Protesting Donald Trump
When Barack Obama became President, Republicans in Congress pledged to oppose him tooth and nail. That was a bad idea. It implied that they were hoping the President would fail. This implies one of two things: either they wished ill for the country, or they were completely convinced that Obama was wrong and they were right on every important issue. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, we can assume hubris rather than dislike of country (or worse).
But hubris brings with it its own set of issues as anyone who has read Greek Mythology can attest. If Obama had achieved success, the Republicans would have looked very, very bad, particularly after 8 years of GW Bush. It could have set back the Republican Party for a generation.
Fortunately for Republicans, Obama has come across as inept. The best defense his supporters can conjure up is, in fact, the fact that Republicans didn’t cooperate with him. But even without the help of Congress, there were many things a President can accomplish. As head of the Executive Branch, Obama could have reduced unnecessary spending, graft and corruption, to name initiatives that are always popular and which have been ignored by American Presidents during my lifetime. Even many of the worst run third world countries have managed to produce a leader who does tries that approach for a few years. We are long overdue.
Obama could also have achieved success by placing himself in opposition to the policies of his predecessor which had generated such disastrous outcomes, and which, not incidentally, were supported by the Congressional opposition to Barack Obama. That would have been a no-brainer. But Obama’s approach toward dealing with the Great Recession was to keep doing what GW had been doing, and above all, holding nobody accountable. Mimicking GW and doing nothing to restore faith in the system had predictable results – a lackluster recovery to an economic meltdown.
So Obama saved the Republicans from themselves with his ineptitude. And now we have the spectacle of millions of Americans on the left behaving the same way the Republican Congress did eight years ago. The protesters are counting on Trump to fail as badly as Barack Obama (and GW) did before. And perhaps he will. Trump’s policies aren’t entirely thought out, and shooting from the hip often generates poor outcomes. But luck matters. And so does the ability to communicate, and to bring the crowds to your side. If Trump fails, it will probably be in a very different way than Obama (and GW) did before him. His failures may not look as bad as their failures. Similarly, if Trump’s policies are sufficiently unorthodox, in those areas where he does succeed, the appearance of success may well be magnified. Chewing out Boeing over the bill for the next generation of Air Force one or cowing Ford into keeping a few jobs in the US may be little more than good optics, but good optics create positive morale, and positive morale feeds back on itself. There is also no reason to believe he will stop with Boeing or Ford.
If I were to advise the protesters, it would be like this: wait until Trump has had a chance to fail before you protest. If he does fail, after all, it will come fast and it will come soon. But if he connects with the public, and you oppose him from the beginning, a lot of voters won’t be taking you seriously by the time the next election rolls around.
To pre-empt one comment… protesting that Trump may want to institute an immigration policy that more closely hews to the one the Canadians have in place doesn’t make sense if you were among those threatening to move to Canada if Trump would win the election. Well, it might, if that immigration policy is the one thing that kept you from moving to our enlightened northern neighbor.
A very bad post, Mike. I have to struggle to find anything in it that I agree with or that I think is even remotely sensible. Where to start?
Well, with your addition. Most of us are not anti-immigration hawks like you are, so I think we shall just go ahead and protest Trump’s immigration policies, thank you, even if you disapprove.
Then we have your argument that Obama could have cut spending, as well as gone after corruption and graft. First of all, Congress officially is in charge of spending. Does you wanting him to “cut spending” include the fiscal stimulus he had at the beginning of his first term, which btw, was not just an extension of Bush’s policies? Most of us think he should have spent more then, not less. As it was, he later went along with some austerity cuts, and lowered the cost curve of health care costs, indeed lowered the rate of increase in spending relative to Bush. Aside from the upfront stim, he did lower the rate of increase in spending compared to Bush and lowered the deficit. Did he get any praise for that? Would he have gotten more praise if he had cut spending more? This is just a ridiculous idea.
As for corruption and graft, do you have in mind any particular area where he could or should have gone after that? Probably the worst area for this is the DOD, which has long been notorious. But I would suggest that if he had really tried to go after it there, he would have run into GOP Congressional defenders of DOD pork barrel spending. Oh, but I know you think it is a mistake for his supporters to blame his problems on the GOP in Congress. Anyway, I think this is another loser. Even if he had tried, he would have gotten no credit and probably a bunch of criticism. So, you have offered a big fat zero of anything worhwhile for him to have done better than the “ineptitude” you charge him with. You are the one who looks inept, frankly.
