It must be hard writing columns everyday about who supports who and what effect actions taken today will have in even 2 years. The next presidential election is of course three years down the road. Will anything today have an effect then? Let’s see a poll of likely Dem candidates against Trump. From an independent’s point of view, the Dems have no one and no one getting prepared. There are a lot making themselves unelectable. MAGA didn’t elect Trump, bases won’t win the next presidential election either. Common sense dictates a wait and see attitude. Better a few hurt because of policies rather than millions dead because of “leaders” here who consider them fodder to weaken one’s enemies. That will be the test. If the armed conflicts of now are settled, how really doesn’t matter, treaties are signed and peace is what many see, the war mongers, whether they are or not, will stay out of power. And insulting the up and coming young leaders and activist of tomorrow, working hard today to make their world better than what the Boomers want to hand them is not a good idea. The Dems have already started to alienate them. The “employees” of DOGE are the leaders of tomorrow.
Informative reporting. It is not surprise that Trump is greatly underwater with $100K+ earners. Under Biden they made money hand over fist, and enjoyed other perks. Biden's Covid response, allowed them to work from home, some permanently. It allowed many highly paid workers to leave high cost and high crime urban areas, and relocate to cheaper housing and better schools.
Next, the trillions of printed dollars, inflated assets at a faster rate than most times in history. Biden increased government spending by 47%. Home owners watched their housing values explode, after many locked in 2% interest rates. Like housing, the stock market also soared. The WSJ recently reported in the US 10% of Americans now account for 50% of all spending.
Many of the printed trillions went to NGOs. That greatly expanded non profit job opportunities for those with liberal arts degrees. Unbelievably, nearly 10% of all US private sector jobs are now with nonprofits. These jobs pay well, without a STEM or professional degree, and are often derived thru family connections, with little need to show productivity.
Also, Biden's open border, drove down the cost of domestic labor. Upper middle class families use domestics in droves. 2 high powered careers, often with travel, can require multiple nannies, and at least 1, around the clock. Add a cook and/or housekeeper. The open border, greatly expanded the supply of domestics, which keeps their pay low.
60+ days is probably a little early to know if Trump will expand his base. Imagine, what a review of Medicaid and Medicare will reveal. Probably a plethora of expensive, unnecessary testing and programs. Think colonoscopies in hospice, and pap smears for women with hysterectomies. Medicaid rolls exploded under Biden. 37% of Californians are enrolled. This is extraordinary, for a program devised to provided health care to poor women and children, and the disabled.
Perhaps Americans really are incensed about fired federal employees. However, considering federal compensation, including perks and pensions, averages over $100K a year, and the median US family income is $77K a year, the empathy may be limited. To say nothing of DOGE reveals. Many Americans had no idea millions were invested to study trans animals, along with funding 3rd world sex change operations and millions to the Taliban, each month. The election commercials, almost write themselves.
It is too early to tell of course, and polls are going to be skewed to favor the left as they always are. IMO, the blitzkreig approach to DOGE is to weed out the activists who were going to sabotage his administration, the DEI / environmental activists who add no value, and to dismantle the funding for the democrat party / NGO apparatus that funds and advances their politics.
Of course there will be caterwauling in the media, and that is to be expected. I suspect that by eliminating the partisan activists in government, it reduces the potential for malevolent compliance, and people will realize the sky hasn't fallen.
So, I don't think Trump is necessarily building his coalition, though I don't see a bunch of people wanting to join the cabal of disaffected theater kids in the democrat party either.
Too soon. But if he does expand his coalition, it will because of what he's not which is the lunatic fringe that currently controls the Democratic Party. Earlier this week, every Democratic Senator voted to maintain a filibuster on prohibiting males in girls sports. There is evidence that Democrats ( or perhaps their confederates in the EU/UK) put Z-man up to the confrontation in the Oval Office. We don't know what was said in those conversations but we know they happened and we saw the results. Refusing to clap for a little boy with cancer is not a good look. And the lawfare and media hysteria continue unabated. Restoring the Democratic Party has got to come from inside the Democratic Party and not because the other guys screwed up.
