Could Incompetence Lead To Reelection?
by Barkley Rosser (originally published at Econospeak)
Could Incompetence Lead To Reelection?
I know, I know, it is way too early to talk about the presidential election of 2020, so maybe this is more relevant to midterms, and more likely it is just something merely momentary. Nevertheless, it occurs to me that the increasingly apparent incompetence of our current president could possibly play into helping him get reelected in 2020.
His incompetence is manifesting itself substantially in his inability to achieve many of the things that he campaigned on most loudly, including repealing and replacing Obamacare, introducing massive trade protectionism, sharply cutting taxes for the rich, and sharply stopping immigration. Of course his new administration, which included probably the most incompetent, insane, and corrupt set of cabinet secretaries and other officials in US history, are doing and will be doing things that will be terribly damaging to American society on many fronts, including the environment, education, womens’ rights, the arts, financial market stability, minority rights, and a long list of others, with many of these very important. The Trump administration is doing and will do a great deal of damage. But none of these were really red meat headline issues in his campaign. They were not the items that got his angry mobs at rallies chanting and yelling and more generally making public fools of themselves while scaring much of the rest of the population. Those issues were the ones I mentioned up front, the ones that Trump seems so far not to be actually doing much about after all the ranting and raving.
So how could this incompetence-fueled failure aid his possible reelection? At least two reasons. The first is that succeeding with some of these could really seriously hurt lots of people, including in some cases especially his own supporters, who might then become unhappy with him if this happened, even though so far polls show most of his supporters supposedly sticking with him even when they hear that he might do something that might hurt them personally. They either do not believe that he will or think that his policies will hurt others they do not like more. In any case the poster boy for this is certainly the health care issue. Trumpcare has proven to be unpopular and Obamacare now finally has a majority supporting it. Lots of people have figured it out that they might get hurt if that campaign promise were kept to repeal and replace. So the upshot is that people do not get hurt and become angry at him.
On immigration and trade policy, these would have mixed effects, but there certainly would be economic damages from seriously enforcing either of them, especially immigration policy, and there already appears to be some damage coming from some of that even indirectly, such as the likely fall in foreign tourists coming to visit the US and also an apparent likely decline in smart foreigners applying to attend US universities, with probably fewer of them than sticking around later to be innovative and job-creating entrepreneurs. But for the moment the attention is on all those judges knocking down Trump’s efforts to simply ban people from certain countries entering the US. But probably these damages will not be noticed that much by the majority of Trump supporters.
So, assuming that all this would continue, which it may not as he may get his way on some issues where he has not so far, with cutting taxes for the rich the most likely to get through at least in part, how does this help his reelection campaign? Because he can run again on these same old issues, complaining about all those judges and Democrats and bad Republicans who did not help him get them passed. Maybe he will drop pounding on Obamacare if it gets even more popular, but, heck, on immigration and trade for sure he could get back to ranting his red meat and getting those angry mobbing troops chanting and screaming again. Hate the terrorist foreigners who are taking away our jobs! It could well work again, especially given that a lot of his supporters seem not to be able to add two and two and avoid getting five.
Barkley Rosser
Nothing can change the solid rep voter from voting for a republican. Nothing.
Performance has no impact on their vote.
Elections are won by turnout. If the Dems turnout they win, if they don’t they lose. Rep voters always turn out.
Course, we now are in the process of watching voter suppression go back to the good old days before the voting rights act, so that will make things more difficult for Dem turnout.
The key is solidarity. Taking one for the team. Moving forward, no matter how slowly, instead of dividing the party because bernie.
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Trump won by trading places with Obama.
NYT’s Nate Cohn: “Just as Mr. Obama’s team caricatured Mr. Romney, Mr. Trump caricatured Mrs. Clinton as a tool of Wall Street” … “At every point of the race, Mr. Trump was doing better among white voters without a college degree than Mitt Romney did in 2012 — by a wide margin.
