Democratic Convention

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Indy
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Re: Democratic Convention

Post by Indy »

3rdside wrote:
Wed Feb 02, 2022 2:32 pm
Trump is hardly the best barometer for comparison .. and he's not too far off him anyway from what I can tell.
part of the extreme partisan times we live in. looking back there were plenty of presidents that maintained over 50% approval ratings for years at a time. But in the last 25 years, no president has kept at least 50% for more than 1 year, including the ones that were re-elected for a 2nd term.

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3rdside
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Re: Democratic Convention

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Conversation with a politically minded friend about Build Back Better and Manchin / Sinema - I'm A), he's B) :


A) The issue for the USA - besides Trump - is that Dems aren't the saviour of that country imo. Both parties are a mess right now although I'd still take the Democrats.

B) It's only Manchin and Sinema selling out their party that's causing the probs for Dems - imo. And, grass-roots are all over it. As they clean-up soc media - it cleans up the debate - imo

A) I'm starting to think Manchin is showing how democracy should work in the USA! Am open to debate on that one lol. But highest inflation rate's for some time and Biden wants to throw another $2T at it ... scary thoughts, although Sinema appears to be of the self serving / self promoting variety / Manchin I don't think is that type.

Just to add that if the D's had a greater senate majority the positions of Sinema and Manchin wouldn't necessarily be such a talking point .. so is it really them holding things up or is it democracy working as it should?

B) A lot of BBB is designed to improve investment in supply chains, renewables etc. All of those things are expected to reduce CPI through cheaper products, electricity prices etc. More jobs means higher wage inflation as the marginal Cost of Labor goes up due to tighter labor supply. So, the thinking is that the reduction in costs resulting from higher productivity of Labor due to higher capital spending, will off-set the increase in wages because of the lower cost of goods, infrastructure and other inputs into the production of goods and services across the economy. A lot of Nobel Laureates have said that BBB is deflationary and not inflationary.

In general, you are correct that more spending = higher inflation. But, well-targeted spending can reduce CPI, even if it causes higher wage inflation. This can result in a relatively flat inflationary environment. The other thing to consider is that a key reason for higher inflation is due to supply-chain shortages/disruption from Covid. As Omicron continues to drop-off in its impact - hospitalization rates are falling - many of these "temporary" disruptions will begin to dissipate as the economy returns to a more normal labor participation rate, and the supply of goods and services returns to pre-pandemic levels. That too is deflationary. So, the spending might have an inflationary impact but it's spread out over about 10 years. Add in that Universal Pre-K, child support payments, and many of the other provisions are in the 60%+ range in polling, Sinema and Manchin have gutted the platform Dems were hoping to run on in 2022, and there's no new cash to make people "feel" good, in the lead up to the mid-terms. Manchin showing how democracy should work? W%nker more like it!

A) Agreed on most counts, although you can probably find enough economists to argue both sides.

I'm generally supportive of giving Democrats their chance to do what they want to do i.e. spend, rather than fix up Republican economic messes handed to both Obama by Bush and Biden by Trump, just that wrapped up in the bill was a grab bag of far-too-left-for-America-handouts (hardly the first time a spending bill has had that) which has clearly turned Manchin and Sinema right off it, even at $2T.

I like that at least Manchin said he’s open to a lower spending bill which would be fine with me, but if he leads Biden on again (I think that was his game last time – he gave Biden no clue he would reject it until he rejected it, which does sound a little like dirty politics but I’m not sure I have the whole picture?) then yeah, he’s a wanker.

B) Yep. That was my take. Manchin bats for the opposition.

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Nodack
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Re: Democratic Convention

Post by Nodack »

Mori Chu wrote:
Wed Feb 02, 2022 4:00 pm
Indy wrote:
Wed Feb 02, 2022 8:37 am
It is funny how people describe Biden as a very unpopular president when in four full years in office, Trump only had 1 month of a higher approval rating than Biden's lowest.
The way I look at it is, conservative "news" like Fox is 100% anti-Biden. And most "mainstream" or "liberal" news is about 50/50 or 60/40, trying to remain neutral-ish and not openly cheer for one side. So overall the coverage is about 75% negative about any Dem President. And the polls reflect that.

Biden's done a lot of good things (COVID relief; general COVID policies; Infrastructure bill; repealing many awful Trump exec. orders; appointing lots of qualified and diverse judges; general comportment, qualification for the job, appointing competent people, not being a megalomaniac dictator), and he's done some things poorly (e.g. Afghanistan), and he's been blocked from doing other things by circumstances (inability to pass BBB / voting rights due to 50/50 Senate and noncomplaint Manchinema).

Overall he isn't a disaster and doesn't deserve a crummy approval rating. But it's hard to get people excited about him when COVID is still causing so much daily misery, inflation has people worried about the economy, and the threat of military conflict with Russia looms. I'm still extremely happy he is President rather than you-know-who.
Everything Trump did was self serving. It was always about him. He just seems so willing to do anything to win no matter what the costs to everyone around him.

Joe has gotten a lot of slack. He’s old and slow and maybe a little senile. In2 and Republicans can say what they want but, I haven’t seen Biden do anything but try to make things better. They aren’t going to convince me to vote for Satan by going after Hunter. So far all the evidence against Hunter seems to be someone is investigating. I haven’t read one report saying they are arresting Hunter for anything. They investigated the hell out of Hillary and nothing. There are dozens of investigations of Trump going on and even a rape case. It doesn’t mean anything until they arrest you.

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3rdside
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Democratic Convention

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