Then we have your lame-brained theory as to how he could have stimulated the economy more, which apparently was not to have more spending in 2009. It was “to hold somebody accountable.” Oh, we already had this debate on Crawford’s thread about Obama as a “noble failure.” Sure, he would probably have gotten some political brownie points for busting some naughty CEOs and CFOs. But would this have led to more economic growth? Anybody believing that is completely delusional. Are you that deluded, Kimel?
I shall only make one more point,although you said several other things that are basically bs. So, you say that if Trump fails it will be fast and soon. What is your basis for arguing that? Indeed, I think it is far more likely to be the opposite, that the manifestation of the failures will come later, not sooner, especially those involving the economy. Keep in mind that the economy is now almost booming. It is doing very well, even though Trump has lied that it is not. All he has to do is avoid some really catastrphic move like defaulting on the debt and the economy will probably continue to grow pretty well for another year or two. He will, of course, immediately start claiming this growing economy as due to him, indeed he has already claimed credit for the good retails sales for Christmas. So, more likely his bad economic policies will take some time to show up, probably not before the midterms, although if he dumps lots of people off their health care insurance, that might be a major blowup. In any case, his supporters will be doing all they can to claim credit for him for any growth that does occur and blame Obama for anything that does not go well, including I predict, the problems suffered by people being tossed off their health insurance. I mean, that will simply be the final proof that Obamacare was a bad thing, and his supporters will accept that. Just wait and see.
Barkley,
I am not anti-immigration. I would be happy to take Canada’s immigration in its entirety, do a Ctrl-H replacing the word Canada with the words United States, and adopt it wholesale.
As to if he fails, he will fail fast and soon… he is proposing big changes. Big changes have big effects. And those effects often come quick. And btw, what we have now is certainly booming by the standards of a few decades ago. If this is what we get for eight years, then Trump is as much of a failure as GW and Obama before him.
As to going after spending and corruption… I may be all for show, but I provided two examples of Trump doing just that complaining about the cost of AF1 and about the F35. He wasn’t even in office at the time. Massive runaway expenditures have been known to the public since the days of the $400 hammer. Any of the Presidents could have made complaining about it a signature issue. None did. Being a muckraker costs very little to do, it requires zero Congressional support, and gets the public on your side. We’ll see whether Trump does it again now that he’s in the Oval Office.
As to busting CEOs… all I can say is that morale matters. I spent almost a third of my life abroad in corrupt Latin American countries. Unpunished corruption is dispiriting to the average person. It reduces the average person’s incentive to do anything, knowing the big guy can come and take what he/she has made away.
“Obama’s approach toward dealing with the Great Recession was to keep doing what GW had been doing, and above all, holding nobody accountable.”
That’s because it was the policies of the Democrat-run Congress, of which he was a part, that he was continuing. He voted for those policies as a Senator. Congress was still in full control of the Democrats. Only when the House went back to the Republicans did the economy start improving.
sigh . . .
Warren,
In the short term, in 2007 and 2008, the President and the Secretary of the Treasury were in the driver’s seat when it came to proposing and enacting policy toward dealing with the mess.
In the long term, what got the economy to that point was laid out in the President’s Economic Blueprint, the one released in February 2001, plus a generous helping of pushing bankers to loan more to people who had no business borrowing money. GW gave speeches in 2004-2006 about expanding homeownership. As I recall it even came up in a SOTU or two. Look it up.
BR,
You are far too kind in your appraisal of this…..this……this whatever it is.
I think we should just let Mike and Warren talk to each other. They truly deserve it.
I will grant you that Obama screwed up by not going after the banksters and having spotlighted show trials. In a situation like that if you don’t clearly identify the wrong doers you will be the one that the blame attaches to.
But waiting for some sign of failure before you go after Trump. Insanity. Complete raving insanity.
Something strange.
Kimels main subject in here has been immigration, particularly illegal immigration.
Now he writes about the Obama administration(if you want to call it that).
Somehow, not one mention that Obama has deported more than 3 million illegal immigrants during his term in office, more than any other President.
Ehh, maybe it is not so strange.
Mike, Bush the Second did not push the Minimum Wage hike.
