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She burned that motherfucker down, and I am so here for it. Thank you, Caroline Kennedy.

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How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

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It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

A fool as well as an oath-breaker.

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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Polling Trump’s ‘Popularity’ Open Thread: Gradually, Then All At Once?

Polling Trump’s ‘Popularity’ Open Thread: Gradually, Then All At Once?

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Nice to see @doherty13.bsky.social with a smart piece for @politico.com today: "A Polling Analyst Digs Into Trump’s Ratings and the Epstein Saga"

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— John Gramlich (@johngramlich.bsky.social) July 22, 2025 at 1:31 PM

Per Politico — “A Polling Analyst Digs Into Trump’s Ratings and the Epstein Saga”:

… Compared with past presidents, Trump’s job approval ratings have, for the most part, moved within a narrow range. The reason is simple: He has always had a low ceiling, constrained by the single-digit approval he gets from Democrats and independents who lean Democratic. But he also has a high floor, thanks to the steady, 80 percent-plus support he invariably receives from the GOP base.

That’s what makes the firestorm surrounding the administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files such a potentially pivotal moment for the president. Coming on the heels of the U.S. bombing of Iran (not to mention passage of the so-called Big Beautiful Bill, faulted by some conservatives for its deficit-busting spending), the Epstein affair is about to reveal something important about the resilience of Trump’s bond with the GOP base. The suspicion Epstein is generating among Republicans is raising questions about whether Trump’s floor may finally crack — and, one way or another, become the “it” moment his opponents have eagerly awaited for so long…

Trump launched his second term in January flirting with 50 percent approval in many polls; this passed for a “honeymoon” by Trump’s own modest standards. By the 100-day mark in April, which happened to come shortly after the tumultuous rollout of his tariff policy, Trump’s ratings had fallen to the mid-40 percent range across the major polling aggregators — a return to his familiar resting place…

That’s why the furor over the administration’s handling of the Epstein files is potentially so important. It’s not just MAGA leaders and influencers who are upset with the administration — it’s rank and file Republicans. Quinnipiac University’s latest survey, released July 16, found more than three times as many registered voters disapproved (63 percent) than approved (17 percent) of how the administration has dealt with the Epstein affair. More revealing, Republicans, who normally can be counted on to overwhelmingly back Trump’s handling of any issue, were divided: 40 percent approved while 36 percent disapproved and a suspiciously large minority (24 percent) declined to answer.

Yet here’s the thing: that same survey found that Trump’s job rating was virtually unchanged since June, with 40 percent approving and 54 percent disapproving (Quinnipiac polls consistently show lower approval ratings for Trump than do many other surveys). Nor was there any evidence that Trump’s image among Republicans had been damaged; 90 percent approved of the way he was doing his job as president. This week’s CNN survey also showed no real change in Trump’s approval.

Clearly, the Epstein controversy is in its early stages and many Americans are still forming their opinions. But it’s not occurring within a vacuum: Trump is facing increasing pressure on many other fronts as well. Inflation is creeping back up, the polling on the BBB has been abysmal, and Trump’s tariffs may yet jolt the economy again, when (or if) they kick in next month.

The backdrop here matters a great deal. Since he was first elected, Trump has never been all that popular, especially when compared with his predecessors. His first-term average approval rating of 41 percent placed him below every other president dating back to Harry S. Truman, according to Gallup Org. Trump barely edged out former president Biden, whose 42 percent average was the second-lowest.

His second term ratings also are weaker than those of his past presidents. The main difference among the polls at his 100-day milestone was whether Trump was the least popular modern president ever at that point, or whether his rating was slightly higher than his own lackluster first-term approval mark.

However, Trump thus far has also been able to avoid the devastating ratings declines that other presidents have suffered, despite the fact that his approval on specific issues — most notably, immigration and the economy — is in negative territory…

Because Trump’s approval ratings move in such a narrow range, even small changes — positive or negative — over the next several months could have major consequences. Even at his current level of support, Trump’s job rating almost certainly will act as a drag for Republican candidates for the House and Senate.

The narrative around Trump’s presidency would shift as well. In the world of poll coverage, change sells, while lack of change is a signal to the reader to read no further. As a result, there is a constant temptation for partisans and more neutral observers alike to exaggerate small shifts in individual surveys to bolster preferred storylines; thus, Trump’s job approval has at times been variously described as “plummeting,” “surging” or “at record lows (or highs),” often based on limited evidence.

But a decisive change in the trajectory, seen across a number of high-quality surveys, would be a different matter, reshaping long-term perceptions of the president.

