Looking Ahead to Somewhat Hopeful 2026 and Later Elections

It will be difficult. And Trump will do a lot of damage in two years. Or even the last weeks before he is sworn in. The Supreme Court may help push extreme small government and social program changes for two years. But we must look ahead, too.

First the January mess. Trump getting his big party thanks to Billionaire money. And we are now getting toward the days when the chaos cabinet for Trump is assembled. A lot of it is putting in department heads to strip down their own department. But Trump is also showing his might over the senate. The senators still worry about re-election in 2026 and 2028. I assume they think they can run Vance in 2028. 

But Vance is nothing, all bluster. Oh, he would run if there is enough support for him in the primaries. But if the MAGA folks are still intrested in politics in 2028, those are all he will get in 2028. It really does not matter if it is he or more established Republican. They do not have anyone that can speak to MAGA and also get the independent voters by scaring them about "losing America."

I am still sticking to my prediction that we will have a different president every four years. That would also include the prediction that all old candidates are scrapped. Democrats in the primaries will not run Harris or Wlaz. It will be a governor.

The goal is to prevent him as much as possible. Prove that democracy works even here, and that by 2026 we will have this under control. Isn’t this a bit of an expensive experiment? First going to the Trump extrme, then bringing those essential things back. Trump can do a lot in two years. The failures in our constitution are obvious. If the president has the House and Senate and the supreme court, there are only the states and lower federal courts to hold him back.

Because Trump pulled out so many from the house, he won't be very effective the first half year. He will attempt to deport as many aliens with the funds he has. Execute orders for many things. The other problem is what is happening with the budget just before Christmas and the first half year. We just have to see. 

We can sort of make some guesses about Trump. He acts impulsively and will not back out of things he decides: Nippon Steel is not buying US Steel.

What is not guessing is that his cabinet is there merely to destroy the administrative state. Mike Johnson is openly talking about SMASHING it.

Trump starts right off with tariffs. A very astute analysis by this poster. Trump is campaigning. What he does best.


                 

And this is partly the reason for his popularity. He campaigns and takes credit continuously. He makes himself the news.

Biden did none of that, a few speeches here and there. But he was so in the back ground, so presidential, that in this social media world it looks like he did nothing.

And we are still wondering about the 2024 election. What has become bolder is simple racism. Telling immigrants outright to go back where you came from.

The New World Order

While we sit and wait for Trump world, there is a claim about our future that looks unstoppable. Capital has reached a point where the average person has no way to stop the way it shapes the world.

The Trump phenomenon with its cultural issues makes it look like some people are getting what they wanted: getting back to "traditional values." But that may just be a trivial effect from Trump, the supeficial part. It of course matters to liberals and multiculture and any individual that does not fit into Mike Johnson's world. But the bigger shift is to a world pretty much run by coporations and wealth. We all have worked for wages, but this is control of us in a much bigger way. The plan is to make us completely dependent on giant corporations that employ us.

The corporations and billionaires have supported candidates with very conservative social issues mainly because that is who they can get in. The corporations do not care about trans gender or healthcare. They only want control of taxes and minimum wage and also some trade. Trump is not the perfect candidate for them. Corporations are globalists.

Democratic principles can be thrown out according to Yuval Harari. Our skills are going to be worthless due to AI taking over even a lot of service jobs. Our vote therefore does not count much, and the world where our worth is little is coming.

The irony is that Trump was allowed to present it all as a grand scheme to take us back to the 1950s world. Those male and female roles and values. The manufacture of consumer stuff is in fact never coming back and Trump will never raise the wages of the white working class. Their only power is to support the social issues that he brought to the front of everything. They may even feel good about "owning the liberals."

Having been rather powerless for decades, MAGA folk may not notice much change in the next few years. The rest of us are all yielding our poltical power to wealth. Corporations and billionaires. We have about as much power at that point as people did under communism. The power we had by electing liberal polticians that would allow at least our multicultural nation to exist. And some minimal welfare and regulated health insurance.

The educated classes will be struggling as well, as many of our jobs can be automated but may need some supervision. And the AI collected data and summary may need to be approved by a human before an AI decision takes effect. But we have often changed jobs and skills, so our chances are slightly better.

The PR problem: "government did not do anything for me."

The election we had focused on issues Trump brought up and had the supporters thinking about for the entire year. A good portion did not vote based on any practical issues, such as the economy, but on so called cultral issues. The fact that those issues weighed more is largely due to the fact that the same voters believed that "government does not do anything for me." I will address the issue of Democrats at the end.

The MAGA voters did not think Harris was going to help them. Either the government does not help them but helps other groups (illegals, those on food stamps). Or the things it does are way too far into the future and will not help them one bit (green energy).

Government has not done anything for them, they claim. What was it supposed to do? Most of them don't pay much federal income tax. Their biggest tax is probably property tax, which is local. We just get the feeling they think the government is only doing things for someone else.

The problem came up with actor Craig T Nelson. We know him as Coach.

His famous quote on Fox:

“They’re not going to bail me out,” Nelson said. “I’ve been on food stamps and welfare. Anybody help me out? No. No.”

It was an epic rant, in large part because the actor didn’t seem to recognize the flaw in his observation. Taxpayers helped him out by paying for his food stamps and welfare, but in Nelson’s mind, no one helped him out. As far as he’s concerned, food stamps and welfare just don’t count.

(more text by Steve Benen, google it)

So the working poor know there are some forms of welfare. But it just makes you feel worse, a loser, to take it.

A good number of people that used to work for a company end up as some kind of independent worker. Lawn care, a plumber retired from industry, electricians. They all get healthcare through ACA if they are undr 65.

Government just is not a business. They do not have to funds to advertise what they did. Only senators and congressmen in their campaign ads on TV. Where the Republicans claim supporting things they voted against.