It's a bit premature to expect Trump to expand his base when he is merely in the process of imposing his dramatic policy changes. Presumably, if his judgement is sound and his actions are wise, popular approval will come later. Reagan fared poorly in the 1982 midterm elections after his election in 1980. Then in 1984 he won in a landslide when his economic program called Reaganomics created a booming economy.
Trump will not run for re-election which frees him from having to position himself to garner votes from those who are not inclined to support him. He is bullishly charging ahead because he only has four years.
Given the pace of Trump's reforms, It's natural for Mr. Teixeira to expect results, but I suspect it's going to take some time for all these changes to sink into voters' minds. If the Republicans keep their majorities after the 2026 mid-terms it will suggest that Trump's makeover is working.
Grasping at polls - any polls - that show a decline in support for this or that aspect of Trump's policies after 6 weeks in office is a waste of time. What's the goal? To buck up Democrats? It's certainly not to persuade those who rejected the Democratic party's drift left to suddenly re-embrace Democrats. Democrats would better off thinking long and hard about their ideological foundations.
The good stuff is getting lost while Musk goes about with his wrecking ball approach.
The savings from DOGE are minimal. Great to see some ill spent grants eliminated, and a lot more to come, but just firing people to save money is nonsensical. Better to keep the good and toss the bad.
Ukraine is a big sore spot for me. I've lived in two communist countries, and though Russia is no longer communist, Putin the ex KGB operative is. Urging peace is a good thing, abandoning Ukraine to a blood thirsty thug like Putin is unconscionable. Putin is not someone we should ever trust.
I voted to close the border and deport illegal workers, not to end scientific research or take health care from poor people.
Just for the record, medical research isn't being cut, it is the administrative overhead for medical research that is being cut. This is known as indirect cost recovery in higher education. It is pretty much a scam though some universities use it for worthwhile program development.
Heard from my daughter this morning that one of her friends lost his position as TSA union rep, now he has to go back on the job. His salary was 100% paid by taxpayers, he had his own office at the airport. How was it ever put into place that taxpayers paid salaries for people whose goal it was to get taxpayers to pay them higher salaries??
Atlas is good. But Baris has Trump pretty consistently over 50. But as you know, I don't pay attention to polls. What I look at says Trump is expanding his coalition BIG TIME.
*Voter registration in virtually every state has continued to move to Rs. In AZ, Maricopa Co. was R+6.2 on election day. Now? 7.2. In deep blue Pima Co., Ds have continued to collapse. They were 11.1 on election day, now 8.2.
*Many states are having voter roll purges. Not surprisingly, however, those almost all favor Republicans. In NJ, OK, and other states, both parties lost numbers but Ds are losing 30,000-70,000 more.
*In NC, Republicans now LEAD in active voters, trail only by 33,000 among all. Trump won the state 3x with Ds having a lead of 175,000.
*In PA, Rs have the total lead under 190,000 for Ds, but among active voters, it's only 89,000. Trump won the state in 2016 with a D+1.1 million lead.
*Even NY saw Rs pick up net 72,000.
Having written extensively on Ronald Reagan ("Reagan: The American President,") what is happening with Trump is pretty much the same that Reagan confronted. High inflation, initial steps almost certain to bring a blip in unemployment, followed by steady inflation reduction and falling unemployment. Once we stop running 25% of our GDP through D.C., the economy will be on steroids. Meanwhile, tariffs are both a revenue tool and a bargaining chip that seem to be working. Today the WSJ said the ChiComs were extremely concerned Trump will win on trade.
There's a long-term plan. Unfortunately, like with all households, you have to break everything down to nothing to build it back up. We are going through this at my house right now. It sucks for a bit, but I remind myself of what Dave Ramsey taught me: Live like no one else so that later, you can truly live like no one else. It has to be done.