Based on Trump’s history, it is almost impossible to imagine him approaching either the lofty heights of Bill Clinton (73 percent approval in December 1998, following his House impeachment) or the subterranean depths of George W. Bush (25 percent approval in December 2008, during the financial crisis). Because of historic levels of partisan polarization, the days of extraordinarily high or low presidential job ratings are probably over.

Historically, presidents looked to 50 percent job approval as the key indicator of their standing with the public. For Trump, 40 percent is the new 50 percent. The remainder of his second term will look very different if his job ratings are consistently below that line rather than above it. How the Epstein saga plays out could be a major factor.

Our beautiful president has taxed the poor, sent troops to stomp through playgrounds in California, opened up concentration camps, doubled the price of seemingly random goods for no discernible reason, and bombed a foreign country just to do it. And yet these ungrateful peasants are unhappy?

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— Tim Onion (@bencollins.bsky.social) July 23, 2025 at 10:13 AM

Reader Interactions

137Comments

  2. 2.

    Martin

    And worth noting that with Congress and USSC in recess and no national election this year, all political spotlights are shining on the White House. Reporters kind of don’t have anything better to do than ask about Epstein.

  4. 4.

    Matt McIrvin

    I would argue that *all presidents starting with Obama* have had popularity that moves within a narrow range. It was a higher range for both Obama and Biden than for Trump, but the constraint coming from extreme polarization is always there.

  5. 5.

    Steve LaBonne

    @Baud: I don’t know about “collapse”, but I expect 70s style stagflation to be firmly established by this time next year. That will hurt Republicans badly.

  6. 6.

    Scout211

    @Baud:Trump has obviously decided his only chance is to take down Balloon Juice.

    He tried, but we have Super WaterGirl on our side!  She saved us from the big, orange, nasty monster!

    It was epic.

  10. 10.

    Lapassionara

    Supposedly, the WSJ has a story saying that Bondi told Trump in May that his name appears in the Epstein files.

  16. 16.

    WTFGhost

    @Baud: Be really funny if Japan’s agreement to make a HALF TRILLION dollar investment was funded by their selling Treasuries… and I wouldn’t put it past them.

  17. 17.

    Old Man Shadow

    I am very skeptical that anything will cause the remaining Republicans to realize he’s an incompetent, dangerous asshole and they should abandon him.

    I hope so, but I have doubts.

  18. 18.

    Deputinize America

    Pollsters and those who relentlessly commission them should be lined up against the wall when The Revolution occurs.

  23. 23.

    Scout211

    @Ramona: The article is not yet up on web archive, but this paragraph is readable.

    When Justice Department officials reviewed what Attorney General Pam Bondi called a “truckload” of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein earlier this year, they discovered that Donald Trump’s name appeared multiple times, according to senior administration officials.

    Who are those senior administration officials who are talking to WSJ?

  28. 28.

    Steve LaBonne

    @dmsilev: I think the Murdochs have been done with Trump for a while and have just been waiting for him to be vulnerable enough for them to stick the knife in. I’m quite sure they would be much happier with the couchfucker.

  30. 30.

    hueyplong

    @Scout211: “Who are those senior administration officials who are talking to WSJ?”

    That’s the single most promising thing typed in a while.  They’re liable to tear themselves apart trying to answer that question and then punish the transgressors.

  31. 31.

    Ramona

    @Baud: My guess is that’s the photo of the rapper ???? Luke?? who  a decade ago reported that he ducked out of a Mar A Lago party when he saw under-age girls being given drugs.

  36. 36.

    rikyrah

    Acyn (@Acyn) posted at 1:15 PM on Wed, Jul 23, 2025:
    Reporter: The senate intelligence committee unanimously agreed in bipartisan fashion that there was no political interference. There was a year’s long justice department investigation that also concluded no political interference. What do you now have that refutes those?

    Gabbard: I am not asking you to take my word for it. I am asking you to do honest journalism..

    Reporter: It’s your belief that those two previous investigations covered it up?

    t.co/rFngJqXCME
    (x.com/Acyn/status/1948084586698973420?t=S3aWM5oisF3hDNcXYdxm6Q&s=03)

  37. 37.

    Martin

    Prior thread ends at comment 20 for me now as well. Reloading doesn’t help. I blame Cole.

  39. 39.

    Scout211

    @prostratedragon:

    Now archived

    Thank you.

    Well, the article is not a tell-all.  It’s a “nothing to see here, folks.”

     

    In May, Bondi and her deputy informed the president at a meeting in the White House that his name was in the Epstein files, the officials said. Many other high-profile figures were also named, Trump was told. Being mentioned in the records isn’t a sign of wrongdoing.

    The officials said it was a routine briefing that covered a number of topics and that Trump’s appearance in the documents wasn’t the focus.
    They told the president at the meeting that the files contained what officials felt was unverified hearsay about many people, including Trump, who had socialized with Epstein in the past, some of the officials said. One of the officials familiar with the documents said they contain hundreds of other names.

