Friday, November 09, 2018

Random Thoughts: From MAGA to KAGA

As we all know, Donald Trump's campaign slogan in the 2016 presidential election was "Make America Great Again", which was not only catchy in itself, but also could be reduced to the nifty acronym MAGA.


The narrative of Trump's message that resonated with his supporters was that there was a time when the United States of America was a great country that somewhere along the line lost its way and was no longer great.


For the anticipated reelection campaign in 2020, I have been seeing the slogan "Keep America Great Again", which assumes that Donald Trump has already been successful in making the country great again.


If that is the case, in what way is America great again that it wasn't before Trump assumed office in January of 2017?  Sure, our economy is continuing to experience decent job growth, but jobs were being added for years before Trump took office.   The unemployment rate was 9.3% when Obama took office and had fallen to 4.8% when he left.  The current unemployment rate is 3.7%.  Likewise, the major stock indices were much higher when Obama left office then they were at the start of his administration in 2009.  Granted, stock gains during Trump's first year in office in 2017 were spectacular.  But 2018 has seen the major indices shrink from their peaks and not long ago the S&P and DJIA were briefly negative for the year.


Earlier this year Trump was constantly bragging that the US economy was the greatest ever in its history.  While one could probably make a case that the tax cuts that took effect in the beginning of the year along with the rollback of Obama-era regulations contributed to the continuing growth in jobs, it remains to be seen if Trump's tariff wars will have a negative impact in the coming months.


While I certainly hope it will not be the case, there is a possibility that the economy could enter into a recession before the 2020 election and that stocks will experience a bear market.  If this should happen, what does it have to say for the "Keep America Great Again" slogan?


If Trump supporters can't rely on jobs and stock market performance in the 2020 election as measurable indicators for American greatness, what else can they rely on?  The scrapping of the Iran deal?  Deporting illegal immigrants (even though illegal immigration declined during the Obama presidency), banning Roe v. Wade?  What?   Maybe Kim Jong-Un will bend over for Donald and completely denuclearize and demilitarize North Korea.  No matter what, we are in for another interesting two years.







2 comments:

Infidel753 said...

in what way is America great again that it wasn't before Trump assumed office in January of 2017?

You can stomp blacks and gays and get away with it again (actually you can't, but the Trumpanzees think they can, and that's the defining feature of the "great" former America that they want back). As for the next two years, they'll keep on loving Trump as long as he keeps on hurting and insulting the people they hate. he doesn't need to do anything else.

Professor Chaos said...

The economy could be identical to what it was under Obama, it wouldn't matter because under Obama the FOX/Limbaugh?Breitbart axis of evil was telling their devotees that everything was terrible. Now they're telling them that things are going great. It's not like the rubes are going to look up economic indicators fro the past several years to compare. They believe what they are told to believe and what makes them feel like they are on the winning team.