The government is there to support you in many aspects of life. Things to do with your every day life. Buying a home. Home loans are still guaranteed by the government, and rates are lower. Veterans get benefits.

Elizabeth Warren has passed bills that helped get financial support and protect you in every possible investment situation. 

The government will also help out in retraining for a new skill. Locally there may be support for every high school student going on to at least two years of college.

All of this is actually going to go away if Musk and Ramaswamy do what they plan to do. Strip down every cabinet to a point where they no longer work. Trump is not going to send fire fighters to California fires anymore, because there won't be any fire fighters. They come from 

-U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service and U.S. 

-Department of the Interior and others.

Trump will personally need to save the USDA if they go after it. The Farm Bill and that department are essential for rural America. There are issues like crop insurance which will never make it to a national platform. Because they are not as important as transgender bathrooms.

There are countless things in life that the government is involved in that seem a nuisance, but are there to protect you. They are there at all times even if you do not know. Think of goverment as the oxygen mask that comes down when you need it. You can then make a safe landing in a short while.

Democrats

The complaint about Democrats not doing anything for the working class may be true, but on the other hand voters have given them very slim majorities. Social Security reform (actually simple: tax higher income) cannot be done. Compare that to a Republican win. Social issues and scare tactics got Trump elected. The result is giving more power to corporations and the rich. This happens over and over, every GOP president and under Clinton. It is just inching year after year to extreme capitalism. Denial of their own healthcare by profit making insurance companies is one more thing that the MAGA voters voted for.

Wage Disparity

The election was lost by Democrats due to disgruntled people. There were many Trump created themes, some we never understood (Hannibal Lecter) and so on. We are going to ignore Trump for a second. The wages have been stagnant for decades. Howard Yaruss discusses all this without graphs in his book. Wages of the lower income bracket just have not moved much. A little with inflation. The upper income levels have gone up in all that time. Wealth has collected to the "1%."  The wealth issue, inheritance and so on, are discussed in the book. I won't summarize, but it is not anything solved soon. Briefly he mentions Thomas Piketty. Interesting concept. Link here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Piketty

But on to the book.

The book from 2022 outlines the developments. The future is very clearly the same trend. Cutting things from the budget for four years under Trump will lead to more disparity. The jobs of making things in America will not come. Well, the Chips Act brought some, infrastructure brought some. Daily consumer goods will have the tariff. None of those things will be made here by 2028. Nobody will bring a factory here from Asia. Service jobs is where all the growth is.

Less clear is the Democrats' role. Did they fail for 30 years? The politics have been rather centrist. Hillary and Obama were connected to Wall Street. Banks can't fail! Was there even anything that could be done with blue collar wages? Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have been pushing the small effort to get even a little more fair deals. Biden improved Medicare issues. Actual politics of choosing our leader was based more on bath rooms used by trans people than jobs and the economy.

The book looks at options near the end. The taxes paid by Americans are not as progressive as we think. Aside from federal tax, the rest of taxes tend to even things out. Property taxes can be a big chunk for someone like me. Loopholes result in the 400 wealthiest Americans  paying 8% tax. Collecting wealth as stocks postpones any tax on it. 

Collecting taxes is a problem. As unpopular as taxes are, we need to hire clerks (they are not any "agents" in the common practice of spying and snooping) to go over records and send bills. Trillions have gone uncollected and could easily be collected.

Transferring money to the low income classes depends on funding. Andrew Yang proposed Universal Basic Income. It might simplify some bookkeeping, but "funding for the plan is unlikely to add up."

However, the long term trend for jobs will need to be looked at for all of us. Yuval Noval Harari has outlined the future for service jobs and a number of fields where AI will take over. He sees no jobs for cashiers or insurance agents. See Homo Deus and other books of his. We would then be left with manual jobs. Mowing a large lawn, planting trees, changing the broken windshield on cars and similar things robots will fail at for the next few decades. Or there are not enough robots. They will work jobs that run 24 hours a day. Like packing Amazon packages. In this situation Universal Basic Income will finally come in.

There are certainly efforts by the federal government that would create jobs. The problem is that they never get very far. The Democrat is in power for 2 years and then the House is lost. Two more years of no action, then perhaps a Republican president for four years (vetoes all spending). The six years of inaction leaves the public with the impression that the "government does not do anything." 

The wealth issue I mentioned earlier has affected our economy already, so it will in fact be a really hard job to make wages as important as wealth. And it will be hard to go back. Unions will probably not be effective in this either.

What if we did have funding and could make lives better? We do some of that, the ACA insurance subsidies help people in low income brackets with getting healthcare. Congress can indeed regulate things the employers provide like healthcare and we really need to have paid leave for maternity. The healthcare we have now is in a bad state, though millions are covered compared to before. It will get worse. Trump will undo all regulation of insurance. They will not be required to take sick patients at all. And yes, I know very well the insurance companies have already ruined some of the policies that you can get. Medicare Advantage is a plan that basically denies all but most simple emergency room care.

One problem is the nature of work. Less and less workers are needed in automated factories. The work just is not worth that much if there is a good supply of uneducated people that will take the jobs. The solution is then education? Maybe, but even there we do not have endless jobs for web designers. The countries that pay well to factory workers and service jobs have requirements for training. Their applied science and vocational schools give you a certificate that then allows you to apply for jobs that someone with a high scholl degree will not get.

Will our current workers want to get trained? No, they do not have time for it and it may cost. Other countries educate for free, some even give housing. And the blue collar workers will just work the jobs they have and move as little as possible, until they retire. There just is not motivation to get them to have some credentials. Experience is all they can offer.

So the problem is complicated here. And due to the superficial nature of people following politics they will not see any kind of  cause and effect from Democratic politicians. Both Biden and Harris had proposals that would help out in a few steps, eventually. They were not gifts to give voters directly. Harris did promise small business loans and housing startup support.  As opposed to that, the Trump messages were much easier to understand. "Deport foreigners" and "tax China" were understood by all his voters. The other promises were very vague. It was a used car salesman making promises. You only get to take home the car you bought from him in 2025.