    They also told Trump that senior Justice Department officials didn’t plan to release any more documents related to the investigation of the convicted sex offender because the material contained child pornography and victims’ personal information, the officials said. Trump said at the meeting he would defer to the Justice Department’s decision to not release any further files.

  40. 40.

    Ramona

    @Scout211: Please remind me again how to access the web archive? I too have only read the snippet available above the paywall.

    Indeed, who are these administration officials-fly-on-the-wall? I don’t very much care as long as they keep spilling the beans. Bondi is going to have to start dragging Trump into the loo to conspire with him but of course she can’t really do that given Trump’s famous propensity to deny having heard anything and pushing people under the bus. Remember the report where his lawyers started to only see him in pairs before he ever ran for POTUS?

  44. 44.

    Martin

    @WTFGhost: I wish Democrats were cutthroat enough to attack Trump for selling America to Japan. “Remember the next time you try to buy a house that the person you are bidding against might be the Japanese government. America should be owned by Americans.”

    Most voters are old enough to remember the 90s panic that Japan was buying everything. Everyone has seen Die Hard.

  48. 48.

    Lapassionara

    @Scout211: It’s an article vetted by lawyers whose client is currently being sued for liable.

    Its importance is the fact that it cites “administration sources” and keeps the Epstein story In the news.

  49. 49.

    Scout211

    @rikyrah: From your link:

    Newspapers like the Wall Street Journal are not used to a high-functioning executive president.

    Ewww.  That’s just, ewwww.

  50. 50.

    hueyplong

    @Scout211: You may read it as saying “nothing to see here, folks,” but you’re not one of the pedophilia conspiracy theorists, and you’re absolutely not Murdoch’s target audience.

  53. 53.

    WTFGhost

    @dmsilev: OMG HE WAS TAKING THE COUCH UP THE AStronaut game, *HI kids*. He was lifting the couch, see, up so it could play ASTRONAUT. Now, who wants to learn advanced algebra?

    @hueyplong: I’m with @beef: on this one – saying they’ll do something in a ForgetForget has already kinda been tried. “Tomorrow” might be more likely.

    (“Two weeks,” is Trump’s way of saying “ForgetForget,” so….)

    @Ramona: So Epstein could come to MAL; and he could bring underaged girls to MAL; and he could give them drugs at MAL; but nobody was supposed to *see*. Hey, you pro-lifers, great family values going on here, you’ve put him on a pedestal, “practically” made him an idol, and he has feet of filth, because that’s what he is, from head to to, except where that rabid weasel that’s attacking his skull is attached – the weasel won’t tell me if that part is filth, so, I dunno.

  57. 57.

    Scout211

    @hueyplong: You may read it as saying “nothing to see here, folks,” but you’re not one of the pedophilia conspiracy theorists, and you’re absolutely not Murdoch’s target audience.

    I read it as the senior administration officials trying to make it a “nothing to see here, folks.”  But your points and the fact that Trump keeps screaming “fake news” makes it closer to a big story. Or a continuation of the story.

  61. 61.

    CaseyL

    For the base GOP voters, the pain has to exceed the pleasure they’re deriving from cruelty before their support for Trump crumbles.

    And that depends on whether they follow an addiction habituation/tolerance model, where their appetite for cruelty only increases; or a gorge-until-you-vomit model, where they eventually become sated and then sickened by it.

    My money is on the former.

  62. 62.

    Baud

    @rikyrah:

    Hunter has a point the CBC, CHC, Bernie and AOC had Biden’s back. As much as the left talks about corporate Dems and Donors, let’s be real those were the people who pushed Biden out the race.

     

    Agreed. But for some reason, leftie social media decided to claim that the left cost us the election because of Liz Cheney or something else deficient. Maybe that strategy will work out for them.

  64. 64.

    hueyplong

    @WTFGhost: I still lean the other way.  “Two weeks” has been used in a couple of contexts.  One is the “forget about it” manner you mentioned.  The other is, “let’s talk about this thing I’m [not] gonna do later until you tire of talking about it, all the while not talking about [Epstein].”

  66. 66.

    Baud

    WaterGirl, when I put a Blue sky embed code into the Code pane, I can’t switch back to visual.

  67. 67.

    Jeffro

    @Matt McIrvin:the constraint coming from extreme polarization is always there.

    alternatively…since most all of the extreme polarization is on one side…Fox and the rest of the RWNJ Noise Machine make it impossible for a GOP president to drop below 40%, no matter what they do.  That’s the constraint on our politics.

