Posted on 08/16/2019 3:32:47 AM PDT by Kaslin
President Donald Trump's reelection hopes hinge on two things: the state of the economy in 2020 and the identity of the Democratic nominee.
The further left the Democrats go to select their candidate, the greater the probability Trump wins a second term.
Thus Trump got good news this week.
The verbal flubs of Joe Biden reached critical mass. They are now so numerous and egregious they have begun to call into question whether Biden, who turns 77 in November, is really up to a year of campaigning, followed by four years of leading the nation in the world.
Nor is it only Trump saying this now.
The Biden staff appears to be agonizing over the endless reruns of Joe's gaffes on cable TV. And a media that sees Biden as the best hope of bringing down Trump is showing signs of alarm.
A valid question arises, not only for Democrats:
Does the Biden we have lately seen in debate and on the stump look like a focused leader who could be confidently entrusted with the most powerful office on earth until January 2025, which would be the end of his first term?
What are the odds that, if he won the presidency, Biden could be a two-term president, until 2029, and not a visibly lame duck from Day One?
Yet, if Biden stumbles and falls before next spring, which seems more of a possibility than two months ago, it is almost certain the Democratic candidate and party platform will be outside the American mainstream.
Consider what the Elizabeth Warren-Bernie Sanders-AOC Democrats have on offer: A Green New Deal with government jobs for all. Net-zero carbon emissions. "Medicare for All," including migrants here illegally. Free tuition at state schools. Forgiveness of most or all of $1.5 trillion in student debt. A trillion dollars of infrastructure. A $15 minimum wage. Reparations for slavery,
All this is being promised while the nation is running a $1 trillion deficit and facing trillion-dollar deficits through the first term of the next president.
And the national debt is already larger than the GDP.
But if the Democrats' performances this summer were heartening for the president, what happened Wednesday must be causing palpitations.
The Dow Jones average plunged 800 points, capping a loss of 7% of its value in weeks. Capital is flooding out of equity markets into the shelter of bonds.
And worldwide, the news is not good.
The German economy, the world's fourth largest, contracted in the first quarter. Factory output in China, the world's second-largest economy, is growing at its slowest pace in 17 years.
Britain, another of the 10-largest economies, is about to crash out of the EU by Oct. 1. Hong Kong, its political crisis unresolved and the protests ongoing, is projecting zero growth.
The U.S. economy remains the strongest in the world, but U.S. growth in the second quarter was 2.1%, tepid compared to the 3.5% growth in the spring of 2018.
On top of this disquieting news on the economic front, Trump's disapproval in the Fox News survey released Wednesday rose to 56%, a 5 percentage-point jump in his disapproval from July.
That the president laid Wednesday's market swoon at the doorstep of the Federal Reserve suggests that Fed Chairman Jerome Powell is being set up to take the fall if the economy goes south in 2020.
And going south is a distinct possibility. Bank of America Merrill Lynch puts the odds on a recession next year at 1 in 3.
From the media and political reaction to the Dow plunge, there is nothing Democrats would relish more than seeing the Trump boom, which has reduced unemployment to record lows, end in a recession, negating his greatest political argument and asset.
And if America can be talked into a recession, rely on the Beltway political and media elites to try to bring it off.
Which brings us to the China trade impasse, which involves a historic gamble by Donald Trump.
Trump seeks to throw out a free trade policy that, rooted in 19th-century ideology rather than U.S. national interests, threw open U.S. markets to the world and produced, over three decades, $12 trillion in trade deficits and a loss of 70,000 factories and 5 million manufacturing jobs.
Like the Russian army carting off German factories after World War II, the Great Arsenal of Democracy was looted by its postwar allies and adversaries alike.
The weapon Trump is using to stop this looting is tariffs, a price of admission into the U.S. market to replace the free passes foreign nations and transnational companies have had to produce abroad and sell into the USA.
Trump is using tariffs to coerce China to stop cheating on the trade rules we have established and to grant us the same access to her markets as producers in China have to the American market.