Trump is attempting to stop the trajectory of the US becoming a European-style looter and moocher system, back to one of production. When the American Uniparty controlled by the Democrats has made 100 million, 1/3 of the eligible population dependent on social safety net benefits, and over 50% of the business economy dependent on government hand-outs and competition-killing regulations (benefiting the big corporations and Wall Street... where most of the upper class get much of their income... investment returns)... cutting DC spending is going to result in unpopularity until the new productive path to prosperity is adopted.
Real leadership for needed bold actions to fix systemic problems requires a blind-eye to popularity tests. If the electorate listens to the gaslighting of the mainstream media in bed with the globalist corporatist Democrats and votes to put Democrats back in charge of the legislature, then the American public will get the results they deserve.
Nonsensical to be talking about coalition expansion or contraction a mere seven weeks into a new administration, no matter how much a new President has or has not done.
But I very much take Ruy’s closing point about how both parties, by playing exclusively to their bases, are unable (no, make that unwilling) to form durable governing majorities. It should raise the question as to whether these two parties are still fit for purpose in 21st century America and if instead we shouldn’t be looking toward the formation of new parties that could effectively organize around the desires and beliefs of American citizens en masse, as opposed to the donor/interest group/lobbyist/oligarch juggernaut that controls the existing parties. Yes, I know this very high-minded and pie in the sky and all that, in addition to how fully rigged the electoral system is around ballot exclusion of third parties. But let’s not discount how strong the desire for an alternative to the status quo is and how quickly it could be organized into a viable competitor for these two fundamentally broken parties. We’re still assuming that tweaks to the status quo will work for us. I don’t think so, and we need to get real about the disruption it’ll take to set things right. Risky? Yes, but I’ll take purposeful disruption now over the chaos later that’s staring us in the face.
(Parenthetically, this is why I haven’t commented much at all on TLP: because I see the ongoing calls here for pragmatic reform by Democrats as 1) pointless because the party is fundamentally incapable of making change sufficient to become politically viable again, and 2) misdirected because these calls for change would be better directed into an organization that’s capable of accepting and applying them to meaningful political action. To my mind that would be a new political party that presents a clear alternative to the current two. We’ve done it before—1850’s Republican Party formation—we can do it again.)
You're right but neither party will do this since they don't want to hand a short-term advantage to the other. MAGA has created a new party on the ruins of the old Republican Party though there are still people lurking in the ruins. The Democrats could do something similar which I think Ruy is advocating but I can't see any movement. Of course in 2015 you couldn't see the change coming in the Republican Party
Great point, I expected Dems to at least appear, to lessen the importance of Progressives. Then every single Dem Senator voted against a bill that kept girls bathrooms, locker rooms and athletic fields, exclusively female.
Dems did so, without even attempting a compromise that would provide separate facilities for trans athletes, and separate categories of individual and team sports. Dems seem to loathe Trump far more, then they actually care about trans kids.
I can't believe a single Democrat - not one - would stand up to honor the guests at the Joint Address to Congress. A child cancer survivor? No one? Instead they showed up with those juvenile paddles like they were bidding at an action. And today those stupid women and their 'fighting' videos. How delusional would you have to be to think that will appeal to independents?
Thanks Ruy. On point as usual, but did I miss any commentary on the Democrat debacle at President Trump's speech to the joint session of Congress? If LP made a comment, please tell me when. Thanks
"Among those with under $50,000 in household income his net approval is +16; among those with $50,000-$100,000 income, his net approval is +9—but among those whose household incomes are over $100,000 his approval is net negative: -18."
I would like a pollster to ask this question.
"In 2017, Trump signed into law the Tax Cuts and Jobs act, which will expire this year if Congress does not renew it. If it expires, households with incomes between $24,000 and $300,000 will see their tax rates go up by 3 percent For example, a household with an income of $100,000 will pay an additional $3,000 in taxes. Which of the following statements best describes your views on this?