    Which is what it was designed to do: keep GOP presidents from ever dealing with a collapse of support from their own side (as per Nixon and Watergate)

    (It does a less-good job of going to bat for wacky Rs in statewide and local races…but it shapes the overall environment and creates a higher floor for them too)

  68. 68.

    Scout211

    @Montanareddog: From your link:

    i think the president of the united states of america deserves to know whether his vice president jd vance is leaking details of the child trafficking and money laundering scheme the president was involved in to the press

    Must be reading balloon-juice.

    Or more likely, everyone is looking at JD as the leaker.

  69. 69.

    WTFGhost

    @Scout211: Well, I mean, of all  the stories to call fake news, this was the one he didn’t want to say was fake.

    It said he received a routine briefing, and, “by the way, lots of names are in the Epstein files, so is yours, there’s some nasty hearsay, etc.” And they didn’t want to release any more because child pornography, and identifying information, because the FBI has never released a redacted report in its existence, or something, and Trump deferred to their preference.

    Me, I love that he calls it fake news – I hope he’s spit-flecked furious over it, and the walls of MAL are dripping red with enough ketchup that it approximates the bloodshed of his evil policies over some short period of time, an hour, maybe 6 hours, but otherwise, that much uncontained ketchup is a serious health threat.

    The more he screams about this being “FAKE NEWS!!!” the better. It’s a beat-sweetener, they threw him a bone (and a meaty one) and he’s crying over it.

  70. 70.

    lowtechcyclist

    @rikyrah: ​

    GET THEE ENTIRE PHUCK OUTTA HERE!

    Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) posted at 10:35 AM on Mon, Jul 21, 2025:
    Bessent: “Newspapers like the Wall Street Journal are not used to a high-functioning executive president. They are used to perhaps President Obama, who was not as economically sophisticated as President Trump.”

    I’m very glad I hadn’t taken a sip of my drink right before reading that, otherwise I’d be doing a major laptop cleanup right now.

  72. 72.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Sister Golden Bear: As I recall, the last attempt to cancel FDA approval of abortion pills was because they were dangerous because they caused “harm” and the “harm” they caused was that they work as intended. It was real “we think you’re stupid” stuff.

  73. 73.

    bbleh

    @Baud: @Steve LaBonne: A collapse or stagflation is possible, but I wouldn’t count on either.  The Biden Boom was both strong and sound, and things are still in very good shape.  The markets seem mostly to have decided TACO, so his bluster isn’t shaking things like it did, and given both those, I’m not convinced the ROW are actually getting very nervous about T-bills.  (If YOU were a non-US oligarch, where would YOU park a bunch of your money?)

    I think a more standard cyclical downturn is not unlikely — hiring in particular hasn’t been great for a while, and we haven’t yet seen the full effects of the tariffs that actually materialized — but unemployment is still low, and we’re still primarily a service-oriented and domestically-oriented economy.

    I’d also guess there will be more visible and significant local effects, eg WV when the Medicaid cuts really hit, and there and other places when clean-energy cuts hit, etc.  The big tax breaks are going to the wealthy and corporations and guess where they live!

    My money’s on whimper, not bang, at least for now.  Crazy Orange Grandpa does something catastrophically stupid that his handlers can’t stop or undo … then things might change more radically.

  74. 74.

    Jackie

    @rikyrah:

    Bessent: “Newspapers like the Wall Street Journal are not used to a high-functioning executive president. They are used to perhaps President Obama, who was not as economically sophisticated as President Trump.”

    Sounds like desperation! Does Bessent truly think we’re stupid? Or, is that message for MAGA, who def are among the poorly educated FFOTUS loves so much? LOL

  76. 76.

    Bill Arnold

    @Ramona:
    There’s a link above.
    There are two main archives. web.archive.org is the big one, but archive.ph has paywalled stuff.
    (1) copy the url for the paywalled site.
    (2) go to archive.ph
    (3) paste the url for the paywalled site
    (4) Choose from the zero or more captures (usually at least one).
    I’m fuzzy about where it is hosted (seems to vary?); they must be somehow insulated from copyright enforcement. More information: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive.today

  79. 79.

    Steve LaBonne

    @bbleh: 15% tariffs are enormous and will certainly trigger sustained inflation. The immigration insanity will cause food shortages and inflation (already starting to be visible) and will cripple the construction industry. The even higher tariffs on various raw and intermediate goods that go into cars are already starting to strangle the US auto industry. I would like to be as optimistic as you because I’m no fan of the suffering a tanking economy will cause, but I’m not seeing it.

  81. 81.

    hueyplong

    We read that Vance was sent off to Idaho to meet with a couple of Murdochs and kill the previous story.

    Shouldn’t be too hard to plant the suspicion that Vance engaged in talks of a different kind in Murdochville.

