7 ms·

Remember, this is the president that won largely because of people's dissatisfaction with inflation, and his promises to "fix" the economy. Instead, he's decid

Remember, this is the president that won largely because of people's dissatisfaction with inflation, and his promises to "fix" the economy. Instead, he's decided to wage a pointless trade war that nobody asked for, and came out yesterday essentially saying he's totally okay with a recession coming out of it. The only thing more absurd is the fact that some people didn't see this coming. He signalled everything that he's doing now during his campaign, over and over. I will say I'm pretty happy with how badly TSLA is doing.

jghn 2y ago
You're not wrong. And yet he's polling well. And as long as people poll surface level questions like "do you like that he's cutting things?" he gets general support. Drill into specific topics item by item and it's a bleaker picture however. But that's how these things always go, like the ACA for instance.
- Trasmatta 2y ago
  He's still in the honeymoon period for approval ratings. Even given that, he's barely above water.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    He did get elected at 49.9% of the popular vote... so there's not exactly a lot of natural approval margin in there for him.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    A honeymoon with 40's approval ratings in a then "good" economy says a lot in and of itself. Wonder if he'll set the global record this time by the time he leaves office. He somehow just missed bottom 5 in his first term
  - intended 2y ago
    https://www.axios.com/2025/03/10/trump-maga-inc-power-fundraising https://www.axios.com/2025/03/10/trump-maga-inc-power-fundra... It looks like there is preparation for low polling numbers. A fund to ensure that senators and lawmakers will toe the line or be primaried.
idle_zealot 2y ago
This analysis is lacking. People didn't vote for Trump because they analyzed his proposed economic policies and decided they would improve their situation. Almost nobody votes like that. There's general financial anxiety in the US, and he promised to fix it. What methods he proposed using are almost irrelevant, it's the rhetoric around them that sways voters. The narrative is now one of temporary hardship to excise the supposed rot of the system that is the root cause of the aforementioned anxiety. Pointing out that inflation is bad has no persuasive power over someone bought in on that narrative. The only way to sway general support away from this self-destructive administration is to offer another path towards alleviating the problems that voters face in their lives. The time when you could run on promises of competent administration alone has passed.
- vkou 2y ago
  Harris also promised to fix it, and had an actual plan for addressing housing, education, medical costs, and prices in general, but we are all now pretending like none of that was a part of her campaign. Anyways, it's telling that everyone who was anxious over $3.50/dozen eggs in November is deathly silent over what's been happening in the past few weeks. All of a sudden, all of those people are now in the 'we have to be patient and get through the pain, there's definitely a payoff at the end' boat. (Milk's $11/gallon at my grocery, by the way. Unless I buy 5 gallons at a time.)
  - itsdrewmiller 2y ago
    What kind of milk and what grocery store? That claim beggars belief.
  - gs17 2y ago
    > Milk's $11/gallon at my grocery You should shop somewhere else, unless you're in Hawaii or something. That's not a normal price for most of the country.
    - vkou 2y ago
      $5.50 for half a gallon of lactaid at my local QFC. ($5 for it at the Safeway that I'd spend another 25 minutes getting to and back from) https://imgur.com/9rpmfr2 https://imgur.com/9rpmfr2 All the sub-$5.50 options were sold out when I went last week. The gallon jugs only hit a good price point at 'buy five'. I suppose I could move to some flyover shithole where milk is cheaper and I'd get paid one third as much, and my wife would be denied medical care by a government small enough to fit in her reproductive system, but I'm not sure that would be as big a win as one would think.
voidhorse 2y ago
> The only thing more absurd is the fact that some people didn't see this coming. He signalled everything that he's doing now during his campaign, over and over. Right, I think it's less that they "didn't see it coming" and more so a basic lack of understanding around how anything works and a complete trust in perceived wealth and authority. The vast majority of people I know that fell into the camp of voting this into power follow a basic equational logic of "he is a (presumably) wealthy businessman he must know about how to manage money, therefore he can fix the economy" that's literally the entire depth to which they go. There's zero investigation into the validity of the premises, no question of the (ridiculous) assumption that governance must be exactly like running a business, no concern over the kind of business the person has background in... etc. I'm sure there are exceptions to this, but I'd also be confident conjecturing that, for a huge number of people, this basic, shallow, completely flawed argument is precisely why they made the choice that they made. That and a pervasive inability to recall what things were like a mere four or so years prior.
- philk10 2y ago
  and being fed a diet of propaganda from Fox, FB etc
- H1Supreme 2y ago
  I'm in an area of the country in which he won easily in the polls. Whenever I hear the "run the country like a business" line, I always ask "What's the product? And who is the customer?". I haven't received an actual answer yet.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - jrs235 2y ago
    And how does it make a profit and what does it do with a profit? Perhaps ask if they think we should hire more LEOs to sit on the roads to write more traffic tickets to generate revenue to make profits to pay for more things including salaries and bonuses to our government officials... Like how businesses run (paying bonuses for being more profitable). What perverse incentives and outcomes might that lead to?
corry 2y ago
My guess is that his supporters are so entrenched in their position that they won't care. Trump channelled their anger at how broken the American Dream has become, and they're probably OK getting personally singed if it means the whole thing burns down. However, it will likely be a rude awakening on the other side for them, especially if they find that some of their entitlements were cut (just as they come to need them most), and meanwhile yet again the rich and powerful not only are fine but the gap continues to widen at an even faster rate. Even then, I doubt his supporters will turn on him. Remember, even Hitler had support from the average Germans after the end of the war (at least before the holocaust and other atrocities came to light to them). I'm not saying Trump is Hitler, just showing how you can lose everything and still not accept that your cherished leader wasn't such a smart or great guy...
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > they find that some of their entitlements were cut (just as they come to need them most), and meanwhile yet again the rich and powerful not only are fine but the gap continues to widen at an even faster rate I’m honestly not seeing a way out of this for the die-hard MAGAs other than letting them age out. The problem is less that idiot 20% and more the Obama-Trump crossover voters. They’re the ones we should fight to win back.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    Depends on why the crossed over. I argue a lot of D's are simply Disempowerd. Getting those people back needs a candidate actually fighting for their demands and not just keeping in tow with the establishment
- jrs235 2y ago
  Making Aging Generations Angry
Balgair 2y ago
Not to derail here, but yeah, TSLA needed to get out of meme stock territory for a long time now. Its been hurting the underlying business. Now, the big question is if the meme is gone, or just turned sour. Either way, I'm not seeing people going back to TSLA with Elon's antics.
skippyboxedhero 2y ago
One of the weirdest views of Democrats is thinking that because the market has dropped 2% then individual voters are out there with their head in their hands thinking the world has ended. If you go back a few years and the government (largely the Fed) was destroying the economy, you never saw this type of comment. It seems to be that Democrats specifically cannot think of politics in any terms other than personal, or (indeed) of government function as anything other than a thing that bestows personal benefit. There is no discussion of content, it is just pure personal vitriol constantly. You see the same thing with left-wing voters in other countries too. Unsurprisingly, this has led to a situation where government spending is massive, most of that spending is handouts, and actual government function has collapsed. Milton Friedman wins again.
- archagon 2y ago
  Meanwhile, Republicans are pushing for a $4T debt ceiling increase and $4.5T in tax cuts. Talk about handouts!
LatteLazy 2y ago
Be careful taking people seriously when they claim to have voted a given way for a given reason; especially a specific reason. They’re usually false claims.