A message to Democrats

 Quit running lawyers and career politicians for Congress and Senate!

The people just can't relate to you. You can't just run people that are clearly labeled as educated and part of the elite. Trump rarely used a word that you would need to go to college to understand. And some that he was supposed to learn he had no clue about (tariffs). But our new candidates mostly need to appear like Marie Perez.

Yes, we can keep all those green funded programs. As long as they create jobs.

The hot potato topics need to be sorted. We can't exactly avoid abortion. Some politicians do in fact need to keep up the fight and have to be vocal. But not the President. That person just needs to pass the laws that his or her party can get through congress on that issue.

Transgender issues need to be focused on recognizing this group as genuine. Forget the bathroom stuff.

The elephant in the room is the wage gap. The low wage jobs are going to be there, there is no way around that. We are not going to have robots stocking shelves at Target anytime soon. Education can only get so many out of the low wage jobs, there are not enough jobs for all of them to be trained and emplyed as...oh...web designers and technical wizards of the Internet age.

Trump somehow offered a fantasy world of an America that no longer imports. Punish China, punish Mexico. This offered the MAGA voters some excuse to vote for him. "It could not hurt, and we need the jobs." The voters also see Democrats sitll (remember Hillary?) on the side of Wall Street and corporations.

Therefore we have to listen to Elizabeth Warren. Tax the rich. We need the tax income to operate modern society. The state and federal governments run endless jobs that are necessary for our security. Make it all very open. The regulation is necessary because, as we see, the Musks of the world will run everything. There are some (very few) good people among billionaires. Some of them will have a fan base. Don't make them look evil (though they are), focus on the message that we made them successful and it is only fair they treat the workers they have and the general public with some understanding. Start with Jeff Bezos. Also, give them credit for starting charitable or non-profit foundations.

As for Trump voters, most of them cannot be reached. Long before Trump, the people that became MAGA hated government. And always will. Probably a good 20-30% of voters. Those are not the people you even address in 2026. But Harris was mostly right in putting a positive future as a goal. The lost people are not going to ever look for anything bright. There is a deep grudge and pessimism that will never disappear for them.

Finally, social media. Your platform issues need to be so short that they can be included in social media post. Use animation if necessary. Yes, we are in a TikTok world.

Trump Voters Fail To Understand Basic Economics...or much of anything

 

"Yeah."

"I did not understand those....words...they use."

This Modern World

Yes yes, I know there is a comic strip with that title. I used to read it. But what we are addressing today is more to do with the WuMo topic here:

In a sense, the person coming out of the green blob is already here. The recent election reminded us of the voters decided based on some trivial item and voted for Trump. And voted nothing else on the entire ballot.

The lack of knowledge about the world by many young voters is shocking. I may have been caught in something very important from my time as a voting age young man: Vietnam. I was quite aware of politics due to that one thing. I even had to think for a minute about my citizenship. in today's elections, Trump foreigners are playing that role. But it now produces the right wing reaction (based on what? mostly film clips on Fox) wheras in my time Vietnam caused a shift to the left among the young. We also had hippies with ideas of sharing the world. The MAGA youth experiences a zero sum world. What is in this for me?

People in general know a lot about some thing, their job for example. Not so much about news or politics. Or even science or medicine. Compared to this extreme specialization of jobs and skills today, we were all "renaissance men" in 1960 or even 1975, when I had a college degreee. I understood a good amount of chemistry and enough of physics related to it. I could use a slide rule, I did addition and subtraction with a pencil and paper. I understood magnetism (it was needed in chemistry) and I had some sense of electronics. I knew to use a thick extension cord if something I needed power to in my yard was far away. Resitance goes up if you use a thin cord. Less power at the other end.

You did not need to college for some sense of the world. Working class people in 1900 were already quite well educated simply by reading the newspaper. They understood their bargaining power. Union busting was a strong effort by rough guys. Now you just use politcs and money.

We also knew how to find things without the internet. We had reference books on topics we did not use daily, but they were available.

There are numerous things Trump kept repeating over and over that are lies. it does not take a lot of effort to find out what tariffs or trade deficits are. Trump ideas could vagely sound as if you are promoting American jobs and goods. If you taxed (the tariff) all imported goods so severely you might end up with American goods taking over. But that would take decades and we would have more expensive goods than before even then. Because our wages are much higher.

Very sepecific things like the Chips Act can promote certain industries. And we CAN in fact enter into things that are new technology related to energy. And we can make electric cars. They are a new thing and now cost more. That will change. The microwave oven took 50 years to make it from labs to kitchens.

The things that Trump will increase prices on are consumer goods. Things the MAGA folk buy at Walmart.

Anyway, it is sad to see this development of people who would be perfectly able to understand things just dismissing them as something liberals promote for some odd reason. Some reason that is going to hurt them someday. Every complex, difficult matter is assumed to be a conspiracy. Find someone you trust to read it and guide you.

Connected to that there is the distrust of science and all experts who know things. It's not that complicated. Even if you distrust vaccines, it is possible to read an article or two on the benefits and dangers. Outside of politics, social sciences and so on, Wikipedia is a completely reliable source of basic facts. For free.

The people have failed us. Based on little information, they have chosen a leader who is putting billionaires in charge and who will make life misearable for most Tump voters.

Lastly, I seem to have entered the age when we seniors can actually say "you young folks just don't know..." But I don't know that any of the Trump voters are actually listening. They have no idea of the world with polio and many of them do not remember what inflation is, even. It happens, and Reagan had a good 5% but seems to have got in because....Jimmy Carter had 9.9%. We had a world event: an oil crisis.