"__ My income is too low to be affected.
"__ I believe the tax cuts were unfair and I am happy to once again pay my fair share.
"__ I believe my taxes should be raised even more because the Federal government needs the revenue.
"__ I already pay my fair share in taxes and do not believe it is fair to raise my tax rate.
"__ My taxes are already too high and they should be cut further, not raised."
Let's see how that correlates to the -18% rating of Trump by households with $100,000 or more in income.
It's a 49/51 country. The 51 & 49 shift due to the "independent moderates". These "swing" voters in "swing" states determine the winners and losers. The conundrum is BOTH parties play to their base.
“While DOGE audits have indeed found many examples of highly questionable government expenditures and related inefficiencies,” The TLP article on Musk didn’t find any of these alleged inefficiencies, as I showed in my reply and analysis of it. I’m not aware of anyone else who has either. Even if this were a task worth doing, Musk is doing a lousy job of it. https://open.substack.com/pub/teedrockwell/p/the-liberal-patriot-sanewashes-doge?r=l7a9l&utm_medium=ios
You are better at putting lipstick on a pig than most on the Left, for sure . Your analysis avoids a basic question, why should American taxpayers, $36 trillion in debt, fork over millions to help Iraqi kids read? 2/3rds of US 8th graders cannot read at grade level.
US Sesame Street could probably be dubbed in other languages for a few thousand dollars, why on God's earth ,would Americans spend $20 million dollars on a new one?
If people want to be Gay, it has always been fine with the vast majority of Americans, but promoting it, often in nations where the behavior is illegal, forgive my bluntmess, nuts. If charities, without federal funding, want to do that, Godspeed. However, with hundreds of thousands of homeless, 40% of the US living on less than S45K a year, and with 30K Vets in desperate poverty, the notion it is a good use of taxpayer funds, is ridiculous. We have far more important needs for the money. Ditto for most of the rest of the list, that are not proper undertakings for a government, teetering on bankruptcy, but for private charity.
I was making two closely related arguments here, which I probably should have separated.
1) These programs are actually doing a lot of good. I won't repeat the arguments for that here, as they are present in detail in the links. I will mention that the Iraqi version of Sesame Street was deliberately designed to counteract the propaganda taught in the fundamentalist Madrassas, which was inspiring children to kill American soldiers. (The Iraqi Sesame Street was created during the second Iraq war.)
2) A program is not inefficient if it does what it is designed to do. You may feel that some of these programs are doing things which aren't worth doing, but when Congress passes laws to meet certain goals, and those goals are met, that is efficiency, not inefficiency. A committee designed to fight inefficiency has no legal or moral right to decide what laws should be written. That is the job of Congress. If you think the Government has no business passing such laws, You should pressure your Senators and Congress people to repeal them. The President is not a King, and cannot legally sweep away laws just because you and he don't like them. This is even more true of DOGE, which has no legal status whatsoever.
Let's see how these tariffs work out. Clearly, as long as DT is beating up on transsexuals and immigrants, he's on safe ground. Mass layoffs of government people has made lasting enemies and spiking NATO probably lost more friends than it made. If the tariffs and layoffs sink the economy, few will care about transsexuals in 2028 and Vance will go down much worse than Harris did. But that's a long way away and the odds are that there will be no substantial legislation 2027-28 while the Democrats again hold the House.
Really not my point and I don't really care much more about transsexuals than you probably do. My understanding is that they were studying side effects of chemicals used on human transsexuals. You might have liked that research if it proved the chemicals were unsafe and the operations should stop.