“Somehow, not one mention that Obama has deported more than 3 million illegal immigrants during his term in office, more than any other President.”
Perhaps because they changed how that was counted: “Under the Obama administration, some actions are included as removals/deportations that once would not have been. In the past, people caught trying to cross the southern border with Mexico were sent back into that country but not counted as removals. Under Obama, they have been, spurring a significantly higher count of deportations.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/12/16/the-numbers-ted-cruz-cited-on-past-deportations-during-the-cnn-debate-were-way-off/?utm_term=.0318b3147211
Obama made one critical error early on in his Presidency, he never went for the jugular in regards to dealing with the GOP. That was not in his nature at the time, he actually believed in our better angels. Once he had to deal with the 2010 Congress, he finally figured it out. Obama was one of the greatest Presidents of the last 100 years despite the obstruction. All of us will rue the day he left very soon. As I read in another column, he was the first POTUS of the next economic cycle, the next POTUS in the modern era of cultural and social change and the first black POTUS in our history. His only fault was that he believed in us, we failed him.
Y’know, the ARRA would have been delayed for months if Obama had not worked with the Collins, Spector and Snowe. He found out real quick after the GOP went after those three..
“Trump’s policies aren’t entirely thought out…”
I disagree. Trump’s policies have not been clearly articulated. Perhaps that is for strategic reasons — because if people knew what was coming, they might have more opportunity to prepare to resist it. Or perhaps the lack of articulation is due to their inherent incoherence.
But I think Trump’s policies have been thought out as entirely as inherently incoherent policies can be thought out.
It is called chaos of the war on facts. no facts or truth and everything is possible.
While I pass on thinking through the comments on Obama and other past figures I do think the final advice is sound. Protest concrete actions or proposals and if that means waiting for them to be apparent, then wait.
The marches were highly successful and a great idea in that they ignited energy in progressives and Democrats to fight the good fight facing them for the next four years. Instead of moping and whining, they are growling, a much better posture.
I’m afraid going from a 79-seat advantage in the House to a 47-seat deficit at the end of the administration is inept. No other President since World War II came close to matching that loss.
urban:
I do not believe there was as much gerrymandering then as there is today. It is certainly prevalent in Michigan and Wisconsin.
Trump will use the bully pulpit, something that Obama failed at. I have no doubt Trump will claim to fix many things that are not broken.
“I’m afraid going from a 79-seat advantage in the House to a 47-seat deficit at the end of the administration is inept. No other President since World War II came close to matching that loss.”
Depends on your baseline. The House, before Clinton’s first election, had 267 democrats. He LOST nine is his first election. (So much for coattails. ) He ended with 212. A net loss of 55.
Before Obama’s first election, there were 236 democrats in the House. That went up to 257. Coattails brought in 21 there. Now, there are 194. A net loss of 42.
So to say that Obama was worse than Clinton, you have to ignore the 21 Obama brought in with him.
This comment is addressed to Dan.
I want to second Barkley’s comment at the top of the thread. In quality added fact I want to double down on the sentiment contained therein. You’ve given Kimel a great deal of space on your blog in the past few months. I don’t see the quality added quotient for that decision. Some of his posts do result in an extended stream of follow up commentary, but mostly fighting with his ideas that seem too often to be unsupported in spite of a torrent of numbers that often are offered as such support. Kimel’s posts too often seem like the work of a very amateur social science researcher. My opinion is that the blog is losing the very high quality of content it has provided at the slightly less than fully professional level of an economics blog. I find very little that I can respond to in a positive manner. Sorry to be so direct in this criticism, but I, for one,am tiring of the level of discourse attached to a Kimel post.
Mike can continue to wait for policy, but being proactive rather than reactive is a reasonable strategy. We will need to react to policy when it arrives, but it is not too soon to prepare the ground.
Craig:
Welcome to Angry Bear. First posts go to moderation .
Responding to Jack’s message: Ditto in spades.
I’ve previously requested AB use more discrimination with respect to Kimel’s posted content — when his “facts” and “numbers” are based on pure bunk AB should realize it as well and remove such. Kimel’s posts do not bring AB a better reputation… .to the contrary in fact.
“Protest concrete actions or proposals and if that means waiting for them to be apparent, then wait.”
Seriously?
This man has throughout the campaign, not to mention his entire life, has clearly shown he is totally Fubar, and we should wait?
