Trump's bargain with swing voters was that he would deliver a strong economy and they would look past his many defects. By attacking Iran, Trump has broken the deal.
Between Trump & Netanyahu the number of Own Goals from this mess... impressive.
A quibble on the energy & climate front: the electrification front is less problematic from the PoV economically of being as you and several others frame it as hydrocarbons / IC vs Renenergy/EV than Democrats not grappling with Supply & Demand and having realistic open eyes about the actual current binding constraints which is... permits - grid, grid, grid.
The base economics on electrification are excellent now on modern tehcnology (which is why China has started eating Germany's industrial cake) but one needs a massive upgrading and expansion of the grid, both transmission (long-distance) and distribution (really this is needed no matter what mode of generation one goes for, gas, nuclear, whatever, given data centers, given industrial systems electrification due to the basics of efficiciency - forget the consumer retail view of things)
Regulatory reform - making buildings faster and easier, and also a real national grid like almost all developed economies (really all) have - not the weird 60s era mishmash US has now - that needs a kind of strategic Eisenhower-highways type federal engagement but the economic returns will be brilliant if done.
(I write this from perspective of someone who finances this stuff, industrial scale self-gen, industrial process equip etc)
I'll keep beating this drum; we really underrate the importance of high interest rates as to why Trump's approval on the economy and Trump's approval generally have gotten so low (and why Biden's remained low even after the worst of the Post pandemic inflation abated).
2008 to 2022 is 14 years and is quite a long time in most people's average lifespan. I know nowadays we talk about ZIRP as only a 2020-2021 phenomenon. But I feel pretty comfortable in saying that we should think of ZIRP as post Great Recession reality for most Americans lived experience. Even if it we weren't in ZIRP circumstances on a technical level, for the average person, we were functionally in a ZIRP environment. This meant low mortgage rates, low interest rates for cars, low interest rates for start ups which is how you end up with the "millennial" subsidy. There is a significant portion of Americans who's entire adult lives were lived in a super low interest rate environment.
It's not just that inflation reached its highest level in 40 years, but interest rates reached it's highest level since 2007. But unlike (to an extent) with Biden (we can debate how much 2021 stimulus contributed to inflation another day), it's really hard to make a case that Trump isn't solely responsible for interest rates being higher than necessary. Between the OBBA (think we underrate the impact this bill had on the 10-year being higher than 4% despite multiple rate cuts), the "Mad King" insanity of his tariff policies and now the "Mad King" manner he is conducting the Iran war, interest rates and borrowing costs remaining high can all be directly attributable to Trump actions. Like honestly, if he had actually spent his second term just playing golf in Mar-A-Lago and literally doing nothing, he is almost certainly at least 5 points more popular in polling thane his now and likely much more.
I simply can't get over the failure to fill up the SPR. It was such an obvious an easy win. And it's not like it would have given away the game. A Republican filling the SPR is the most uninteresting thing ever.
I sometimes wonder if Trump thought attacking Iran would produce the much-discussed "rally around the flag" effect, and reverse his polling numbers. And maybe since his Venezuela adventure seemed to go okay, he figured military action is a freebie. Throw in the reality that Republicans are always eager to attack some Middle Eastern nation and it becomes easy to understand recent events.
Pundits always underestimate just how unpopular Trump really is, possibly because the voters themselves forget every four years or so. They they elect him and remember, oh, wait, we don't like this guy. No one should be surprised that Trump does foolish things; the real wonder is that he hasn't done more of them.
He thought he'd get a quick easy decapitation and we'd have a friendly-ish government there. Take out Venezuela and Iran and we're choking off our enemies and rivals. (75% of Venezuela's oil and 90% of Iran's went to China.) The oil would continue to flow, we'd just have more of a say where.
If it had worked it would have looked like genius. Maybe doing the capitation at the same time ash the mass protests, there may have been a revolution in Iran.
He truly has gotten to a point where less people are believing his lies. This is a great thing. They aren't buying his LONG drawn out stories like he used to. And so many other things that people are ignoring. Well when you do what he does a1nd try to white wash what he says. It truly is boring. And most people have just moved on from here
You're taking it for granted that this war cannot be won. Why? WW2 looked similarly hopeless not too long before Allied victory (see Operation Market Garden and the subsequent Dutch famine). All we know about Iran so far is that it cannot be won on the level of quick aerial strikes; but that would be an exception rather than the rule. The idea that the West definitionally can only lose a war of attrition, no matter how weak the enemy, is standard fare for Putin and his favorite philosophers, but a strange one to be accepted by American commentators.
The Strait of Hormuz is a major problem, but not an unsolvable one; the Russians keep attacking the port of Odessa and yet it remains in use. And we've heard quite a few doom prophecies about half the world dying of hunger when the war in the Black Sea started!
I never know how to distinguish whether this is actually, really, truly the time that Trump harms himself politically in a meaningful way. Just because you invoke all the previous times we thought that and were wrong doesn't mean you're right this time.
"Now we will finally see what happens politically when Donald Trump makes choices that wreck Americans’ personal financial situations en masse."
Arguably, we saw that once before with Covid. Ironically, Trump followed most expert opinion and shut down the economy, much to his detriment. I suspect he might have won again in 2020 had the economy not taken that Covid related hit. This time, of course, it's far worse, especially as POTUS pretty well ignored expert opinion and went with his "gut" (and the Israeli PM) to engage in a foolish war of choice.