Trump Explained

Donald Trump is a showman. He liked to be on stage, he likes audiences. He is at home at a Trump Rally. In fact he is still campaigning. He will do this for several months. His major plan to deport all the migrants that he labeled a danger will very likely start in 2025. The cost and details will need to be worked out. Laws covering immigrants have just border partol funding. Not deporting millions.

I'm trying to see what 49% of voters saw in a man who is very clearly just an asshole. To most of us.

He talks and talks. Migrants, Hannibal Lecter, tariffs, China. It did not really matter. There were 49% of voters that understood something that he said. It was probably not factual. But it was an outcome they wanted. A true demagogue. Trump appeared genuine to them, and the hatred of certain groups by Trump is genuine. Making fun of liberals appeared somewhat humorous, but these too are real threats. Also the cultural trends have gone quite a ways toward the left in the past few decades. All that needed to be erased too. In the Reagan era this was a big issue, that is why we did not get gay marriage till later.

So part of MAGA era support is for throwing out all the WOKE stuff. TV ads did focus on liberals allowing trans-gender people to identify as such and the schools then at least approving this. In fact, on the local level, schools have been a big issue for ten years. They think schools should teach basic skills. The other stuff, history and so on, cannot address race and gender issues. It was a platform issue due to all that happened during the pandemic. Federal funding for schools is at issue. It may be a lot for poor states. Other states fund themselves.

His opponent was relatively unknown. As VP she could not claim that she personally did some presidential deed. Biden was in on it. The voters also look at a candidate and immediately form a gut feel.

Voters are not able to make any statistical or financial estimate of anything they are deciding on. If Trump said something often enough, it was taken as the probale outcome or truth on any matter.

Trump also took credit for several things Biden or Obama did. I still hear MAGA folk repeating the thing about Child Tax Credit. That was 2021, not Trump.

Biden did none of that, a few speeches here and there. But he was so in the back ground, so presidential, that in this social media world it looks like he did nothing. Fentanyl deaths are down under Biden, but nobodyd said a word about it this year.

Apart from Trump himself, the hatred of government produced the Trump cult. This is a decades old phenomenon.

One more aspect of being disgruntled is that the voters believe the "Democrats have done nothing for me." Biden actually improve healthacare costs and support. But I have to admit that despire ACA, the health care is still a mess in the US. The Democrats have done their best. But lobbyists are always there. Let us see how Trump does with that. He intends to cut corporate tax. That will do absolutely nothing for MAGA folk.

The economy: Trump promised to "fix" the economy. That will not happen with tariffs. The tariffs might bring some jobs, but lose some. He was going to make things affordable. Well, they will be, once wages catch up with inflation. Prices will not come down. Nothing to do with Trump. It is just how inflation works.

The problem of defining treason when Trump is president

I posted this a few places and nobody was willing to debate my idea. The concept that when we have a president who is out to destroy the administrative state, give his donors and backers billions in taxcuts, we can't really label it treason. Even giving Putin data on Ukraine is not treason. Because in a sense THE PRESIDENT IS THE SAME AS THE COUNTRY. If the voters voted for him to do all this, he is doing his job.

The candidates for Trump Cabinet are all going to be questioned by the Senate. But distinguishing their allegiance is going to be difficult. The oath of office is to the constitution and not Trump. But you would then need to find unpatriotic acts and impeach them. Actual crimes would be easier to charge. But the justice department is now Trump's.

The response to that from those who think there is hope is that the 49% of voters is not a mandate from the masses. So changing things very radically and in favor of Trump and say Putin might be considered treason. And what do we do with a treasonous president? We used to impeach them. That is not going to work. Did not work with Democrats in control even.

If Trump says it is patriotic to donate Ukraine to Russia, then it is patriotic to do that. If the FBI destroys every piece of evidence indicating Trump is a criminal, then it is partiotic to do that.

And the Senators? Will do nothing.

And then there is Russia. Tulsi Gabbard will leak info to Russia. It is treason. What do we do? Fire Tulsi and impeach Trump?

As far as domestic matters go, there I was able to find minimal information. The military are not required to obay Trump in cases where it would break the law. Their oath is not to Trump. Despite Hegseth claiming such an oath.

Heading into the 2025 disaster of the Trump II era

The earlier post expressed my disappointment at voters in my state. It was not so much that they would go for Trump a second time, it is that they full well knew he will be close to a dictator. About the only thing holding him back is the federal court system and the states themselves. Those can maybe guarantee a fair 2026 election. We can still hang on to some first amendment rights. But any federal worker resisting Trump now or in the past (Vindman) will be prosecuted.

The somewhat low numbers of voters for Harris are actually not low. Enough people showed up because it was an important election. Harris got more votes than Trump did in 2016 where he only won by the electoral college. He got 62,984,828.

We may start to think about future elections. But the problem is bigger than message and policy. Some 49% of the voters got very little of the message from Harris. We can only follow the news and see how much of the Trump disaster (guaranteed) can get through to the voters by 2026. The social media and so on dominated in 2024. Facts were irrelevant. But if Trump starts cutting off things people need we may have a chance.

The low information voters showed up in good numbers, even though the total voters were about the same as 2016 and earlier national elections. They got to decide who the president is based on "I'm somewhat worse off than I was in 2020 and I have no idea about the economy, really." They do not quite understand inflation. Young voters do not recall inflation in their lives and the rest sort of forget what happened in 2008 or the Reagan era. We had inflation. My first mortgage was at 13% under Reagan. What happens after inflation is that the wages slowly creep up so that you can keep the economy running. The voter does not notice that.  The prices NEVER come down except some goods that had an issue (eggs...bird flu) or because production was low in the pandemic.