” … Mr. Obama] would have won Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin each time even if Detroit, Cleveland and Milwaukee had been severed from their states and cast adrift into the Great Lakes.)”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/23/upshot/how-the-obama-coalition-crumbled-leaving-an-opening-for-trump.html
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America should feel perfectly free to rebuild labor union density one state at a time — making union busting a felony. Republicans will have no place to hide.
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When are we going to learn America — the “defining issue of out time” (sorry for borrowing your phrase Obama) is rebuilding labor union density?
Those numbers are wrong in many, many ways.
“There are lots of ways to slice and dice how and why Hillary Clinton lost on Nov. 8 what looked — by virtually every measure — like a race she could not lose. But, to me, the most compelling reason is this: She simply didn’t excite or turn out the Democratic base enough.
This chart, which comes via the Republican polling firm Public Opinion Strategies, encapsulates Clinton’s base problem nicely. It breaks down turnout from 22 key counties in six swing states — five of which Clinton lost (or, in the case of Michigan, looks likely to lose)…..
Take Wisconsin, for example. Here’s how Clinton and Obama did in Milwaukee County, the largest county — by population — in the state.
Clinton: 288,986 votes
Obama: 328,090 votes
That’s a 39,000 vote difference, Clinton lost the entire state by just more than 27,000 votes. So, yeah.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/21/these-22-counties-cost-hillary-clinton-the-white-house/?utm_term=.4b1987af5414
EMichael, You may be interested in:
Democrats Are Bad at Midterm Turnout. That Seems Ready to Change.
Nate Cohn, APRIL 5, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/05/upshot/democrats-are-bad-at-midterm-turnout-that-seems-ready-to-change.html?_r=0
Well, the Rs have been promising to make abortion illegal for 30 years or more. They’ve been promising to make guns available to any nut with enough money to buy one. They’ve been promising to make everybody prosperous by lowering taxes and spending like drunken sailors. But we still have abortion, though access to it is troubled, we still have gun control laws, though they are pretty porous, and we still have taxes, though they are low and we have a big deficit. Abortions, gun control laws and taxes are crucial to the R’s election strategy, and have been for decades. Why should we be surprised at all the other things Trump is promising and not delivering?
Incumbency is an advantage, if we don’t have a recession before then, but I wouldn’t bet on the latter.
Lord,
I will disagree. Regardless is his admin turns out to be semi-competent or not, the people will not allow this imbecile another turn.
Imho, the odds of him finishing one term are 50 times better than him getting another one. Dems dividided, they screwed up. It will not happen again. Of course that is estimating that we are alive.
“Nothing is accurate now because we haven’t made a final determination. We haven’t made a determination as to public/private. There are some things that work very nicely public/private. There are some things that don’t. The federal government, we’re doing very well you saw, a lot of good numbers coming out. You saw our imports. You saw what happened with China. And various other people that this country has been dealing with over the years. You saw the numbers come out today, they’re very promising. Lot of good numbers are coming out. We are borrowing very inexpensively. When you can borrow so inexpensively, you don’t have to do the public/private thing. Because public/private can be very expensive. When you go equity, when you give equity to people who own your highways essentially for a 30-year period, who own your tollbooths for a period of time — come on in, Mike! You know Mike and Reince?
Uh, we’re working on health care. Can I just say, so when you called the health care bill, you know, that was just a negotiation. You didn’t hear me say it’s over. That was a negotiation. You understand? A continuing negotiation. It may go on for a long time or it may go on until this afternoon. I don’t know. It’s a continuing negotiation.”
http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/6/15205032/trump-infrastructure-plan
EMichael,
Thanks for the link on Trump’s comments about infrastructure. This confirms what has been my impression, although I was not aware that they have been proposing actual cuts to infrastructure spending. Wow. And some of that rise in the US dollar and US stock markets after the election was based on people taking seriously that this administration would be spending an extra trillion dollars on infrastructure? Just wow.