OK, according to him this is day one(I’ll forget the insanity of crowd size bs), and we get this:
The Gag Rule Presidency of Donald Trump
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-global-gag-rule_us_58822355e4b070d8cad1f774?2h0qxx9cl5edrc0udi
“Donald Trump Reinstates Ronald Reagan’s Abortion ‘Global Gag Rule’”
‘It bars international health organizations that receive U.S. funding from mentioning abortion as a family planning option’
by Amanda Terkel, Senior Political Reporter & Laura Bassett, Senior Politics Reporter…01/23/2017…11:52 am ET
“WASHINGTON ― In one of his first acts as president, Donald Trump has reinstated a federal ban on U.S. funding for international health organizations that counsel women on family planning options that include abortion.
The Mexico City policy, also known as the global gag rule, was first put in place by President Ronald Reagan in 1984. It prohibits giving U.S. funding to nongovernmental organizations that offer or advise on a wide range of family planning and reproductive health options if they include abortion ― even if U.S. dollars are not specifically used for abortion-related services. ”
How many thousands of women did he kill today?
And people wonder why they marched.
This man is the antichrist. And I am an atheist.
Jack,
I totally agree. His posts belong on Breitbart.
Sometimes he tries to pull that sheep clothing over him, but you do not to be Kreskin to figure him out.
Meanwhile, interesting to see who agrees with him, though predictable.
Well, other than the the data and the literature, nobody.
Hopefully we can accept reality as it is rather than simply say it belongs on Breitbart. Keep doing that, and Breitbart gets to pick tomorrow’s policies.
Sure, the data and the literature do not agree with you that cutting federal government spending would have increased economic growth, nor is it at all obvious that doing so would have yielded any political benefits, given that lower growth would probably have been the outcome of such cuts in federal spending.
I know, you are talking about your big obsessive, immigration. So please do not tell us that you are not an anti-immigration hawk. You are one, period.
Oh, sorry. You are not anti-immigration, Mike, you are pro-immigration from northwestern Europe. So you would like to return to our 1924 law on it that was strongly supported by the KKK. Congratulations.
Mike,
i did not have the feeling that the marches were anti Trump in goal overall….Trump represents a problem to be solved. Watching how locals organized was instructive,,,how families went together, or mixed cohorts went together….and how people are already doing follow up with local and state officials.
Having families march as the numbers grew was a different demonstration of solidarity and long term thinking. The details of policy are arriving already as in the much expanded gag rules mentioned above.
While the details of policy are important, details do not generate passion for most…and the narrative develops no matter they precisely match the prescriptions of experts. Details are of course important and will provide for a lot of debate when forthcoming, but possibilities are not opaque
Protesting Trump and the republican congress, from the beginning is a necessary thing to do as a strategy….he is a man of his word so to speak and has the cabinet to place it in policy. I consider the current situation different than any other in my lifetime.
But I don’t see the Saturday and Monday marches as ephemeral…there are some very basic differences that will manifest given how things evolved.
Chicago had large numbers and some have estimated it at > 200,000. It did pull in many people of which many were female to the Loop. There were too many to really conduct a march. If anything Trump has polarized an opposition which was mostly complacent in the past and not believing something of his type could make it to the office of the presidency. I believe in the long term he will regret his doing so.
Barkleu Rosser,
Your reading comprehension is better than mine. When I read my posts, I think I am mostly showing that tax rates should be increased and immigration policy should be more targeted. I didn’t realize I was advocating big cuts in federal government spending. I have mentioned eliminating waste and overpayment, but I would imagine that is a very different animal.
I keep advocating for immigration by groups and individuals who mostly share our values and are likely to have high personal incomes once they move to the US and will not need to rely on welfare. I have mentioned that we should encourage immigration from such northwestern European nations as Japan, South Korea and Singapore. I may have mentioned Finland and the Baltic States, which perhaps on your map are located on the western coast of Europe. I would also suggest that many well-educated people from other countries who have similar values to those most Americans share (e.g., they don’t think keeping women locked in the house is, in general, a good idea, and they aren’t into practices like bacha bazi).
If there is a simple test, I would say this: if we believe based on a person’s skills and attitudes (and our own past experience with people with the same skills and attitudes) that someone will boost our real GDP per capita, let them in. If they will depend on charity and welfare, we can provide that more cheaply if they stay somewhere where costs are lower. I am sure the 1924 KKK would have been fully on board.