The Pandemic itself ran from the spring of 2020 to about two years later. I talk to Trump voters and they think he bailed them out. He did not. The child tax credit was for 2021, for example. In any case no pandemic type of relief programs will come in 2025. More likely Elon Musk will get tax relief. If the voters think Trump gave them something, they were wrong. Gas prices and eggs, sure, but nothing to do with Trump.

And here we are. Trump has taken this message (a win over Harris by less than 2% and not getting over 50% of the votes) as a mandate from the masses. A good portion of young males voted also to bring down "government excess." Any benefits to seniors or any other group and all that regulation was seen as bad. They even saw vaccines as some evil thing the elites invented. None of them recall the vaccinations they got as a kid.

What Trump will do for a number of things will be impulsive. Woodward in one of his books (War?) located an interview he did with Trump as a NY businessman. Trump discussed buying things. He has a gut feeling and does it. He does not ask for any financial analysis. As president it will all be for show. He will not allow Nippon Steel to buy US Steel. Simply because it will not look good for him.

Trump being so impulsive may lead to unexpected results. He makes personal connections to leaders and this may even lead to China gaining something for four years. Musk has contracts with China for Tesla supplies.

The young males showed up to vote for one thing: Trump. Nothing else on the ballot mattered. Perhaps it sounded cool and strong that this tired old man was going to be dictator for one day.

The middle aged men sit behind him at rallies. One photo had one half in cowboy hats, the other in trump hats. Oklahoma maybe? These are the cult from back in 2016. They will be difficult to approach in any manner. They have an axe to grind with liberals. It will never end. Even as Trump takes away the ACA (they might need it at age 60-65) nothing will change their minds. The only hope we have there is that Trump will not fix the economy. He will not. Inflation may be under control but the workers there will never get the raises to be the equal to the upper middle class. So my guess is that they will never admit being wrong, but will sort of fade out of political activity and voting in 2-4 years. There cannot be another Trump for them. Trump is a lame duck and that will be more and more apparent by 2026. He does not have the strength to carry on much past that, he is not well.

The undecideds, low information voters and so on, that went to Trump in the last few weeks, those people can be brought back in 2026. Or they will stay home. For them the election was a referendum on Biden. Biden got the blame for not bringing America a decent standard of living for the working classes. It was not doable in four years, and the GOP has persisted in blocking major changes. These would require a higher tax for the rich permanently. Then the government would be able to direct things such as housing. Which Harris would actually have tackled.

Immigrants...Trump's big challenge

Trump's MAGA folk have rejected all but white American culture. Immigrants are rejected widely. The ones to be deported are going to be the focus in 2025. This will be a test for MAGA. If Trump succeeds enough with this...deporting say 500 000 in two years (unlikely number, as it will cost and they have to go SOMEWHERE, not clear where) then the MAGA people will show up in 2026 and keep the GOP in power. If Trump fails with that, then they will just say, "oh well, we tried" and tune out from politics.

Sadly, even Latinos already here voted against Harris. One was interviewed by ProPublica. She is in fact illegally here, and she had her two American kids vote for Trump.

MOST CLAIMS NOT TRUE

The claim about government endlessly growing and too big and Ramaswamy and Musk ordered to cut it down was popular for a while. Well, it is not true. It has not grown. It is about 3 million workers. There are a good number of contractors now, also paid for some term in the contract for their work. Those are easier to control year to year.

Who knew? Trump has to write his own constitution

 Get someone out there with a legal pad. Here are the instructions. Trump will bring the Sharpie.

Michael Lewis gives us a preview of Trump's second term

                                  

The election is over. We will probably never get full clarity on everything related to the electorate. Biden, who led the country for four years, was perceived as weak. Quite clearly the majority of voters choose on a gut feel basis. "I feel that Biden is to blame for my own situation."

Trump's next moves had already been announced to those who follow news and politics. Project 2025 lists everything the right wing wants to do. It might not have been very clear to the voters that Trump intends to dismantle a large part of the so-called "administrative state." The heads of the cabinets under him are chosen precisely to stop all the so called waste. New ones are chosen for the positions to minimize excessive government rules. A number of these cabinets are not mentioned in the constitution. George Bush and Jimmy Carter both added one cabinet level. According to the news, tens of thousands of civil servants in those cabinet institutions will be replaced by party supporters. Bureaucrats are not be trusted. Bureaucrats working under the Treasury Department are more difficult to replace. In addition, the head of the central bank cannot be changed. Its leader would not change until the election year 2026.

Our government has almost three million employees. The right-wing's dissatisfaction with civil servants came to the fore already at the beginning of 2017. Michael Lewis had time to study the bureaucrats in 2018 during Trump's training term. Trump's ideas were guided by Steve Bannon, and their solution was not to appoint secretaries at all. For a long time, the departments were managed by deputy directors.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration manages a wide range of activities. The agency under the Department of Commerce is responsible for shipping, weather, space programs and related projects. The Weather Bureau operates under it and feeds weather forecasts to every television station. Airlines and the FAA also need weather information for the safety of airplanes.

NOAA got Barry Myers as its chief. He owned the AccuWeather channel and was a lawyer by training. Under him, the government's free weather service began to be restricted so that AccuWeather and other commercial channels would get more customers and advertising revenue. The danger was that citizens would not get accurate information about hurricanes and tornadoes. In addition to weather reporting  NOAA had 12,000 employees, whose work Myers could not manage because he was not technically competent.

According to Lewis, accusations of state keeping us in the dark are largely baseless. Each department had websites where you could find out about drugs, pollution, climate change, crime, etc. Many agencies had consumer oriented pages that helped you plan your safety and health. Now, according to Trump's order, information referring to climate change was removed from the public at all websites. FEMA information from disaster areas was removed. Negative feedback with consumers about banking was removed as was any safety in our investments. It was pointless for the citizen to search for free information about any security issue. When the data was removed, it supported Trump's and the right's view that the state is doing nothing. Disasters kept coming, so why have FEMA?

