Somebody PLEASE tell the damn people who call themselves economists to stop telling us the American economy is doing ‘Good’ …..
It ISN’T….
At least not for us middle and lower class people…
Gas prices keep bouncing up…..
Interest rates are going to go up….
The tax cut that gave rich people more money have give us little to gain….
If you have a student loan?….You’ll be paying it forever….
Employer’s are giving 1% raises, if any at all….
And your President is throwing tariff’s around like ping pond balls that will surely raise the prices on just about everything….
Folks?
WHAT GOOD ECONOMY?
AND?
The above looks like an invitation for a good ole fashion RECESSION….
From drivers paying more for gas and families bearing heavier child care costs to workers still awaiting decent pay raises and couples struggling to afford a home, people throughout the economy are straining to succeed despite the economy’s gains.
They are people like Katy Cole, a 33 year-old music teacher from North Creek, New York, who’s still repaying her student loans. It took her two years of working a second job to repair her credit and amass enough money to try to buy a home with her boyfriend. She just gave birth last month — the fourth child in her blended family — which means having to take unpaid leave from her school job.
“As far as the numbers saying everyone is working, that’s great,” Cole said. “But is everybody surviving? I don’t think so. In a great economy, everybody is thriving — and not just a certain group.”
When analysts at Oxford Economics recently studied American spending patterns, they found that the bottom 60 percent of earners was essentially drawing on their savings just to maintain their lifestyles. Their incomes weren’t enough to cover expenses.
“Many people are still living on a paycheck-to-paycheck basis,” said Gregory Daco, head of U.S. economics at Oxford…..
More…
The economy is doing well. It is very rare for a recovery to last this long. The fact that 1/2 of the country isn’t benefitting from the strong economy is a distribution of resources issue. You know, the thing that your enemy Bernie Sanders likes to talk about.
Come on Z?
Why do u want rib me like that?
The guy isn’t my enemy
He does have some good points he sells
That was his #1 issue by far. It was the major theme of his campaign – even more than Trump’s was about immigration.
Hillary mostly spoke passionately about how Trump was unfit for office and things such as how women are treated unfairly. Other than that, I am not sure she really believed in what she was advocating – including any comments on the income distribution.
I agree Z
While I strongly supported her
I was part of the crowd that had to think when asked what she actually stood for…
Actually I remember one time when I went to bat for her?
My defense of her was in terms of what wasn’t in Trump and the GOPer’s
Not in what she was
I am on record here as calling her a lousy campaigner
It never changed from when Obama beat her
Doing well for those who were doing well BEFORE the bogus tax give away…
I think that one reason that Hillary did extremely poorly in rural areas was because the income/wealth distribution was not a major focus of her campaign. Yes, rural blue collar whites might be concerned about immigration, their guns, gays and abortion, but they also responded to the Sanders message that they are not getting their failures share. A Democrat can’t win the rural areas with that issue alone, but a Democrat who strongly makes that case can do well enough there to win the election.
That was part it certainly….
But in my view only a symptom of her lack of poltical skills.,..
From early on she was not able to mesh he crusading spirit from her college days into a political force….
She comes across as defensive in the media
While those who actually meet her say she is actaually warm and gracious
Maybe it’s the lawyer in her?
During the Iraq vote and later against Obama and Trump
She simply was unable to boil her answers to questions and a campaign push to simple points that would resonate with voters
Her husband, Obama and even Trump where born with ability to do
She never got it
We all know she would be able to handle the job of being President
Heck , Putin was scared of her so much he helped Trump get the job
But where Bill and Donald recovered and harnessed their mess ups ?
She couldn’t
She seems to be someone who could be good trying to get things done
But her raw political skills have failed her in two major campaigns
What a pity for her the last time
And America and the Wotld
I largely agree. I don’t Think Hillary would have been successful largely because she would not have won with a mandate. Her main campaign message was that Trump was unqualified. With that said, no Democrat would have been successful without controlling both houses.
By the way, Janes. Your reply was though-provoking and relevant to the discussion. Thank you for stepping up your game.
Thank You Z
Sometimes I hit a homerun….
Sometimes I hit a single…
Good to know that you bat 1.000. I wish I did!
He, he, he
Sometimes Z
Sometimes….
Looking back both in time and the comments of both of you, I think that maybe Hillary Clinton was stuck in the same trap that would have hurt Joe Biden and has hobbled previous Vice Presidents running for the Presidency (e.g. Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale and Al Gore) — even though she’s never been Vice President.
Being an outsider who’d never held an executive Federal office (and as James has so often pointed out, not even a formal member of the incumbent party), Bernie Sanders was free to criticize the status quo in the economy, social relations and other issues.
But Hillary Clinton was essentially in a very similar position to the one that Joe Biden would have been in had Barack Obama not actively discouraged his entry into the race in favour of Hillary’s candidacy. As effectively seeking a “third term” for the Obama-Biden presidency, she was limited in how much she could criticize the economic discordances and inequalities that persisted under both Barack Obama’s administration and her husband’s.
She was in a particularly awkward position in trying to move away from such Third Way initiatives (and Sanders targets) as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, NAFTA, the World Trade Organization and financial deregulation (the “Big Bang” that included things like the effective repeal of Glass-Steagall’s Chinese Wall between consumer and investment banking).