It must be hard writing columns everyday about who supports who and what effect actions taken today will have in even 2 years. The next presidential election is of course three years down the road. Will anything today have an effect then? Let’s see a poll of likely Dem candidates against Trump. From an independent’s point of view, the Dems have no one and no one getting prepared. There are a lot making themselves unelectable. MAGA didn’t elect Trump, bases won’t win the next presidential election either. Common sense dictates a wait and see attitude. Better a few hurt because of policies rather than millions dead because of “leaders” here who consider them fodder to weaken one’s enemies. That will be the test. If the armed conflicts of now are settled, how really doesn’t matter, treaties are signed and peace is what many see, the war mongers, whether they are or not, will stay out of power. And insulting the up and coming young leaders and activist of tomorrow, working hard today to make their world better than what the Boomers want to hand them is not a good idea. The Dems have already started to alienate them. The “employees” of DOGE are the leaders of tomorrow.
Informative reporting. It is not surprise that Trump is greatly underwater with $100K+ earners. Under Biden they made money hand over fist, and enjoyed other perks. Biden's Covid response, allowed them to work from home, some permanently. It allowed many highly paid workers to leave high cost and high crime urban areas, and relocate to cheaper housing and better schools.
Next, the trillions of printed dollars, inflated assets at a faster rate than most times in history. Biden increased government spending by 47%. Home owners watched their housing values explode, after many locked in 2% interest rates. Like housing, the stock market also soared. The WSJ recently reported in the US 10% of Americans now account for 50% of all spending.
Many of the printed trillions went to NGOs. That greatly expanded non profit job opportunities for those with liberal arts degrees. Unbelievably, nearly 10% of all US private sector jobs are now with nonprofits. These jobs pay well, without a STEM or professional degree, and are often derived thru family connections, with little need to show productivity.
Also, Biden's open border, drove down the cost of domestic labor. Upper middle class families use domestics in droves. 2 high powered careers, often with travel, can require multiple nannies, and at least 1, around the clock. Add a cook and/or housekeeper. The open border, greatly expanded the supply of domestics, which keeps their pay low.
60+ days is probably a little early to know if Trump will expand his base. Imagine, what a review of Medicaid and Medicare will reveal. Probably a plethora of expensive, unnecessary testing and programs. Think colonoscopies in hospice, and pap smears for women with hysterectomies. Medicaid rolls exploded under Biden. 37% of Californians are enrolled. This is extraordinary, for a program devised to provided health care to poor women and children, and the disabled.
Perhaps Americans really are incensed about fired federal employees. However, considering federal compensation, including perks and pensions, averages over $100K a year, and the median US family income is $77K a year, the empathy may be limited. To say nothing of DOGE reveals. Many Americans had no idea millions were invested to study trans animals, along with funding 3rd world sex change operations and millions to the Taliban, each month. The election commercials, almost write themselves.
It is too early to tell of course, and polls are going to be skewed to favor the left as they always are. IMO, the blitzkreig approach to DOGE is to weed out the activists who were going to sabotage his administration, the DEI / environmental activists who add no value, and to dismantle the funding for the democrat party / NGO apparatus that funds and advances their politics.
Of course there will be caterwauling in the media, and that is to be expected. I suspect that by eliminating the partisan activists in government, it reduces the potential for malevolent compliance, and people will realize the sky hasn't fallen.
So, I don't think Trump is necessarily building his coalition, though I don't see a bunch of people wanting to join the cabal of disaffected theater kids in the democrat party either.
Too soon. But if he does expand his coalition, it will because of what he's not which is the lunatic fringe that currently controls the Democratic Party. Earlier this week, every Democratic Senator voted to maintain a filibuster on prohibiting males in girls sports. There is evidence that Democrats ( or perhaps their confederates in the EU/UK) put Z-man up to the confrontation in the Oval Office. We don't know what was said in those conversations but we know they happened and we saw the results. Refusing to clap for a little boy with cancer is not a good look. And the lawfare and media hysteria continue unabated. Restoring the Democratic Party has got to come from inside the Democratic Party and not because the other guys screwed up.
