Will 2026 finally be the year when a critical mass of Americans wakes up and realizes that Republicans always screw up the economy?
Donald Trump inherited an economy from Joe Biden that was perhaps not firing on all cylinders but was in pretty good shape all the same.
For the third straight time, a Democratic president handed a Republican president an economy that was at the least pretty good, and at most (Bill Clinton) really humming along very nicely. And, for the third straight time, the Republican has made things worse. Which also means that Democratic presidents have to clean up messes left by their GOP predecessors.
I’ve been waiting 20+ years for Republicans to wake up. They will never wake up. So many uncrossable lines have been crossed and yet they still maintain their momentum and people fall over themselves to vote for them in elections.
The problem is twofold:
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Most people are chronically unaware or ignorant of who represents them. Even terminally online political junkies often don’t do any research into the candidates they vote for, and they don’t follow up on whether or not their campaign promises were fulfilled. They lock in and vote R all the way down the ballot. To be completely fair™ and balanced™ - Democrats are also guilty of this and will happily vote for the D all the way down the ballot which is how we end up with progressive candidates running 3rd party in primaries losing to DINO incumbents.
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There is too much disconnect between which parties in government are responsible for which policies. Many people believe the president has far more power than they actually do. In reality, outside of executive orders and appointing SCOTUS judges, the largest political impact a president has is to be a veto on legs. Congress are the ones who truly hold the power, but because you are represented by one U.S. house representative for your district and two senators for your state, it’s easy for people to think that their vote for those seats, win or lose, has little impact in shaping national policy. But even when their party has a majority (albeit slim), Republicans rarely draft any kind of legislation that is aimed to help their constituents or fulfill their campaign promises. People never check their reps voting records to see that they barely show up for their jobs, and that when they do, it’s usually to cast a deciding vote against something that would help their constituents tremendously if passed. It all circles back around to people not bothering to do research or follow up with their votes in any way.
Voting to a lot of people is a team sport, and if their team is winning then all is right with the world. The bad things are happening because the others caused it, or are preventing it from being fixed. It can never be because they made a bad decision and voted in someone terrible into office. It’s always someone else’s fault. If good things are happening, it’s because they made the right decision all along and they are succeeding in spite of opposition - no need to even bother checking if the guy who represents you voted in favor of the good thing or not!
It’s much simpler. The problem is Fox et al.
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Republicans dont care about the economy, they care about their wallets. They will keep voting for any red tie that makes them pay one penny fewer in April and call anyone who disagrees foolish.
I can’t stand these people and im fuckin drowning in them
All the ones I’ve met that still support the current government only care about hurting queers.
The ones I know say they hate all of this but a Dem would be worse so…
As my eyes roll so hard they fall out.
What will likely happen is that when we finally get a Democrat in next election, all the bad shit Trump caused will just be blamed on the Democrats who just got into office.
Literally happened when Trump arranged for the military to pull out of Iraq…during the next president’s term. I don’t remember if it happened after he lost the election or not, but Biden got blamed for how the pullout with no time to prepare went, anyway…
That was Afghanistan, but that’s exactly what happened. If I remember correctly trump committed to the pullout after the election. Literally causing incalculable suffering just to spite his opponent
I think Republicans define “the economy” as the stock market, even the temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
They won’t.
Many of them are stupid. Many are poorly informed.
But many of them are operating with stupid axioms. They would rather suffer and die personally if it meant those people got it worse.
If you offered free health care, guns, and hamburgers to everyone but it meant that black people got it too, a lot of Americans would say no
The Confederacy should have been burned to the ground, its leaders and supporters hanged and their bodies left to rot in the sun.
Amen. Instead they were coddled, allowed to put up statues (of their loss lmao), and left to fester.
And the purpose of those statues was to make sure black people knew to stay in their place.
If anyone out there has any good recommendations for books about what happened after the war and why the losers just got to walk off the field, I’d appreciate ‘em!
It’s not about the confederacy itself but look up the book “Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth” to learn how a relatively unimportant location in Texas has become an international symbol of defiance and American spirit… when it was a bunch of slave owners invading Mexico, ignoring the laws, then stealing the land.
The book covers the history of Alamo, and the battle of the Alamo is only in the first quarter, it goes all the way to modern era. It helps show how that group twists myths to their advantage.
Long story short the Union was worried splitting the country or hamstringing the southern economy would weaken the US and make it vulnerable to other world powers (we weren’t one yet). Much like Ukraine now, we were a former colony fighting a brutal war with the newest tech (which later revolutionized warfare eg trench warfare a la Longstreet) and there were military observers, advisers, and adventurers from many other countries here watching everything go down. Also they were sniffing around for weakness.
The people in charge of surrendering didn’t want to die, and wanted to continue to live cushy lives. Most of the Union didn’t want to march all the way to the gulf killing every confederate on the way there. Even today, a good chunk of the south holds resentment for losing the war as badly as they did. When faced between allowing some shit bags to get off with a slap on the wrist, or murdering half the country and drawing out the war, the choice was pretty obvious.