  82. 82.

    Eolirin

    @bbleh: I think the deportation push is going to cause more economic damage than is currently being factored into people’s assessments.

    When you tack on tariffs and then massive contraction of federal spending and employment, even though individually those things won’t necessarily hit that hard given the size of the US economy, there will be amplifying effects from them all happening at once.

  84. 84.

    Martin

    @rikyrah: Yeah. The Biden defenders always fail to note that when Harris was named as the nominee and we started those zoom calls, 10s of millions of dollars were raised and 10s of thousands of people volunteered. You know what they weren’t doing when Biden as the nominee? Donating and volunteering. The campaign was in bad shape long before the debate and anyone paying attention could see that. Some of that was the big donors not giving, but the real alarm was that Democratic voters weren’t stepping up, because Democratic voters weren’t enthusiastic about the candidate. Some were, obviously, but not enough to carry the campaign. Say what you will about big donors  – they do pay attention to that kind of stuff. So did Pelosi and Obama.

    One of the early challenges of the Harris campaign was tipping up field offices and putting people to work because the infrastructure for that kind of campaign hadn’t been built. There was no meaningful grassroots until that moment.

  85. 85.

    Ramona

    @Lapassionara: Exactly this! That WSJ says that the inclusion of one’s name in the file doesn’t necessary imply guilt does not mean that everybody mentioned in the files are innocent.

    The WH calling WSJ a purveyor of fake news in response to this article further feeds interest in the story.

    Administration officialS (plural) willing to leak such tantalizing nuggets to WSJ adds to the vulnerability of this poor excuse for an administration.

  87. 87.

    Lapassionara

    @Ramona: Plus, it’s a “Sue us, see if we care” message. this is heartening when so many others are afraid of the administration.

  89. 89.

    Belafon

    @Martin: You’re not taking into account how much of that money was from those of us that were pissed that Biden got pushed out and were countering the “We need a primary” that was coming from everywhere.

  90. 90.

    Ramona

    @WTFGhost: I don’t recall if the article I read mentioned Epstein. I didn’t read or watch the rapper reporting this. In a way, it’s worse if this incident postdates 2004 when Trump and Epstein were no longer pals.

  91. 91.

    HopefullyNotcassandra

    @Scout211:

    ”They told the president at the meeting that the files contained what officials felt was unverified hearsay about many people, including Trump, who had socialized with Epstein in the past, some of the officials said. One of the officials familiar with the documents said they contain hundreds of other names.”

    Has anyone investigated any of that hearsay?  Does that hearsay come from victims or documents?  Can it be verified?  Has anyone tried?

    What an odd statement to make about the almost pack-rat files of a known sex trafficker.  Did the trafficking happen in a vacuum?  Is the WSJ truly suggesting only Epstein and Maxwell molested these girls?

    There are 300 gigabits of documents we are told.  Is that not at least 30 million pages?

  94. 94.

    Betty

    For Water Girl: I have been using Kindle/ Silk browser to read and comment on the posts with no difficulties.

    I wanted to note for those who haven’t seen it that the Tim Onion post is a satirical reply to the Axios bros publishing an article praising Trump for his amazing accomplishments during his first six months in office.

  96. 96.

    Martin

    @Baud: Yes, even known leftist David Brooks has argued that Harris should have stayed on her populist economic focus from early in the campaign. Even though he didn’t like those policies, he thought voters focus on the economy would have rewarded her.

    It is a mystery why advisors David Plouffe (Chief Advisor for Uber) and Tony West (legal counsel for Uber) would have scuttled the kind of economic populist messages that Harris was championing.  Just like it’s a mystery why these two at Uber pushed a ballot initiative in CA that exempted them specifically from treating their workers as employees where they would need to do economically radical things like provide health insurance and pay into Social Security.

    Protip for the next Dem nominee – don’t hire Uber to advise you on your economic policies.

  97. 97.

    Ramona

    @WTFGhost: That was my feeling as well. White House spokespeople could have emphasized the WSJ’s caveat that mention of a name in the files does not necessarily imply guilt (the ‘necessarily’ is something I add because idiots interpret “correlation does not imply causation” to mean “correlation implies no causation” when the “imply” in the field of logic and math is better communicated in ordinary language as “necessarily imply”) and the Biden administration would have indicted others if the reports in the files were anything more than hearsay. Calling this report fake news might look to his base as though he is dismissing a potentially exculpatory account.

  98. 98.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    @Trollhattan: A tenner says Barron.

    Now there is a thought! Do you recall the golf cart snippet where Trump is telling Barron it’s going to be Kamala? I thought at the time the leak of that video indicated a mole.

  100. 100.

    WTFGhost

    @Trollhattan: OMFG that would be so awesome.