It's a bit premature to expect Trump to expand his base when he is merely in the process of imposing his dramatic policy changes. Presumably, if his judgement is sound and his actions are wise, popular approval will come later. Reagan fared poorly in the 1982 midterm elections after his election in 1980. Then in 1984 he won in a landslide when his economic program called Reaganomics created a booming economy.
Trump will not run for re-election which frees him from having to position himself to garner votes from those who are not inclined to support him. He is bullishly charging ahead because he only has four years.
Given the pace of Trump's reforms, It's natural for Mr. Teixeira to expect results, but I suspect it's going to take some time for all these changes to sink into voters' minds. If the Republicans keep their majorities after the 2026 mid-terms it will suggest that Trump's makeover is working.
Grasping at polls - any polls - that show a decline in support for this or that aspect of Trump's policies after 6 weeks in office is a waste of time. What's the goal? To buck up Democrats? It's certainly not to persuade those who rejected the Democratic party's drift left to suddenly re-embrace Democrats. Democrats would better off thinking long and hard about their ideological foundations.
The good stuff is getting lost while Musk goes about with his wrecking ball approach.
The savings from DOGE are minimal. Great to see some ill spent grants eliminated, and a lot more to come, but just firing people to save money is nonsensical. Better to keep the good and toss the bad.
Ukraine is a big sore spot for me. I've lived in two communist countries, and though Russia is no longer communist, Putin the ex KGB operative is. Urging peace is a good thing, abandoning Ukraine to a blood thirsty thug like Putin is unconscionable. Putin is not someone we should ever trust.
I voted to close the border and deport illegal workers, not to end scientific research or take health care from poor people.
Just for the record, medical research isn't being cut, it is the administrative overhead for medical research that is being cut. This is known as indirect cost recovery in higher education. It is pretty much a scam though some universities use it for worthwhile program development.
None of the essential functions of these agencies are being cut. It is the activists that are being shown the door.
This will be a case of addition by subtraction.
Heard from my daughter this morning that one of her friends lost his position as TSA union rep, now he has to go back on the job. His salary was 100% paid by taxpayers, he had his own office at the airport. How was it ever put into place that taxpayers paid salaries for people whose goal it was to get taxpayers to pay them higher salaries??
Atlas is good. But Baris has Trump pretty consistently over 50. But as you know, I don't pay attention to polls. What I look at says Trump is expanding his coalition BIG TIME.
*Voter registration in virtually every state has continued to move to Rs. In AZ, Maricopa Co. was R+6.2 on election day. Now? 7.2. In deep blue Pima Co., Ds have continued to collapse. They were 11.1 on election day, now 8.2.
*Many states are having voter roll purges. Not surprisingly, however, those almost all favor Republicans. In NJ, OK, and other states, both parties lost numbers but Ds are losing 30,000-70,000 more.
*In NC, Republicans now LEAD in active voters, trail only by 33,000 among all. Trump won the state 3x with Ds having a lead of 175,000.
*In PA, Rs have the total lead under 190,000 for Ds, but among active voters, it's only 89,000. Trump won the state in 2016 with a D+1.1 million lead.
*Even NY saw Rs pick up net 72,000.
Having written extensively on Ronald Reagan ("Reagan: The American President,") what is happening with Trump is pretty much the same that Reagan confronted. High inflation, initial steps almost certain to bring a blip in unemployment, followed by steady inflation reduction and falling unemployment. Once we stop running 25% of our GDP through D.C., the economy will be on steroids. Meanwhile, tariffs are both a revenue tool and a bargaining chip that seem to be working. Today the WSJ said the ChiComs were extremely concerned Trump will win on trade.
There's a long-term plan. Unfortunately, like with all households, you have to break everything down to nothing to build it back up. We are going through this at my house right now. It sucks for a bit, but I remind myself of what Dave Ramsey taught me: Live like no one else so that later, you can truly live like no one else. It has to be done.
