A thought for Sunday: of basic decency and humanity, and how the economy is shoring up the GOP A few threads of the Trump malAdministration came together this past week. The latest attempt to overturn Obamacare confronted Trump with a choice between his two main goals: basking in a Trump triumph vs. erasing all of Obama’s programs from the history books (in retaliation for Obama humiliating him at the White House correspondents’ dinner in 2011). At the beginning of his presidency, Trump opposed the “repeal and run away” Congressional GOP objectives for Obamacare, telling them he wanted a “replacement” plan with more coverage and lower premiums. He wanted, in short, a Trump triumph. After 3 failures, however, Congress’s 4th try at dismantling Obamacare has
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A thought for Sunday: of basic decency and humanity, and how the economy is shoring up the GOP
A few threads of the Trump malAdministration came together this past week.
The latest attempt to overturn Obamacare confronted Trump with a choice between his two main goals: basking in a Trump triumph vs. erasing all of Obama’s programs from the history books (in retaliation for Obama humiliating him at the White House correspondents’ dinner in 2011).
At the beginning of his presidency, Trump opposed the “repeal and run away” Congressional GOP objectives for Obamacare, telling them he wanted a “replacement” plan with more coverage and lower premiums. He wanted, in short, a Trump triumph.
After 3 failures, however, Congress’s 4th try at dismantling Obamacare has no replacement features. Things like guaranteed coverage of pre-existing conditions were stripped away. The bill in essence simply repealed Obamacare, punted the issue to the States with instructions to not even think about enacting something like universal coverage, and gutted Medicaid to boot. In short, it was very much “repeal and run away” (with a fig leaf).
Trump’s support for the bill showed that he will even eschew a Trump triumph if the alternative obliterates an Obama accomplishment.
Another thread of the Trump presidency is its nearly constant failure on the test of basic decency and humanity.
One of the places where it had been safe to avoid the rancid circus of Washington was The Weather Channel. Not this past week, where it more than any other media outlet highlighted the humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico, which appears to be approaching Katrina x 10. When an outlet as innocuous as The Weather Channel feels compelled to implore Washington to DO SOMETHING! you know that those in power have plumbed a new low in the banality of evil.
I have a feeling, however, that conditions in Puerto Rico are going to get much worse — and maybe finally noticed by the actual news media — before they get better.
Which brings me to the final thread. Polling for Trump has been waxing and waning within a limited range for half a year now. It waxes when there he rails against foreign or domestic enemies, like North Korea or uppity nonwhite malcontents, and wanes when his basic lack of decency and humanity is in the forefront. To wit, here is the latest update from Gallup:
Why hasn’t it sunk any lower?
Paradoxically, Trump and the GOP are benefitting from the pretty decent Obama economy — which is still in place, on autopilot, because the GOP has accomplished exactly zero legislatively on economic matters.
And the ongoing Obama economy at the moment has a 4.4% unemployment rate, is still adding about 150,000 new jobs a month, has real median household income at its highest in a decade, if not forever, and real hourly wages for nonsupervisory workers at their highest in 4 decades. In short, civil society may be going to hell, but the economy? Not too shabby.
Historically, in the absence of either war or civil unrest generating a real death toll that dominates the headlines (like Korea, Vietnam, or the race riots of the late 1960s), an economy with these numbers generates reasonably good numbers for the incumbent political party. The benefit of that — of Obama’s economy — is currently going to the GOP!
But if Trump’s approval is in the 35%-40% range with a decent economy — and the Congressional GOP polling at the worst ever — just imagine what the polling is going to be like when the economy as it must eventually turns down.