At the very beginning of the book, the Department of Energy, DOE, is described. The staff prepared for the new manager's arrival with folders and presentations and organizing meetings. Everything was ready. At the other end was only a lobbyist hired by Trump who specialized in fossil fuels. A person named Thomas Pyle eventually entered the discussion. He prepared a survey on the use of coal and the staff's opinions on the use of coal as energy. Based on that, a large number of senior DOE employees were removed before Trump took office. Rick Perry was appointed secretary. He wanted to end the whole DOE, and served as head for three years. The DOE budget was probably a fourth earmarked for the treatment of old nuclear waste. It was now enough to keep the waste in a safe place and secure. Other energy projects were Solyndra, an energy project with solar panels that failed. The department still had 100,000 people working across the country. The secretary never tried to find out what his department was doing. Lewis lists quite thoroughly what the DOE continued to do without leadership. Perry's "deputy" John J. MacWilliams ran the facility. With those forces, risks were reduced, for example, in the electricity distribution network. That was the fifth risk on Lewis's list, which also included the uranium needed for Iran's nuclear reactor.

We can expect those same leaders in the cabinets in 2025. They are there mainly to dismantle the department they themselves run. If some risks still need to be managed, the usage of money must be kept to a minimum and the problems must be left to the next president to deal with.

A somewhat more recent book by Lewis is The Premonition: A Pandemic Story. It covers the first year of the pandemic. The future of vaccination is now somewhat uncertain, but you can still get vaccines if you pay for them yourself. Pandemics, on the other hand, largely remain under the control of the state. The book gives a very good picture of that, California as an example. But of course we are a country, so failure of some states will allow pandemics to last longer.

People involved with the HHS appointment and a bunch of Trump insiders have started to push the "vaccines are not safe" propaganda already. Link:

https://www.threads.net/@renee.diresta/post/DCx1RwFRgDz?xmt=AQGzZoVQnWipmw_l5HFYJzPur_eD9XluA9TwGIVY_9_vJw

The expected trend:

Looking ahead, Musk and Ramaswamy (who have no power) propose to get rid or 75% of the federal work force, with the IRS, FBI, ATF etc. completely disappearing.

The Lewis book outlines a lot of necessary departements, which are there for our safety. Is there something we cans slash safely for four years, at least? Yes, research. Medical research, drug research in colleges, many types of chemistry (think Lithium batteries) and countless practical fields are funded by the USA. Graduate student scholarships to do research. All that can be scrapped. Industry does not invent new chemical reactions, for example (many can't be patented, they are there for common good). All that will need to be scrapped for now. And in the long run we will not be the leader in innovation anymore. China will be. They will also do many types of public constuction. We can't build the Hoover Dams that the future technology will need.

At first it will look like the Trump cabinet appointees will just run political depaertments, aimed at advancing Trump's causes. Get rid of IRA staff so the wealthy cannot be taxed. But in some departments it will be worse. Congress cannot fire cabinet heads. They can maybe impeach them. But the head of the FBI only reports to DOJ, which also a Trump appointee. In practice Kash Patel cannot do wrong. If he does exactly as Trump wishes, witch hunts of Democrats will start immediately. The Republican Senate will also take part in this. 

Homeland Security reports to the White House. Hopefully the department will still keep us safe from terrorism while Patel is dismantling the FBI and burning all of Trump's papers from Mar a Lago.

The Federal Government

The government is seen as a bunch of people out there...in DC...trying to run our lives. The Democrats are seen as elites. The Republicans also were seen as largely controlled by corporations.

This all changed with Trump. He pointed mostly to regulations. But also to the behaviors that changed on the part of MAGA supporters. The rules of the game. Now it is perfectly OK to point to foreigners as someone to reject, throw out. Even women are to return to a lesser role. MAGA voters are finally able to say just exactly what they think. All topics that they label woke and connect to the federal government. In practice it was mostly fairness in hiring that the feds carried out.

The hatred of federal government has always been there, but MAGA folk can now say they want to reduce it to basically nothing. Government is nothing but waste. Too much regulation!

To achieve this, they voted for Trump. Many showed up to vote for one line of the ballot: president. The down ballot stuff is just....polticians, issues, regular poltics. They do not care so much about that. Let my local people vote in whoever and run things in my states. Let's keep the feds out of it.

I posted a little thing at one of our congressmen's Facebook page. He is in a purple district.

I said: 

Would you like to have the "elected back 2026" award? You will need to stop Trump from repealing the ACA and Elon from cutting my SS by 30%. You and 10 others in blue districts.

Trumpster said:

hahaha your a moron

That is as eloquent as Trumpsters get.

There was some thought in the post below that:

Quit patting yourself on the back. It's time to clean up our Government and cut it down. You've had no problem spending money we didn't have. Now its time to clean house .

The congressman has a hard time. He needs to see when Trumpism is waning. At that time he can talk regular issues. He can look like supporting some benefits. But also look like a frugal Republican, the old time Republican from our state.


As far as the MAGA folk go, they will actually not learn much from the next 2 or 4 years. The government does a lot of invisible stuff for citizens. The benefits are not obvious. Think of it as the oxygen mask in the airplane. It's up there, probably. I have never seen one come down. But it will save your life if the air plane undergoes a number of dangerous events. And it can still fly you to the nearest airport.

Or you can compare the government to ecology. If you remove a species from a habitat, the effects will be seen a few steps up or down the food chain. We can't kill all mosquitos for example. The effects of the animals also relate to the vegetation. So the governmnet is like that. A complex invisible hand. Just like Capitalism is, on the "free" side.

WHAT WILL WE SEE IN 2025?

Pretty much the same as in 2016, but much worse. Michael Lewis went through the important cabinet postitions in this book in 2018. The guy that owns AccuWeather got to run the Weather Bureau. The dpartment of energy is not just about drilling. It covers nuclear reactors and nuclear waste and so on. I'm re-reading it now.

