Trump is a clown, I'm going to ignore a lot of what he does and everything he says, and look at what he's done to the economy. Clowns are fun (or scary) but Money! is important. I think for lots of people ideology comes down to voting their wallet.
"
That's one way to interpret it, but imho that's through the Dem lens of "everyone plays identity politics" and competes to be the biggest victim with the whites as the designated losers.
I don't think you beat him by doubling down on what didn't work before and giving him all the white voters because they're not black/brown/whatever. I also think White Guilt just hit a wall.
Trump is probably best viewed as a "strong man" politician, in the mold of Putin or various others like him. He defeats the "victim" game by attacking his attacker.
"
Just off hand (without the internet):
1) 911
2) Torture
3) Not killing BL.
4) Firing up a 2nd war before winning the first.
5) Not vetting the intel for the Iraqi war (this can be spun as "Bush lied").
6) Gross incompetence for what happened after the war.
7) Bush basically ran the post-war via what was politically convenient in the US and not what was realistic on the ground.
8) The Iraqi war when it was expensive and unpopular (although I think Hillary voted for it so maybe not).
9) Not firing Rummy (early enough).
10) The Housing bubble (or credit bubble).
11) Trying to put an obviously unqualified Supreme on the Court.
12) Not paying for his tax cuts or his expansion(s) of gov.
A dozen is probably enough.
Some of these things are fair, some of them not fair, some are cheap shots but whatever.
However what stands out is this sort of criticism, even when deserved, typically does not happen. Old Presidents don't normally try to undermine current ones, especially right after power switches and things are unsettled.
"
Here is a graph of world wide food production: https://suyts.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/image_thumb26.png?w=661&h=341
GW should be making it's effects known on the rest of the world right now (it's clearly not). Adjusted for global population, we're still increasing food production. https://suyts.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/image27.png
I think we need more immigration, not less. I want to brain drain the rest of the world, we should have policies which openly promote that.
For the illegals, give the bulk of them green cards and stop wasting resources trying to rip apart families. Most of them would become productive citizens, we should let them try.
"
Me? I'm data driven. I follow the math.
However there's a lot of truth in that "caricature".
The words of "experts" are often misused to justify what politicians want to do anyway. Worse, there's a lot of bad science out there which we're supposed to treat seriously. And worse yet, good science is often misused.
I very strongly want good science to be treated seriously. However our "government filled with experts" makes that impossible with claims we need to treat all college men as rapists, and that the world is ending but only for funding green boondoggles.
"
Sounds a lot like you're headed back to "vote Dem or you're a racist".
Rather than continue with identity politics, or insist that's all the other side is doing, I'd rather see ideas debated... and yeah, that might be just me.
"
Let me rephrase the "experts" argument as it's presented to some.
Experts agree that GW is real, therefore we need to do a lot of things which are really painful for YOU, but not for ME. Your jobs get destroyed, I don't need to sacrifice a fish. Because, um, the planet is in danger.
Oh, and the only permissible solution is command+control which is my solution for everything. And shell out some more money for my friends "studying" all this, and we're going to seriously fund those expensive only-for-the-rich electric cars. It's for the good of the planet and not because they're giving me campaign donations.
In the meantime let's listen to some experts talk about how colleges are rape centers, and women get less, and the solution is massive tax increases to "help" the people who vote for me while I destroy your jobs.
Oh, and my pet experts also say that you're a racist if you don't vote for who I tell you to. Microaggressions or something. This isn't a power grab, you're just too stupid to see the correct way to do things so you NEED me to spend your money for you.
So cough up the taxes you racist, every dollar the gov spends is important, and there's no fat at all, even though we're paid a LOT more than you are to do a lot less.
"
"problems" normally goes with "bad government" which was off topic; But yes, various agent issues are definitely in there.
"
The gov has a monopoly on the use of force and no one short of ISIS is trying to oppose that. I think "war" is problematic.
"
Giving guns to drug dealers? Using the IRS against your political rivals? Inviting a member of the Supreme Court to a speech so you can bad mouth him?
There were lots of opportunities for political cheap shots.
Similarly I can think of things Clinton tried in the early days before he found his footing and Bush #1 didn't take him to task. The Bushes put country above taking partisan shots, apparently Obama isn't going to do that.
As far as I can tell, the problem is one of implementation, not "crackpot" ideology.
A good summation of what Trump is trying to do, and why, and the disconnect between that and how the media is reporting it, is here: http://thefederalist.com/2017/01/30/why-do-we-have-refugee-crisis-because-elite-failures-foreign-policy-immigration/
"
Speaking personally, yes, that exactly.
I can get used to (i.e. ignore) Trump the drama artist and Trump the bull in a china shop. He's taken a lot of steps which give me pause for hope.
"
It is reasonable to think that low growth, regulatory capture, expansion of gov, etc are not "Good", and are more "self interest" than "expert thinking".
"
Increase economic growth and all sorts of sins are forgiven and all kinds of things forgotten.
The previous elites have left a LOT of growth enhancing things on the table because of ideology or incompetence or self interest. That *should* be disturbing to people because it's opened the door to Trump.
"
Granted, if the people he can fire disobey and refuse to carry out his orders, then the only thing he can do is fire them. However that's not much of a limitation.
Julian Assange might disagree with you.
"
He's a bastard. But I can dislike him but like his policies. I can even think "I'm glad he's working for me".
This is why he seriously over punches at the voting booths.
"
Actually...
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.