jghn 2y ago

You're not wrong. And yet he's polling well. And as long as people poll surface level questions like "do you like that he's cutting things?" he gets general support. Drill into specific topics item by item and it's a bleaker picture however. But that's how these things always go, like the ACA for instance.

Trasmatta 2y ago
He's still in the honeymoon period for approval ratings. Even given that, he's barely above water.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  He did get elected at 49.9% of the popular vote... so there's not exactly a lot of natural approval margin in there for him.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  A honeymoon with 40's approval ratings in a then "good" economy says a lot in and of itself. Wonder if he'll set the global record this time by the time he leaves office. He somehow just missed bottom 5 in his first term
- intended 2y ago
  https://www.axios.com/2025/03/10/trump-maga-inc-power-fundraising https://www.axios.com/2025/03/10/trump-maga-inc-power-fundra... It looks like there is preparation for low polling numbers. A fund to ensure that senators and lawmakers will toe the line or be primaried.

idle_zealot 2y ago

This analysis is lacking. People didn't vote for Trump because they analyzed his proposed economic policies and decided they would improve their situation. Almost nobody votes like that. There's general financial anxiety in the US, and he promised to fix it. What methods he proposed using are almost irrelevant, it's the rhetoric around them that sways voters. The narrative is now one of temporary hardship to excise the supposed rot of the system that is the root cause of the aforementioned anxiety. Pointing out that inflation is bad has no persuasive power over someone bought in on that narrative. The only way to sway general support away from this self-destructive administration is to offer another path towards alleviating the problems that voters face in their lives. The time when you could run on promises of competent administration alone has passed.