    @hueyplong: Oh, come now, what would the honorable JD Vance have to gain from Trump’s utter humiliation and the destruction of his good name?

    (must keep straight face… must keep straight…)BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!

  102. 102.

    Eolirin

    @Belafon: I don’t think that was enough to have made as much of a difference in the energy around the campaign as it did.

    What I don’t think we can fully account for is how much Trump’s turnout improved from being able to run against a black woman, but I do suspect that Biden would have done worse overall. The slander and the narrative had stuck. There’s a lot of reason to be mad about the narrative, but it was embedded. 

  103. 103.

    Ramona

    Thanks Bill! I think you may have posted these instructions before. This time, I’ve made sure to copy and paste them into a memo with keywords.

  104. 104.

    Ramona

    @Bill Arnold: Thanks Bill! I think you may have posted these instructions before. This time, I’ve made sure to copy and paste them into a memo with keywords.

  105. 105.

    HopefullyNotcassandra

     

    @Ramona:  Remember Covid slowed down almost every investigation.  We cannot know what investigation happened beyond the Maxwell case.

  106. 106.

    Baud

    @Martin:

    I’m not analyzing. It’s above my pay grade. But it someone wants to volunteer that they’re responsible for electing Trump, I’m not going to argue with them.

  107. 107.

    prostratedragon

    @Belafon:  Absolutely. For an incumbent, it was still early in the normal course of things for the public to feel  a big push.

  108. 108.

    BigJimSlade

    @lowtechcyclist: “You can count on it”

    First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it.’

  109. 109.

    bbleh

    @Steve LaBonne: but even counting intermediate goods, imports just aren’t that much of “the economy,” and 15% of not that much is even less much.  Certainly there are bigger local shocks, eg as you note to the auto industry, but I’d be willing to bet that only some of those cost increases will be passed on to consumers.

    @Eolirin: and I think the effects of deportation will depend heavily on how much ACTUALLY happens, vs. how much gets talked about.  Not to minimize the horror stories, not least because of the way they’re doing it, but so far the numbers aren’t the kind that can really make a dent in a $30T economy.

    And the cuts in Federal spending aren’t actually that big, except as noted in certain areas, eg Medicaid, clean energy, which WILL have significant local effects imo.  Mostly they just gave a gigantic amount of money away to wealthy individuals and corporations and tacked it onto the deficit.

    Not trying to be a Pollyanna here — I’d love to see the Orange Guy faceplant, even as I’d deplore the suffering it entailed — but so far the economic consequences seem to be far more talk than action.

    One thing I would say is, I think things are more brittle.  If there were a significant nasty shock — he does something stupid and unrepairable, some significant natural disaster, some political shock (Middle East? China?) — then things might unravel quickly and significantly, beginning in the financial markets.  And then heaven help the individual investor …

  110. 110.

    Ramona

    @Lapassionara: Gladdens the cockles of my heart!

    Have you moseyed along to emptywheel.net where Marcie Wheeler has a timeline setting the context in which WSJ released this story and hinting that their primary source was Maxwell?

  111. 111.

    Fair Economist

    @bbleh:

    but I’d be willing to bet that only some of those cost increases will be passed on to consumers.

    Oh, I assure you every penny will be passed on and them some, because the market will not accept a drop in profits.

  114. 114.

    Ramona

     

    @HopefullyNotcassandra: Oh! I am not saying that the Biden administration would have indicted others if the names in the files were anything but hearsay. I’m saying that is something WH spokespeople could have said which their base would buy. If you look at the comments to the WSJ article, there are a few MAGAts saying that it’s not credible that Trump has done anything given that the Biden administration did not indict him given it indicted him for “crimes for which there was much less evidence.” Their words, not mine.

    Of course, such an investigation would take huge resources and a lot of time. Senator Wyden’s investigation into the money trail is the important one and the Republican Senate has stymied it.

  118. 118.

    Martin

    @bbleh: A collapse or stagflation is possible, but I wouldn’t count on either.  The Biden Boom was both strong and sound, and things are still in very good shape.

    We have record levels of auto loan defaults. Credit card delinquencies are near record highs as households are at historic levels in terms of debt service paid. Consumer spending is down in part because of this, a trend that started in 2023 due to raising interest rates to combat inflation. Banks jacked of average credit card rates from 16% to 23% in a matter of a few months in 2024 increasing the debt service of the average household by $1500. It didn’t matter if the cost of eggs had stopped going up, people had $1500/yr less money to spend.