And he is betting his presidency he can pull it off.
We’ll see.
I hope for our sakes, he’s right.
More like a war between finance capitalism and industrial capitalims.
Citibank whining means we are winning. These bankers bet on themselves, the wrong horse.
The Fox polls are for making news and stirring the pot.
No. It matters not who the demonrats have. People will vote their party.
There ... fixed it.
Always true.
An early example of “democracy”.
This is correct. It does not matter if the dems nominate a commie. If President Trump stays true to his base he can win if he does not, as in he passes any gun control law he will lose no matter how bad the democrat appears to be.
This is what has really got me concerned. Trump people seem to think the poor quality of the democrat candidate somehow gives them room to negotiate with the left in order to seem "reasonable". In other words pass a gun control background check law. If he does that it's game over. He will not win. We have got to make this clear and get the message out. The red line in the sand is there no matter what the democrat looks like. ABSOLUTELY NO GUN CONTROL LAW CAN BE PASSED IF PRESIDENT TRUMP IS TO HAVE A SECOND TERM. Even if you read this and say I will still vote for him because the alternative is so much worse it won't matter. Enough people will stay home to give the dem an easy win.
Me sometimes thinks this is the republican’s turn anyway, thus to ensure Trump gets two terms, the left lurched hard left to ensure the outcome....
Hope is right? he right or wrong was settled and Free Traitors™ lost. Go away and form your own globalist party.
People have written about hard core factory construction running into more work than a one-armed paper hanger. I hope that’s right, as it means we’ll start making our own stuff again. We HAVE to make our own stuff.
“If Trump signs the 300K increase in H-1B visas + green cards ( The Fairness for High Skilled immigrants Act ) he will lose”
Did you forget the sarc tag?
NOBODY cares about THAT! (or even knows what that is)
So in 5 years 1.5 million Indians will take Americans jobs! This is very emotional issue for millions of Americans. The media doesn't report on it because they are not being replaced by foreigners on an industrial scale and it doesn't interest them. IT IS BIG DEAL BELIEVE ME.
Financial people should stick to balancing ledgers and never be running governments or corporations. Stay in your lane.
Elijah Cummings----outed as an immigrant suck-up as his constituents wallow in poverty---has handily enumerated the charges they intend to level against Republican opponents.
QUOTING TWEETING CUMMINGS: Voting is our democratic right, & allows us to control our destiny. Cummings cites the voting scams.
<><>meaningful improvements to voter registration,
<><>voter access,
<><>election security
<><> ensuring Marylanders can exercise their constitutional right
https://twitter.com/RepCummings/status/1162008417059377152
====================================
Democrats and their "rising star" (gag) have been in touch.
The insufferable loser, Stacy Abrams, announced she has decided to apply her caloric fueled energy to do what she's best at: Whining and encouraging voter fraud (she calls it “voter suppression”).
It seems every sicko Democrat has an obsessive compulsive disorder with making sure all the dead and illegal aliens get to vote. They need immediate professional help.
Abrams is (or was) a rising star in the Democratic Party once they got her up there with a 10 ton derrick. She gained more weight AND (cough) a national following during her losing bid to become governor of Georgia last fall.
She even told Joe Biden to take a hike on naming her VP. Abrams said she was too important "to save Biden's ***."
What to do next? Abrams contemplated long and hard in between triple orders of Popeye's fried chicken, orders of Taco Bell, and sides of Dominos extra large pizzas.
The Panthers wanted to recruit her---thinking she'd make a formidable defensive (cough) end...... running for president and the Senate (at the same time) was also considered.
Instead she's decided to go full-frontal virtue signalling: “My job is to be the voice to those who do not believe they are heard."
Heaven help us.
If the Dem party goes on the assumption that Trump will win in 2020, they’ll not waste a general election on Biden who is too old to profit from the learning experience. They’ll back someone who will still be young enough to run in 2024, and who will then have one presidential campaign under their belt — along with some sympathy for having lost to the Orange Man Bad.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.