“How many thousands of women did he kill today?”
How many more children did he save?
Warren,
Zero.
Sorry, I think I am done with this blog. Somehow, Bev has disappeared, and I haven’t seen Waldmann post in a long time. Now this. Kudos to Barkley Rosser, whose website I do and will continue read. Scolding protesters! Give me a break – they are the only ones standing between the people and chaos. They/we are trying to stop Trump from “connecting with the public” – at least those who are not already in his camp.
Calling Obama inept – ignoring the ACA, Dodd-Frank and a host of environmental regulations that will now be undone. Sure, Obama might have been less effective than he could have been because he tried to see the good in everyone. Any president could have been more effective in hindsight.
bye-bye.
Happy Trails:
Obviously you have not been reading my posts on the PPACA, or maybe you know it as the ACA or Obamacare. Why didn’t you comment to Mike directly as many of us have done? Waldman has a post up on some research he is doing as well as Sandwichman and Dorman. New Deal Democrat also has a post up and so does Noni.
And Mike’s simple test for who he would let into the country smacks of racism.
My generation protested Nixon because he went into Cambodia.
These libruls for Obama did not protest any of the hugely more immoral escapades Clinton and Obama did
The tea party protested Obama for a number of actions, they won from 2010 to 2016
The moonbats who lost to the tea party guy think they are going to get what the tea party got by protesting before the guy does anything
other than beating the crooked the DNC selectee.
Dumping on Trump was a losing DNC strategy and it will continue to lose.
I am being kind showing the error of ya’all’s way.
Kimel is too.
ilsm:
You drinking again???
TAHfromSLC
Stick with cognitive bias, eh.
BR:
“But I would suggest that if he [Obama] had really tried to go after it there, he would have run into GOP Congressional defenders of DOD pork barrel spending.”
Expectation management?
Nah, read Obama’s peace committee lecture.
He let out his neocon militarist: ‘unjust peace’ doctrine as excuse to use his massive state sanctioned techno-destruction machine that don’t work.
My observation: Carter and his acquisition organization {Kendall took over when Ash went to selling cluster bombs] is the most ineptly corrupt I have seen and I observed from 1983.
F-35 is not only useless it cannot pass a test. CVN 78 can’t get 4 days of sorties off…….
Shorter for BR:
Dems would have rebelled faster than GOPsters to save make work pentagon troughs in their districts.
Obama was never going to test what US could do with $2T not wasted arming al Qaeda, killing Qaddafi and buying slop for the trough.
Rosser embarrassed you once before with your Vietnam Vet comments. Do not push your luck.
Run,
He is a deeply disturbed and sick human being. Though I am beginning to doubt his entire story.
Ignore him.
He is not capable of discussion.
Mike,
I am out of country and not on internet all the time.
I see not one word about taxes at all in your post, not one. However, you did say that through executive action, Obama could have “reduced unnecessary spending.” Aside from the problem of determining what is unnecessary and what is not (and some is), this is spending and you called for cutting without any calls for increasing any other possibly good spending.
Bottom line. You said nothing about taxes and called for cutting spending, even if just that which is “unnecessary.” You called for more austerity. That is the bottom line, just as I said.
Again, this was a terrible post all the way through, barely a defensible remark in the entire thing.
Barkley Rosser,
You also saw not one word about Europe, Northwest or otherwise, or immigration, but decided to bring it up anyway. I get it. The topic of the post leaves an opening. But I figured since you were bringing commentary about how you read other posts and erroneously claim I am against immigration from outside Northwest Europe, I can a) correct your statement and b) mention that there are two topics I keep writing about: taxes and immigration. I mentioned “posts” in my comment, not “post.” The one place I cover both is when I put together a simple model analysis containing data on both tax rates and immigration effects.
There was even an example of what I hope will be a reduction in un-necessary spending in the post, though I didn’t feel it was necessary to call it out as such:
I guess being against overpaying defense contractors is technically a form of austerity since it reduces government spending. But if your goal is to stimulate the economy by buying $400 hammers (adjusted up in price to account for inflation since the 1980s) I believe you will have a hard time selling that to the public at large. The defense contractors will be grateful though.