    None of that showed up in unemployment or GDP or DJIA numbers. Job opening are declining. You still have a lot of industrial construction left over from Biden’s bills, which really cranked that up which was really good, but it’s unclear if there is going to be demand for those once they’re complete as spending is down for both consumers and businesses. Biden’s economy was pretty good for high earners and investors, but even when inflation was at 10% crop prices fell 20%. Farmers and farm laborers really got fucked, consumers without much discretionary income got fucked. Asking rent spiked after Covid and never really slowed down.

    The top line economic numbers in 2024 were great, but the underlying reality was very different. That was true in 2007 as well, with near historic low unemployment, strong GDP growth, record highs on the Dow. The global economy basically crashed within 12 months because the underlying metrics were terrible, but political reporters don’t talk about that shit. It was all fucking roses and sunshine going into 2008.

    The people saying the economy was a problem in 2024 weren’t lying. Trump won poor voters. I think it was the first time they voted GOP in decades. And it wasn’t just white working class, he took huge chunks out of Dems black and latino voting bases at the lower end of the income range.

    The refusal to recognize this is going to kill Democratic chances going forward. Democrats have to learn to see this and respond to it.

  119. 119.

    Eolirin

    @bbleh: Well, it’s a good thing we’re not living in a world where climate change is going to cause a near perpetual risk of a massive natural disaster happening then. :p

    But I think you’re potentially undervaluing the extent to which both the tariffs and the deportations, in the way they’re being carried out, cause uncertainty and risk that cannot be effectively managed and how that uncertainty has knock on effects. For instance, ports and transportation of goods haven’t fully recovered traffic from “Liberation Day” and truckers are already really low margin. There are potentials for a geometric rate of contraction if some part of the system hits a tipping point, and if that part of the economy was vital, that can turn into contagion.

    If construction costs skyrocket because of labor shortages driven as much by fear as actual deportation numbers, or trucking collapses, because it’s already brittle given how that industry is structured, of offshoring of supply chains to deal with concerns about access to raw materials and a drop in import/export as the world slides into trade wars, it’s going to affect a whole lot more than just those industries.

  120. 120.

    bbleh

    @Fair Economist: eh, do a round of firings, maybe close a marginally productive plant somewhere.  The markets love them some Hard-Nosed Cost-Cutting.  Explain the rest away as blah-blah temporary adjustment blah maintain share blah.  And the profit margins on the kinds of vehicles American car manufacturers produce these days are staggering.  I think both they and many other companies hit by supply-chain shocks — such as they actually turn out be when the dust has settled — will try to mitigate them rather than duck and cover.

    Could be wrong!  But that’s what I’d do ..

    @Eolirin: yes, it’s a complex system with nonlinear feedback elements, and such systems indeed can hit “tipping points,” both from unanticipated external shocks and just from a buildup of known but mutually reinforcing forces.  The latter could happen!  I guess I just don’t see a big enough wave at this point (although as noted I *DO* see significant “local” effects, both geographic and industry-specific).  And the former is by definition unpredictable.

    (As to trucking, though, it’s about the closest thing to “perfect competition” as I know.  A big fraction of it is perpetually on the border of nonviability.  I wouldn’t look to that as a driver — heh — only as a barometer.

    Just to be clear — I ain’t sayin’ things are gonna be great, or even as good as they were!  Local effects, tightening household budgets, some tariff effects, etc — still not convinced that deportation is gonna be too big, given that hiring is already soft — these things are imo driving at least a cyclical-style downturn.  And a big external shock, or some weird internal multiplier thing, could turn that into a steep one.  But if I hafta bet, it’s on a whimper not a bang.

  121. 121.

    Martin

    @Belafon: How does that explain why Biden was so far behind on fundraising and building out volunteer staff? Did you know he was going to be pushed out and saved supporting him?

    I’m not following your argument at all.

  122. 122.

    Miss Bianca

    @Martin: yeah, I made some comments that got repeated then eated then others disappeared as well. Poor WaterGirl’s got her hands full today!

  123. 123.

    Martin

    @Eolirin: We have evidence he likely would have done worse. There as a poll the day before the election that asked if Biden had stayed in the race how would voters have chosen and Biden lost by 10 points. I think it was Marist. I’ll see if I can find it.

    Exit polls pointed to voters saying they were economically worse off as the main reason for their vote. I don’t know how Harris counters that from voters without breaking with Biden on economic policy. Saying “I woudln’t change a thing” is suicide, and that’s literally what happened.

  124. 124.

    Eolirin

    @Martin: How is it going to kill our chances when the Republicans are in the process of making literally everything worse?

    After 4 years of deportation fears killing construction (which isn’t going to help with housing costs!) and driving up food prices (and those snap cuts are going to put even more strain on farmers), of tariffs driving up the cost of most consumer goods and making cars even more unaffordable while putting our exports at risk of trade wars, of worsening burdens on existing student loan debt as the administration fucks with the rate numbers (anecdotally, I’ve seen someone’s loan go from 600 a month to over 1000), of uncertainty paralyzing business investment and new hiring, and a massive cut in federal spending pulling trillions out of the economy do you really think people aren’t going to look back at 2024 and think, damn, those were good days? Because it’s all relative. It depends on where our frame sits.