Trump is attempting to stop the trajectory of the US becoming a European-style looter and moocher system, back to one of production. When the American Uniparty controlled by the Democrats has made 100 million, 1/3 of the eligible population dependent on social safety net benefits, and over 50% of the business economy dependent on government hand-outs and competition-killing regulations (benefiting the big corporations and Wall Street... where most of the upper class get much of their income... investment returns)... cutting DC spending is going to result in unpopularity until the new productive path to prosperity is adopted.
Real leadership for needed bold actions to fix systemic problems requires a blind-eye to popularity tests. If the electorate listens to the gaslighting of the mainstream media in bed with the globalist corporatist Democrats and votes to put Democrats back in charge of the legislature, then the American public will get the results they deserve.
Nonsensical to be talking about coalition expansion or contraction a mere seven weeks into a new administration, no matter how much a new President has or has not done.
But I very much take Ruy’s closing point about how both parties, by playing exclusively to their bases, are unable (no, make that unwilling) to form durable governing majorities. It should raise the question as to whether these two parties are still fit for purpose in 21st century America and if instead we shouldn’t be looking toward the formation of new parties that could effectively organize around the desires and beliefs of American citizens en masse, as opposed to the donor/interest group/lobbyist/oligarch juggernaut that controls the existing parties. Yes, I know this very high-minded and pie in the sky and all that, in addition to how fully rigged the electoral system is around ballot exclusion of third parties. But let’s not discount how strong the desire for an alternative to the status quo is and how quickly it could be organized into a viable competitor for these two fundamentally broken parties. We’re still assuming that tweaks to the status quo will work for us. I don’t think so, and we need to get real about the disruption it’ll take to set things right. Risky? Yes, but I’ll take purposeful disruption now over the chaos later that’s staring us in the face.
(Parenthetically, this is why I haven’t commented much at all on TLP: because I see the ongoing calls here for pragmatic reform by Democrats as 1) pointless because the party is fundamentally incapable of making change sufficient to become politically viable again, and 2) misdirected because these calls for change would be better directed into an organization that’s capable of accepting and applying them to meaningful political action. To my mind that would be a new political party that presents a clear alternative to the current two. We’ve done it before—1850’s Republican Party formation—we can do it again.)
You're right but neither party will do this since they don't want to hand a short-term advantage to the other. MAGA has created a new party on the ruins of the old Republican Party though there are still people lurking in the ruins. The Democrats could do something similar which I think Ruy is advocating but I can't see any movement. Of course in 2015 you couldn't see the change coming in the Republican Party
Great point, I expected Dems to at least appear, to lessen the importance of Progressives. Then every single Dem Senator voted against a bill that kept girls bathrooms, locker rooms and athletic fields, exclusively female.
Dems did so, without even attempting a compromise that would provide separate facilities for trans athletes, and separate categories of individual and team sports. Dems seem to loathe Trump far more, then they actually care about trans kids.
They loath Trump more than they care about anything. This is no way to build a party.
I can't believe a single Democrat - not one - would stand up to honor the guests at the Joint Address to Congress. A child cancer survivor? No one? Instead they showed up with those juvenile paddles like they were bidding at an action. And today those stupid women and their 'fighting' videos. How delusional would you have to be to think that will appeal to independents?
Thanks Ruy. On point as usual, but did I miss any commentary on the Democrat debacle at President Trump's speech to the joint session of Congress? If LP made a comment, please tell me when. Thanks
"Among those with under $50,000 in household income his net approval is +16; among those with $50,000-$100,000 income, his net approval is +9—but among those whose household incomes are over $100,000 his approval is net negative: -18."
I would like a pollster to ask this question.
"In 2017, Trump signed into law the Tax Cuts and Jobs act, which will expire this year if Congress does not renew it. If it expires, households with incomes between $24,000 and $300,000 will see their tax rates go up by 3 percent For example, a household with an income of $100,000 will pay an additional $3,000 in taxes. Which of the following statements best describes your views on this?
