On one hand, the Democrats have a history of managing the economy correctly with moderate fiscal responsibility, maintaining social services, and pushing back on corporate excesses and warmongering. The last time we had a balanced budget was Clinton’s.

On the other hand, Republicans claim they are better for the economy, although they are the ones that constantly crash it, do the most to worsen the debt and deficits, and take away living standards for the average American.

So who’s better for the economy? It’s so hard to tell.

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    One of the worst things about trump is he gets his opponent to talk about how horrible of a person he is and not how horrible of a president he was.

    Running ads like this would actually change the “moderate Republicans” minds, maybe not vote D, but getting them to stay home is still a win.

    It’s like the people running recent Dem campaigns never read any Douglas Adams

    The President in particular is very much a figurehead — he wields no real power whatsoever. He is apparently chosen by the government, but the qualities he is required to display are not those of leadership but those of finely judged outrage. For this reason the President is always a controversial choice, always an infuriating but fascinating character. His job is not to wield power but to draw attention away from it. On those criteria Zaphod Beeblebrox is one of the most successful Presidents the Galaxy has ever had — he has already spent two of his ten presidential years in prison for fraud.

    trump is basically Zaphood without all the froody bits.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      One of the worst things about trump is he gets his opponent to talk about how horrible of a person he is and not how horrible of a president he was.

      It is easy to put all this shit on Trump’s shoulders, when we’ve had decades of public policy that amounts to “The state cannot help you, only hurt you” reinforced by Drug Wars and untreated epidemics and trillions tossed into the burn pits overseas and an increasing hostility towards whomever is currently in office based entirely on your deteriorating economic and ecological conditions.

      Running ads like this would actually change the “moderate Republicans” minds

      None of this data is a secret. People post about it online and go back-and-forth on those talking head shows on it all the time. There are a number of conservative rebuttals, starting with a different set of graphs showing a different set of big scary lines when Democrats take office that go down when Republicans take office and ending with a fixation on conservative issues (number of immigrants, number of people in social programs, rising cost of fossil fuels, propensity of young people to self-report as being LGBTQ, volume of taxes paid, number of regulations, etc, etc) that tell a different story.

      The issue is not that Ds lack some Killer Points, its that media is increasingly and overwhelmingly a product of conservative business interests. When Clear Channel and Sinclair and NewsCorp and Amazon/Microsoft/Facebook/Tesla shareholders own and operate all the venues of discourse, you’re going to hear discourse that’s biased to the opinions of these corporate bureaucrats and board rooms.

      trump is basically Zaphood

      He’s not. Zaphood is this charming quick-witted glamor obsessed cartoon character with no real power or influence outside what he can get his hands on straight away.

      Trump is a figurehead for a real national conservative political project encompassing tens of thousands of activists and bureaucrats. The folks surrounding Trump are the same ones who were surrounding Bush in the '00s. In some cases, they were the same ones surrounding Obama, Clinton, and Reagan. Guys like current Trump critic Mark Milley have been circulating in both parties for decades, always as a war-hawk preaching a more hostile relationship with Middle Eastern and East Asian states. There are dozens of other Mark Milleys still in Trump’s orbit. There are Mark Milleys in Kamala’s orbit.

      That’s one of the more frustrating aspects of this race. So much of what we’re hearing from both candidates is just the liberal case versus the conservative case of “How To Bomb Iran” or “How To Seal the Border Against Evil Foreigners” or “How To Force People To Have More Kids” or “How To Get More Money Spent on AI”.

      Graphs like this seem to neglect what these historical presidents did with their power when they had it. You’re looking at broad market and congressional spending trends without discussing what policies went into place and what consequences they had.