She, perhaps, could have said that many of the forces holding back Middle America and the bottom three quintiles (three-fifths) could not be restrained or reversed while Republicans still held Congress, but one of the striking features of her campaign was the shortness of her coat-tails and the lack of support her campaign gave to down-ballot Democratic candidates (this being, by the way, in clear contrast to Al Gore’s 2000 campaign which took back no fewer than 6 Senate seats seized in the 1994 wave, thereby giving Senate Democrats parity and then a brief majority; even John Kerry’s 2004 campaign limited GOP net regains in the Senate to 2.)
To abbreviate all that: campaign messages usually have to choose between “Time for a change” and “You never had it so good !!” (Harold Macmillan’s Conservatives successfully seeking a third term in 1959). It’s hard to straddle the two.
Good point – although GHWB was successful.
Perhaps Hillary could have successfully had a message like “strengthen social security” – which might have appealed to moderates and liberals, and was largely silently ignored by both Clinton and Obama.
Good points from all of us….
My main point was more basic….
Hillary Clinton just doesn’t like campaigning….
She never had the knack for it…
It my memory serves me well?
She waited and waited before actually jumping in….
He first BIG rally was about 5,000 people….
She was canned in here appearances….
Trump, like her husband , Obama and eveb Bush II seemed to LOVE the camera…
Loved the energy of the crowds…
She did NOT…
Guarded, from being a Clinton and other tangles with the media?
She often refused to play ball with them….
BUG MISTAKE….
Donald Trump feed the media with BULL SHIT like he does today….
It worked and still works….
Her husband loved the crowds and media…Showing an open folksy self…
Obama the same thing…
A smile…
And electricity….
Trump had crowds that went crazy for him…
His attacks on the media where WHAT THEY LOVE….
All of the above was simply NOT Hillary Clinton who had to have staff slip in her drinking a beer to ‘huminize ‘ her….
She just was NEVER comfortable being a candidate…
Obama didn’t really like the campaigning thing either I read…
But he was able to get out there and do it when he had to….
Oh, and of course there was the recuring story of how Hillary just didn’t have the managing skills with her campiagn staff…
Same story repeated from 2008 to 2016….
The woman was just not meant to be President….
Sidebar….
On top of all of the above?
I have said here that it would be harder for a white woman to become President than a black/mixed male to ….
That still holds true….
I have seen and heard both Bill and Hillary Clinton, Hillary first while campaigning in Providence in the general election of 1992.
She seemed kind of forced and insincere, in a Liddy Dole sort of way, but I ascribe some of that to the fact that at that point nearly all of her public speaking (outside the Children’s Defense Fund, etc.) was campaigning for her husband’s candidacies for state Atty-Gen and Governor.
Bill Clinton campaigning for re-election before a huge crowd in Providence four years later seemed much more relaxed and natural. Of course, he has the knack of giving the appearance of natural sincerity even when he may not feel it — kind of the reverse of his wife’s apparent inability to appear sincere and natural even when she is.
And I, too am mystified by Hillary Clinton’s apparent inability to avoid the same kind of staffing and budgeting mistakes (Mark Penn, spending too much and then running out of cash too soon) that she should have learned from after 2008.
So true DSD….
Trump lucked out ….
Democrats do NOT need to pick a rookie or a person NOT up to the job
The last three Democratic presidents were all rookies.
You names for them?
On paper, there was a great deal to be said for the proposition that Hillary Clinton was about as qualified and experienced as any other president or presidential candidate has been (e.g. Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush) — certainly more, say, than JFK. However, she’d never held elective executive office at the municipal, state or federal level. (Of course, neither had Donald Trump.)
But what Zreebs calls rookies have been the presidential norm for quite a while, now, since few Senators now get elected President, other than those who have also been Vice President. [Sen. Barack Obama vs Sen. John McCain in 2008 was the outstanding exception.] Voters distrust Washington, and those outside a governor’s state can be persuaded that a governor has the necessary experience.
¶ Recent Presidents who have only been Governor (and never served in Congress or as Vice President):
George W. Bush
Bill Clinton
Ronald Reagan
Jimmy Carter
FDR
Woodrow Wilson
¶ Recent Presidents who have served as Vice President:
George H.W. Bush
Gerald Ford (never elected)
Richard Nixon
LBJ
Harry Truman
Calvin Coolidge
Theodore Roosevelt
¶ Recent Presidents who have only served as Senator:
Barack Obama
JFK
Warren Harding
¶ Recent Presidents who have never served in Congress, as Vice President, or as Governor:
Donald Trump
Dwight Eisenhower
Herbert Hoover
William Howard Taft
The problem with having a nominee with a long track record is that it is easy to cherry pick their votes to fit the narrative in the way that the opponent wants to define that person. And don’t underestimate how effective Trump can be at that game.
I agree on the history working against someone running for the American Prezidency
But for me?
The OVERIDING thing for the 2020 nominee HAS TO BE LEGISLAIVE EXPERIENCE
They ARE gonna have to put things back together after Trump
Biden fits the bill
He is just flamboyant as Trump