The Confederacy should have been burned to the ground, its leaders and supporters hanged and their bodies left to rot in the sun.
I come from the south, I know my heritage has a confederate officer in it.
John Brown did nothing wrong.
The Confederacy should have been burned to the ground, its leaders and supporters hanged and their bodies left to rot in the sun.
huzzah
In the future, that last statement may finally come true.
They are easily manipulated by propaganda, and Republicans have weaponized that for years, leading to where we are today. They’ve used that propaganda superiority to define and control the messaging for decades, all of it negative and self-serving.
So the Dems should do the same thing, but with POSITIVE propaganda, and pound them relentlessly with new messaging, accompanied with positive reinforcement, and take control of the definitions and messaging.
I think even if this was on billboards and schools started to teach this basic fact, it would take decades for it to finally sink in.
I cannot tell you how many “non political” people tend to believe it, too. I could see dumbass cult members parroting nonsense talking points about how magical Republicans are on the economy, but the fact that people that barely pay attention believe it is just exhausting.
Far too many idiots think: “the government should be run like a business, and Republicans bend over the hardest for business, therefore we should put a Republican in as a President-as-CEO, preferably someone also from the world of business”.
It’s all so very fucking stupid, starting with the very premise…
In the presence of continued propaganda from the GQP and the duplicity of the Fourth Estate supporting and distributing that propaganda I don’t think it will ever sink in.
Oligarch owned mainstream news providers have become Republican disinformation tools - slightly veiled versions of Fox News held to no standard at all. Facts have little chance against widespread lies repeated constantly almost everywhere.
Hell, even before Faux came along, the mainstream media was and is embarrassingly skewed to the right.
But that was not enough for the Bircher types. They resented that something like Watergate was allowed to bring down their Nixon. They needed outlets that were ridiculously, cartoonishly even, right wing. And they had the balls to call them “fair and balanced”.
The funniest thing is when you see some Bircher bitching about how Faux is “woke” or something unhinged like that.
I mean, Network skewered the corporate capture of news quite well, and that was 50 years ago.
The liberal media helped fascism grow in the 1920s and 1930s in America. They also did the same the second time in the mid 2010s to now.
edit: seems quite a few don’t like to acknowledge reality
And by liberal media, I’m assuming you are talking about the corporate media that the conservatives all call “liberal media”.
I certainly don’t mean leftist media, but the prevailing liberal media conglomerate is what I’m referring to. So yeah I guess.
Explain how liberal media supports fascism
The entire system, which is propped up by the media, supports fascism. Media is nothing more than the propaganda arm of oligarchy.
bingo
These guys can do it way better than I ever could, and way more in depth (it’s a 2 parter).
edit: I’ll add that this is the “Behind The Bastards” podcast so anyone else can find this in the future
There have been less than 48 DNC senators for over 13 years now, the majority of the 2010s to now, so I’m interpreting this as you somehow thinking the GOP are liberals…?
What do you think “media” means? Does it mean Congress?
Ooooh, okay, I get it, you’re saying the liberal media somehow enabled fascism while not being fascists themselves?
Take a look at the Behind the Bastards link I shared in another comment in this chain. You too can learn all about it.
Nah you don’t have enough credit in my book for me to click your links. I accept your resignation, sucks to suck.
Republicucks always said they were fiscally conservative. It’s always been what they touted as a defining characteristic when you took idealogy tests.
Turns out, that was all lip service. At least for the last few decades.
Oh conservatives have always loved to spend money, just on things like weapons for “defense” and not like, people.
They just want a strong Daddy type (or a facsimile of one, like PEDOnald, who strikes me as one of the most effete people in the public eye, but I digress. It doesn’t have to make sense to people of average+ intelligence) that tells them it’s okay to say the N-word, grab women by the pussy, burn whatever you want and cut everything down, and own the libz by rolling coal on bicyclists and sneaking meat into the diets of vegans or whatever.
That’s pretty much it.
All the other lofty rhetoric coming from conservatives is just window dressing.
Of course the donor class running the party just wants tax cuts and businesses to be completely unrestrained by law.
The ironic thing is how many businesses were started with a big fat loan?
“Will 2026 finally be the year when a critical mass of Americans wakes up and realizes that Republicans always screw up the economy?”
I live in a red state.
LOL. LMAO even.
They WILL vote against their interests as long as the R is next to the name.
Leftists are just too ethical to trick them like Sinema or Fettermam (even though progressive policy is extremely popular when you don’t say it’s progressive).
I imagine the GOP would actually do something about it though, unlike the Democrats
I imagine the GOP would actually do something about it though
My state has a supermajority Republicans for the last ten or so years. The cities police are under control over the state instead of the cities themselves. Crime has risen… but they still parrot that “liberal cities are crime infested” (feature not a bug), we can vote on bills through a petition process, they’re trying to kneecap that, while the past few bills pass overwhelmingly progressive parts but the Republican supermajority either reintroduces the bill with confusing language to overturn it, overturns it directly while saying “People didn’t know what they were voting for”, or just outright ignores it (We put into our constitution for medicaid expansion. They’ve not implemented it in over five years, just ignoring it). We’re now a flyover state that is about to get rid of income tax and increase sales tax, despite the two major population centers are right on the border for other states.