"__ My income is too low to be affected.
"__ I believe the tax cuts were unfair and I am happy to once again pay my fair share.
"__ I believe my taxes should be raised even more because the Federal government needs the revenue.
"__ I already pay my fair share in taxes and do not believe it is fair to raise my tax rate.
"__ My taxes are already too high and they should be cut further, not raised."
Let's see how that correlates to the -18% rating of Trump by households with $100,000 or more in income.
It's a 49/51 country. The 51 & 49 shift due to the "independent moderates". These "swing" voters in "swing" states determine the winners and losers. The conundrum is BOTH parties play to their base.
“While DOGE audits have indeed found many examples of highly questionable government expenditures and related inefficiencies,” The TLP article on Musk didn’t find any of these alleged inefficiencies, as I showed in my reply and analysis of it. I’m not aware of anyone else who has either. Even if this were a task worth doing, Musk is doing a lousy job of it. https://open.substack.com/pub/teedrockwell/p/the-liberal-patriot-sanewashes-doge?r=l7a9l&utm_medium=ios
You are better at putting lipstick on a pig than most on the Left, for sure . Your analysis avoids a basic question, why should American taxpayers, $36 trillion in debt, fork over millions to help Iraqi kids read? 2/3rds of US 8th graders cannot read at grade level.
US Sesame Street could probably be dubbed in other languages for a few thousand dollars, why on God's earth ,would Americans spend $20 million dollars on a new one?
If people want to be Gay, it has always been fine with the vast majority of Americans, but promoting it, often in nations where the behavior is illegal, forgive my bluntmess, nuts. If charities, without federal funding, want to do that, Godspeed. However, with hundreds of thousands of homeless, 40% of the US living on less than S45K a year, and with 30K Vets in desperate poverty, the notion it is a good use of taxpayer funds, is ridiculous. We have far more important needs for the money. Ditto for most of the rest of the list, that are not proper undertakings for a government, teetering on bankruptcy, but for private charity.
I was making two closely related arguments here, which I probably should have separated.
1) These programs are actually doing a lot of good. I won't repeat the arguments for that here, as they are present in detail in the links. I will mention that the Iraqi version of Sesame Street was deliberately designed to counteract the propaganda taught in the fundamentalist Madrassas, which was inspiring children to kill American soldiers. (The Iraqi Sesame Street was created during the second Iraq war.)
2) A program is not inefficient if it does what it is designed to do. You may feel that some of these programs are doing things which aren't worth doing, but when Congress passes laws to meet certain goals, and those goals are met, that is efficiency, not inefficiency. A committee designed to fight inefficiency has no legal or moral right to decide what laws should be written. That is the job of Congress. If you think the Government has no business passing such laws, You should pressure your Senators and Congress people to repeal them. The President is not a King, and cannot legally sweep away laws just because you and he don't like them. This is even more true of DOGE, which has no legal status whatsoever.
Let's see how these tariffs work out. Clearly, as long as DT is beating up on transsexuals and immigrants, he's on safe ground. Mass layoffs of government people has made lasting enemies and spiking NATO probably lost more friends than it made. If the tariffs and layoffs sink the economy, few will care about transsexuals in 2028 and Vance will go down much worse than Harris did. But that's a long way away and the odds are that there will be no substantial legislation 2027-28 while the Democrats again hold the House.
"Beating up on transexuals?" Many Reps could not care less if some desires to change sexes. Adults, should live as they please, and be happy.
However, we emphatically do not want to pay for the procedures, and we certainly do not want our tax dollars wasted, studying trans animals.
Really not my point and I don't really care much more about transsexuals than you probably do. My understanding is that they were studying side effects of chemicals used on human transsexuals. You might have liked that research if it proved the chemicals were unsafe and the operations should stop.