General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I'm not completely convinced we're the problem [View all]muriel_volestrangler
(102,774 posts)... my prejudices". Take this:
from https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/11/21/trump-biden-economy-republicans/ (you may get a gift link at Wonkette). Now that they've won, many Republicans suddenly feel that they're not doing worse than since a year ago, after all - although Trump is not yet in power, and can have had no actual effect. The difference is they don't need to tell themselves "I am/we are worse off, so I'll vote for a change in president" to persuade themselves that it's not about taking revenge on groups they hate, via a president who clearly shares that hatred.
They weren't disconnected from reality, or woefully uninformed; they just felt better pretending that they were. They picked what media - social or commercial - to listen to, so that they felt they had made a "rational" choice.
Good point from the end of the Wonkette article:
It has consistently been the case that Republicans have more extreme views of the change in the state of their own finances than Democrats or Americans overall. Under Trump, Republicans were on average 28 points more likely to say their position had gotten better than worse; Democrats were 16 points more likely to say it had gotten worse. Under Biden, Democrats were only one point more likely to say things had gotten better (across his entire term); Republicans were 41 points more likely to say they’d gotten worse.
The same held for Obama, for all the Republican insistence that Democrats believed he was the Messiah. Clearly, this means that Republicans are far more in touch with their economic feelings than Democrats, who fail to perceive how Trump is flawless and both Obama and Biden ruin everything good and holy. Heh, remember when Barry Bamz ran a budget surplus? Terrible times!
With that in mind, we can confidently predict that within a month of Trump’s second inauguration, the economic stats won’t have changed significantly, but Republicans and probably idiots in the mainstream media will be kvelling about the bright new economy the Great Man has ushered in. Even if he follows through on those inflation-boosting tariffs.
Then Big Brother will increase the chocolate ration to a smaller amount and we’ll all rejoice.