Welcome to Trump World

 

Decisions Decisions

I came to this college town and state capitol to retire. It is a good size city for culture. Compared to my native Finland, it is the size of Tampere. I had been here a year, then Trump happened. largely an agricultural state, it has tended to be conservative, but mostly in the penny pinching sense on public spending. Abortion was an issue and the voters just fixed it to 12 weeks, forever.

What I am now thinking is that the state has gone too far into Trumpism. They can use a lot of low wage workers in agriculture and food industry. But that was not on their mind when they voted Trump in by 60%. In 2020 there seemed to be some hesitancy. They went 58% Trump and 39% Biden. My county went about 50/50. It was the same in 2016, 58% Trump. Harris and Biden got the same 39% in our state. Not even after the pandemic disaster did they think Democrats would have a better solution in matters where the federal government is needed and can act swiflty.

Even if my state had gone for Nikki Haley, things would have gone normally. Trump tariffs will actually ruin our soybean markets. Farming will in general require subsidies to survive.

The 2016 election can maybe be excused. They have always voted republican. Now we have Project 2025. The idea of getting rid of the administrative state is clearly there. I am guessing half of the 60% Trump supporters would know of it and approve it.

The pandemic did nothing, people continued working in meat packing plants and dying of covid. Our governor tried to block statitics reaching the public from the counties with meat packing plants. That was not enough mismanagement to change elections, for example to 50% Trump and 50% Biden in the next election. They ignored it. "Too much regulation, masks were awful."

Rural people seem to isolate themselves and disregard a good part of poltics. Hospitals and healthcare is a state level issue. The state has failed to provide rural healthcare. They did not expect any federal aid in that. So they vote mostly on cultural values.

The Democrats have always backed the farm bill, they must know that.

Religion does come into politics strongly. I won't discuss details here.

Overall, it seems I have a very condescending view of my state's voters. It is. Not only that, Trump was the con man and they were the mark. The idea of the foreigners invading the USA is easy to convince. Just use the right video clips on Fox News. But beyond that, convincing 60% of my state that cutting taxes for billionaires will produce a good economy is quite a stretch. That takes some skill. If the election is just a casual event in their lives, that is just as bad. It should take a little more effort than making your weekly shopping list. Young males were apparently easily fooled by Trump and the likes of Joe Rogan. Here the comaprison is that they put as much thought into voting as in buying a new TV. Politics is just not part of their life. Other than watching the occasional Joe Rogan.

Just a very brief note to Democrats: if the election is with someone like Trump running, the policies are nothing. There were issues, sure, abortion and Trump's foreigners. But the Democrat needs to test out their speaking manner and approach to low information voters next time. Those voters are hard to get interested in politcs at all. But now they felt they had a complaint. Many were young enough to never have had a major inflation to deal with. Test focus groups next time. When we have a whole year to run a campaign. Now we had some 100 days.

The voting in my state is mostly based on rurals watching Fox News. Let's take a quick off topic view of the national picture:

Masses of people…young men, Latinos, wannabe libertarians, incels, Joe Rogan fans…are not interested in politics. The president is just a guy that seems to lead the country but what he does is not all that clear. Something vaguely like West Wing. So these people have to make some bond with the presidential candidate on some weak evidence. Trump dancing to YMCA, Kamala with "understand the assignment," AOC and her cheerful leading of progressive ideas. Left, right…not a big deal. They relate to the candidate the same as to an entertainer.

I have good relations with people I interact with, and I did not get the idea that I am poisoning their blood. But I really can't tolerate the fact they think newcomers would do that.

I have lived in eight states. Jobs dictated three of them. This time I have options. I relly can't afford to live on the coasts, but other options are open.

Where will we go? Medical care will be a primary factor. Our state is small. The penny pinching philosophy does not add any state level health coverage. For the poor, our governor tried to block Medicaid expansion. We forced him with a referendum (our state is not totally hopeless!). They are all national plans and the Obamacare choise is one company, if you are 60-65. I am on Medicare, which will weaken for two years at least. I would be looking at the state healthcare rules and in general the safety net they have put up. Nearby there are states with bigger populations that have better safety nets to survive the Trump II term. It will not be Missouri for sure, already tried that. 

We rather carefully chose a city we were familiar with and where we can function with one car. We have even gone to a football game several times on bikes. It will be difficult to match the plus sides of the city with another one. It should not be more "republican" than the 50%. Basically there is just one. The one where my wife and I both went to grad school. it is quite possible that our present city will return to the pre-Trump state in four years. But will the country?

America itself has offered me opportunities, and I made some major decisions right after the Carter era. I could have gone elsewhere at the latest in 1982. After that I was stuck here. The large wage disparity and divisive politics of this decade were somewhat visible. Not so clearly going to the extremes that they have. But Reagan led the way.

2024 Election

I have not got much support for my idea, but here goes. In this Internet age, we have completely lost patience. Many voters grew up with internet in most of their life. The result will be that we will have a string of presidents seving ONE TERM. Not two consecutive terms.

The media are definitely reaching voters. They knew of all the polling. States with a Democratic majority in most elections had low turnout as they knew Harris would win. California is still counting. It may be that both candidates get about 72 million votes in the end.

There were groups that seemed to react merely by gut feeling. Young black or Latino males in Michigan voted for the alpha male. Similar voters were able to vote for Biden 2020. It's easier to be the alpha male....if you are a male. And the abortion issue that should have won the election for Harris appears to have done nothing. Trump actually gained women voters. Threre the pro-life movement appears to be still quite stong.

But from those groups, abortion made little difference to white women (Guardian) :

The excitement to defeat Trump was definitely there in 2020. Looking at Pennsylvania.