vkou 2y ago
Harris also promised to fix it, and had an actual plan for addressing housing, education, medical costs, and prices in general, but we are all now pretending like none of that was a part of her campaign. Anyways, it's telling that everyone who was anxious over $3.50/dozen eggs in November is deathly silent over what's been happening in the past few weeks. All of a sudden, all of those people are now in the 'we have to be patient and get through the pain, there's definitely a payoff at the end' boat. (Milk's $11/gallon at my grocery, by the way. Unless I buy 5 gallons at a time.)
- itsdrewmiller 2y ago
  What kind of milk and what grocery store? That claim beggars belief.
- gs17 2y ago
  > Milk's $11/gallon at my grocery You should shop somewhere else, unless you're in Hawaii or something. That's not a normal price for most of the country.
  - vkou 2y ago
    $5.50 for half a gallon of lactaid at my local QFC. ($5 for it at the Safeway that I'd spend another 25 minutes getting to and back from) https://imgur.com/9rpmfr2 https://imgur.com/9rpmfr2 All the sub-$5.50 options were sold out when I went last week. The gallon jugs only hit a good price point at 'buy five'. I suppose I could move to some flyover shithole where milk is cheaper and I'd get paid one third as much, and my wife would be denied medical care by a government small enough to fit in her reproductive system, but I'm not sure that would be as big a win as one would think.

voidhorse 2y ago

> The only thing more absurd is the fact that some people didn't see this coming. He signalled everything that he's doing now during his campaign, over and over. Right, I think it's less that they "didn't see it coming" and more so a basic lack of understanding around how anything works and a complete trust in perceived wealth and authority. The vast majority of people I know that fell into the camp of voting this into power follow a basic equational logic of "he is a (presumably) wealthy businessman he must know about how to manage money, therefore he can fix the economy" that's literally the entire depth to which they go. There's zero investigation into the validity of the premises, no question of the (ridiculous) assumption that governance must be exactly like running a business, no concern over the kind of business the person has background in... etc. I'm sure there are exceptions to this, but I'd also be confident conjecturing that, for a huge number of people, this basic, shallow, completely flawed argument is precisely why they made the choice that they made. That and a pervasive inability to recall what things were like a mere four or so years prior.

philk10 2y ago
and being fed a diet of propaganda from Fox, FB etc
H1Supreme 2y ago
I'm in an area of the country in which he won easily in the polls. Whenever I hear the "run the country like a business" line, I always ask "What's the product? And who is the customer?". I haven't received an actual answer yet.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- jrs235 2y ago
  And how does it make a profit and what does it do with a profit? Perhaps ask if they think we should hire more LEOs to sit on the roads to write more traffic tickets to generate revenue to make profits to pay for more things including salaries and bonuses to our government officials... Like how businesses run (paying bonuses for being more profitable). What perverse incentives and outcomes might that lead to?

corry 2y ago

My guess is that his supporters are so entrenched in their position that they won't care. Trump channelled their anger at how broken the American Dream has become, and they're probably OK getting personally singed if it means the whole thing burns down. However, it will likely be a rude awakening on the other side for them, especially if they find that some of their entitlements were cut (just as they come to need them most), and meanwhile yet again the rich and powerful not only are fine but the gap continues to widen at an even faster rate. Even then, I doubt his supporters will turn on him. Remember, even Hitler had support from the average Germans after the end of the war (at least before the holocaust and other atrocities came to light to them). I'm not saying Trump is Hitler, just showing how you can lose everything and still not accept that your cherished leader wasn't such a smart or great guy...

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> they find that some of their entitlements were cut (just as they come to need them most), and meanwhile yet again the rich and powerful not only are fine but the gap continues to widen at an even faster rate I’m honestly not seeing a way out of this for the die-hard MAGAs other than letting them age out. The problem is less that idiot 20% and more the Obama-Trump crossover voters. They’re the ones we should fight to win back.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  Depends on why the crossed over. I argue a lot of D's are simply Disempowerd. Getting those people back needs a candidate actually fighting for their demands and not just keeping in tow with the establishment
jrs235 2y ago
Making Aging Generations Angry

Balgair 2y ago

Not to derail here, but yeah, TSLA needed to get out of meme stock territory for a long time now. Its been hurting the underlying business. Now, the big question is if the meme is gone, or just turned sour. Either way, I'm not seeing people going back to TSLA with Elon's antics.

skippyboxedhero 2y ago

One of the weirdest views of Democrats is thinking that because the market has dropped 2% then individual voters are out there with their head in their hands thinking the world has ended. If you go back a few years and the government (largely the Fed) was destroying the economy, you never saw this type of comment. It seems to be that Democrats specifically cannot think of politics in any terms other than personal, or (indeed) of government function as anything other than a thing that bestows personal benefit. There is no discussion of content, it is just pure personal vitriol constantly. You see the same thing with left-wing voters in other countries too. Unsurprisingly, this has led to a situation where government spending is massive, most of that spending is handouts, and actual government function has collapsed. Milton Friedman wins again.

archagon 2y ago
Meanwhile, Republicans are pushing for a $4T debt ceiling increase and $4.5T in tax cuts. Talk about handouts!

LatteLazy 2y ago

Be careful taking people seriously when they claim to have voted a given way for a given reason; especially a specific reason. They’re usually false claims.