Between Trump & Netanyahu the number of Own Goals from this mess... impressive.
A quibble on the energy & climate front: the electrification front is less problematic from the PoV economically of being as you and several others frame it as hydrocarbons / IC vs Renenergy/EV than Democrats not grappling with Supply & Demand and having realistic open eyes about the actual current binding constraints which is... permits - grid, grid, grid.
The base economics on electrification are excellent now on modern tehcnology (which is why China has started eating Germany's industrial cake) but one needs a massive upgrading and expansion of the grid, both transmission (long-distance) and distribution (really this is needed no matter what mode of generation one goes for, gas, nuclear, whatever, given data centers, given industrial systems electrification due to the basics of efficiciency - forget the consumer retail view of things)
Regulatory reform - making buildings faster and easier, and also a real national grid like almost all developed economies (really all) have - not the weird 60s era mishmash US has now - that needs a kind of strategic Eisenhower-highways type federal engagement but the economic returns will be brilliant if done.
(I write this from perspective of someone who finances this stuff, industrial scale self-gen, industrial process equip etc)
I'll keep beating this drum; we really underrate the importance of high interest rates as to why Trump's approval on the economy and Trump's approval generally have gotten so low (and why Biden's remained low even after the worst of the Post pandemic inflation abated).
2008 to 2022 is 14 years and is quite a long time in most people's average lifespan. I know nowadays we talk about ZIRP as only a 2020-2021 phenomenon. But I feel pretty comfortable in saying that we should think of ZIRP as post Great Recession reality for most Americans lived experience. Even if it we weren't in ZIRP circumstances on a technical level, for the average person, we were functionally in a ZIRP environment. This meant low mortgage rates, low interest rates for cars, low interest rates for start ups which is how you end up with the "millennial" subsidy. There is a significant portion of Americans who's entire adult lives were lived in a super low interest rate environment.
It's not just that inflation reached its highest level in 40 years, but interest rates reached it's highest level since 2007. But unlike (to an extent) with Biden (we can debate how much 2021 stimulus contributed to inflation another day), it's really hard to make a case that Trump isn't solely responsible for interest rates being higher than necessary. Between the OBBA (think we underrate the impact this bill had on the 10-year being higher than 4% despite multiple rate cuts), the "Mad King" insanity of his tariff policies and now the "Mad King" manner he is conducting the Iran war, interest rates and borrowing costs remaining high can all be directly attributable to Trump actions. Like honestly, if he had actually spent his second term just playing golf in Mar-A-Lago and literally doing nothing, he is almost certainly at least 5 points more popular in polling thane his now and likely much more.
I simply can't get over the failure to fill up the SPR. It was such an obvious an easy win. And it's not like it would have given away the game. A Republican filling the SPR is the most uninteresting thing ever.
I sometimes wonder if Trump thought attacking Iran would produce the much-discussed "rally around the flag" effect, and reverse his polling numbers. And maybe since his Venezuela adventure seemed to go okay, he figured military action is a freebie. Throw in the reality that Republicans are always eager to attack some Middle Eastern nation and it becomes easy to understand recent events.
Pundits always underestimate just how unpopular Trump really is, possibly because the voters themselves forget every four years or so. They they elect him and remember, oh, wait, we don't like this guy. No one should be surprised that Trump does foolish things; the real wonder is that he hasn't done more of them.
He thought he'd get a quick easy decapitation and we'd have a friendly-ish government there. Take out Venezuela and Iran and we're choking off our enemies and rivals. (75% of Venezuela's oil and 90% of Iran's went to China.) The oil would continue to flow, we'd just have more of a say where.
If it had worked it would have looked like genius. Maybe doing the capitation at the same time ash the mass protests, there may have been a revolution in Iran.
He truly has gotten to a point where less people are believing his lies. This is a great thing. They aren't buying his LONG drawn out stories like he used to. And so many other things that people are ignoring. Well when you do what he does a1nd try to white wash what he says. It truly is boring. And most people have just moved on from here
You're taking it for granted that this war cannot be won. Why? WW2 looked similarly hopeless not too long before Allied victory (see Operation Market Garden and the subsequent Dutch famine). All we know about Iran so far is that it cannot be won on the level of quick aerial strikes; but that would be an exception rather than the rule. The idea that the West definitionally can only lose a war of attrition, no matter how weak the enemy, is standard fare for Putin and his favorite philosophers, but a strange one to be accepted by American commentators.
The Strait of Hormuz is a major problem, but not an unsolvable one; the Russians keep attacking the port of Odessa and yet it remains in use. And we've heard quite a few doom prophecies about half the world dying of hunger when the war in the Black Sea started!
I never know how to distinguish whether this is actually, really, truly the time that Trump harms himself politically in a meaningful way. Just because you invoke all the previous times we thought that and were wrong doesn't mean you're right this time.
Ah! Well. Nevertheless,
"Now we will finally see what happens politically when Donald Trump makes choices that wreck Americans’ personal financial situations en masse."
Arguably, we saw that once before with Covid. Ironically, Trump followed most expert opinion and shut down the economy, much to his detriment. I suspect he might have won again in 2020 had the economy not taken that Covid related hit. This time, of course, it's far worse, especially as POTUS pretty well ignored expert opinion and went with his "gut" (and the Israeli PM) to engage in a foolish war of choice.