Then in 2024 it was Trump that got almost the same number as Biden got in 2020. It cannot be the same 3.4 million that voted for Biden and now Trump, it just looks comical. The shift was some 100 000 voters. So even though Michigan was maybe doable for Harris (if she had had a whole year to campaign) this PA group of shifting voters was again decisive. NBC profiled Latino voters. They seemed to just want to blindly believe in a Trump economy to come. The black voters cannot be blamed, but it is odd that Biden had the huge turnout. He even won Georgia with a large percentage of black voters.

It may be noted that Harris was not just a woman but a vice president. Typically they do not do well, having sometimes spent almost eight years almost invisible to the general public.

Prediction for 2028: they will run a male governor.

From a blog, found a claim that there is a belief that Democrats do nothing...ever...for rural people:

People in big cities who can’t understand countryside anger don’t remember this experience, because this only happened in the countryside. Most people now laughing at Trump supporters for “voting against their interests” have not felt abandoned by all sides of their government yet. That must be nice.

That is largely an impression they get. Partly it is true because the very visible benefits of federal support are in cities. Not in small towns.

LOOKING FORWARD

It's one thing to think about us (Mike Johnson is out to wipe out all that remains of the New Deal, let alone Biden deals), but we also have to consider Ukraine. This may get resolved. And Putin may get some property without losing face. Trump and Vance claim the Nobel Peace Prize.

Then what? We have to fight to preserve what we have left of democracy. Then we need to think of 2028. Morning Joe was trashing the Democratic Party this morning. We have to abandon all wokism, presumably climate issues etc. Because we can't talk to the working man anymore. Well, that is all nonsense. We can keep all the policies, trans gender and all. We are a coalition. It has cat ladies and many single issue groups. No, we need a GUY. And I mentioned governors. We have one. Tim Walz will do it, he will joke and make fun of the failures of Trumpism and the frail old man that Trump will be. Or Vance running Trumpism. No wokism needs to be dumped. No need to talk about those issues so much. There are economy issues and a little more of the inclusiveness we have tried. And Walz can repeat one of Kamala's messages: Trump's party is one of hatred. We need to end that.

 Bring farmers on board. We help them as much as the GOP ever did. And..if Walz is not what the primaries want, then bring an actual Democratic Farmer on board. John Tester.

From my social media I am getting a lot of fear. Trump will do a lot of damage in two years. But as he is not in terribly good health, we will see him decline by year two. There is really nobody to take over him that has long term support. Yes, I am disappointed at the GOP since January 6th. But there is still hope. A lot of the worst will hit us this January. We will see what can be done.

It's time

 

We are going to win this. About 273-275 for Harris. Any way we can. It could even go this way.

Nov 6th:
Well, it did not go that way. PA was supposed to end up with small edge for one or the other and a recount. It did not go that way. The upper Midwest should all have gone about this way. Harris had the disadvantages of 1. being a woman 2. being a part of the Biden administration, which blue collar workers had grown to hate.

Finally, some satire from my firend Kari:

How can Trump do those things that all the Democrat presidents could not?

 As we get closer to the election more and more of the low information voters are coming out. These Elon fan boys are now Trump voters. They seem to have no idea how government works. And do not care.

Others are coming out and saying "it's not going to be so bad." After all, how can Trump do those things that all the Democrat presidents could not?

It's simple. None of the departments and none of the so called administrative state are required by the Constitution. It might be a little difficult to dismantle the Treasury. But for the most part the departments are strictly there so the president does not have to run every government function. If the DOE is not needed, then scrap it. If the EPA is bad...not even a cabinet level department...scrap it. All these things require is a presidential order. There is no budget required to eliminate a department. A building left to be auctioned off.

There are in fact laws that set up departments like the DEA. They do get funding, normally. But it is entirely up to the Trump appointed head of the EPA (could be an oil executive under Trump) whether to enforce the laws. One of the objections to environmental matters is that to enforce the rules and to sue polluters, you still have to go to court. Both sides paying the lawyers. A link to EPA laws:

https://www.epa.gov/laws-regulations/laws-and-executive-orders

If an authority over some matter comes up, the Supreme Court will rule that the federal government has no authority over this matter. It could could be the US Fish and Wildlife Service or some similar agency.

No Democrat ever proposed to scrap the federal governmnet and run a bare bones operation. Make money and run a military would be all that is required. Trump can round up the immigrants with his army if that is his plan. Use army funds to house the camps. Pull out military bases from the entire world.

The lines are getting blurry. The President can also cut funding. He cannot fund new things, but there is a way to cut spending:

“We can simply choke off the money,” Trump said in a 2023 campaign video. “For 200 years under our system of government, it was undisputed that the president had the constitutional power to stop unnecessary spending.”

His plan, known as “impoundment,” threatens to provoke a major clash over the limits of the president’s control over the budget. The Constitution gives Congress the sole authority to appropriate the federal budget, while the role of the executive branch is to dole out the money effectively. But Trump and his advisers are asserting that a president can unilaterally ignore Congress’ spending decisions and “impound” funds if he opposes them or deems them wasteful.

(From Propublica, by Molly Redden )

Voting guide

For your undecided friends and relatives. The man is not well. He is not fit to be president of any country. If he quits, you get Vance. Who is not quite human.

 

It may take some effort for them to see who Trump is. Mostly a fake.

If they are still "I just don't know about Kamala..." remind them of their duty to the country:

Finally, a word on polls from Jeff:

It seems that FOREIGNERS are indeed Trump's trump card

 He does not seem to be winning in other areas, so it makes sense to repeat the claim, from Ohio to Colorado to California.

I took a few wild guessed in the 538 polling game.

I took the view that the ones that agree to answer at all are angry about 1 migrants or 2 abortion.

You can do your own guessing here:

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/donald-trump-poll-quiz-2024/