Yet our idiots that live here keep voting for these assholes.
It’s not Republicans it’s just the RINOs! /s
We’ve known. But liberal purity politics got us trump anyway. But at least some first world brat can pat themselves on the back and say they didn’t support a genocide by voting for a candidate that would not have declare war on Iran. Real good guys, I’ll be sure to say thanks as we are all hauled off to a death camp
Vote for this genocide or you get that genocide?
More like same thing except republicans lie to right wingers and democrats lie to right wingers too and ignore leftists. I know genocide doesn’t seem that bad to you but it is a deal breaker for some. Shocking.
No. Instead you get more genocide.
The worst part is that this time the effects are affecting everyone in the world. Fuck you trump. You fat cunt 🖕
It affects the whole world each time.
Especially considering Trump was one of the two outcomes for the last 3 elections or 12 years, and a GOP candidate is one of the two outcomes every single election.
Conservatism heavily relies on lifestyle marketing. You’re not voting for promises, but for a lifestyle.
And licence to hate
Their mantra is FREEDOM, despite wanting to do nothing but take away everyone else’s.
But the freedom they’re talking about is Freedom To…not Freedom From…
As in freedom to be an unrepentant racist, homophobic , transphobic asshole.
Meanwhile the otherside is losing their freedom from hate, torment, persecution…
Not saying it was all Clinton, but Bush inherited a great economy, which he nuked by deregulating Wall Street.
Obama inherited that, did all the best to right the ship.
The orange kid-fucker tried taking credit for the state of the economy within months, and got laughed at. his shitty policies and robbing the nation let the economy slip but his complete bumblefuck of COVID lead to another crash
Biden inherited that, did whatever he could but the reds lead by that ancient fuck mitch outright said they would block any and all meaningful legislation just to make him look bad.
orange rapist somehow sleezed his way back in and is now on a blatant power grab, openly embezzling money, and the economy is 1 bad day away from a total collapse…which I am almost expecting.
Why don’t right leaning people see this? Because anyone over 40 joyously watches focks nooz, oann and all those other blatant propaganda outlets while the rest listen to blowrogan and other right-winger propaganda podcasts (usually dark-funded by Russia, Israel, etc).
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Bush had a lot of other major issues that affected the economy. Mainly being a puppet for his father and the other cronies obsessed with oil in the Middle East. As usual Americas obsession with the Middle East is both hindering and actively destroying us.
Yeah I left out the whole part of Dick using the war for his companies to get no-big contracts. But the biggest one is Wall Street. Because much like COVID, it was at the tail end of his term and left as a mess for the next person to clean up…and ultimately get blamed for
every 4-8 years. then they forget in 2.
Well they won’t need to worry about this anymore because Republicans aren’t going anywhere regardless of what happens. A fascist authoritarian government will be there for the next decade.
We’ve seen Republicans wreck the Clinton economy and the Obama economy, both of which were very good. The one-term Biden economy wasn’t sturdy enough yet to withstand their bullshit as well.
Plus, it was so devastated by Trump and Covid, that the best Biden could do was save it from absolute and utter disaster.
Which he actually did manage to do
Yeah it was never great, but sometimes great isn’t on the table. It was better than most countries were doing and it wasn’t crashing. In fact the biggest thing you can say about it is every year a crash was expected and avoided
The one-term Biden economy wasn’t sturdy enough yet to withstand their bullshit as well.
IIRC it was said that the economy at the end of Biden’s term was amazing.
Trump has been uniquely economically irresponsible. Stuff like the tariffs changing every week is just insanely stupid.
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It’s not even the wrecking of the economy that really gets to me about this latest Republican administration. That’s a pattern for sure, but this admin grifts right off the top, in plain sight. The Trump phones, the ballrooms, the sweetheart deals for friends, the IRS decision that puts taxpayer funds directly into the President’s pocket.
I can’t think of another admin that has so openly stolen from US citizens.
For me it’s how they murdered millions of people by cutting USAID and suing to keep the ready-to-distribute aid locked up in a warehouse until it expired.
Honestly, the crypto bribes and the epstein files are all pretty bad, but that murder of millions by starvation for no point but cruelty itself is what gets me.
That is a good point. There’s a lot of overt cruelty which seems to Literally exist to “own the libs”, as Onion-y as it sounds. It’s quite disgusting considering the party pretty much owns everything at the moment.
Schoolyard charades, but with higher stakes and real, human victims, at scale.
“When will Romans learn the truth? Caesar is…”
“When will Russians learn the truth? The Aristocracy is…”
“When will Germans learn the truth? The nazi party is…”
Going by history, the answer is, if ever, at the end.