  125. 125.

    Martin

    @Eolirin: Because if voters are still focused on economic issues, Democrats need to respond with economic solutions – not only attacks on Trump or attacks on immigration policy. And those economic solutions need to really focus on low and lower middle class workers as well as young workers. And apart from Biden’s labor push and the early extended child tax credit, the economic solutions that dems were offering tended to be more valuable to people higher in the income ladder. FFS, Democrats mostly gave up on raising minimum wage back in 2021 when they couldn’t get Democrats to vote for it.

    Meanwhile, Trump offers up to eliminate taxes on tips and SS. Trump offers to cap credit card interest at 10%. Trump offers a credit to family care providers. Trump offers to let you deduct car loan interest. Like, those are popular policies and mostly benefit low income workers. I think some are terrible precedents and some will have pretty serious secondary effects, but they’re a lot better targeted at low income workers than an EV tax credit.

    Look at how Mamdani won. I know everyone has their ‘eww, DSA’ glasses on, but his 6 signature policies were all economic and all targeted to low income voters and all have positive approvals nationally. Taxing the rich +43 nationally. Free child care +38 nationally. $30 minimum wage +15 nationally. Rent freeze for low income tenants also +38 nationally. Everyone in NYC understands that poor NYers use the bus not the subway, mainly because the subway doesn’t service many low income neighborhoods so when he says free bus but not free subway, it’s pretty obvious who that policy is for.

    Not saying Democrats should do those policies nationally, but I think there’s a lot of lessons to be learned in those policies. He could have campaigned on fighting Trump but he didn’t. That didn’t hurt him.

    You say you’ve seen someone’s loan go from 600 to 1000/mo – yeah, that’s the problem. That was established before the election. Trump wants to fire Powell because he wants to lower rates. Do you think your friend is in favor of that? Note, I think lowering rates is a good idea. There is a lot of evidence that the post-Covid inflation wasn’t a result of rising wages or cost of inputs but from profit taking. As such, raising rates is the lever the Fed can pull, but it’s not the right lever. The right lever is to go after corporate profits, which the Fed largely lacks the ability to do, but which the President can call out and with Congress can act on. Even if Congress hadn’t acted, Biden could have set the narrative that inflation was the result of greedy corporations taking profits from a vulnerable populace and put forward policy solutions to address that. Specifically on eggs it could have been the exact same price control system we use for milk. Price gouging was also an option, which Harris did pursue. At least in this case you can establish that you are pursuing policies to help working voters and it’s the GOP opposing them and you ride that horse through the election. But that never happened, and because it didn’t happen the Fed pulled the interest rate lever and your friends loans got prohibitively expensive, and here’s Trump campaigning on limiting credit card rates, something that was once a signature Democratic issue way back when. There is now a bill in the House and Senate to put a 10% cap for 5 years. In the House the authors are Anna Paulina Luna and AOC, and in the Senate it’s Josh Hawley and Bernie Sanders. My guess is folks here will point out how the DSA are again selling out Democrats by working with Republicans something-something-horseshoe, but consider who the beneficiaries of that policy would be, and who you would be fighting against in opposing those bills.

    There are a lot of folks that have internalized the GOP as the party of big business because that was true before Covid, before Trump and before the financial crisis and it’s true of most GOP politicians still, but it’s not true of most GOP voters. Republican view large corporations and banks as or more unfavorably than Democrats do, but Democrats keep campaigning as though if they attack large corporations and banks they’ll lose the electorate. I think that’s because older Democrats have internalized that division and because that’s their go-to for campaign funds. I think that’s a big part of the generational split.

  126. 126.

    catclub

    @Steve LaBonne: and have just been waiting for him to be vulnerable enough for them to stick the knife in. I’m quite sure they would be much happier with the couchfucker.

     

    I would say that is a huge miscalculation on their part.

    Trump has gotten things done. Vance will not. And will be much more unpopular.

  127. 127.

    catclub

    let me just say that when the article mentions the bombing of Iran as something that his fans do not like, they (the authors) are deluded.
    No one cared. Also extremely few care that he is taking Putin’s side against Ukraine.

  128. 128.

    The Audacity of Krope

    @Martin: Democrats need to respond with economic solutions – not only attacks on Trump or attacks on immigration policy.

    I know there was a lot more to your argument, but improving immigration policy is absolutely an economic issue.

  129. 129.

    Martin

    @The Audacity of Krope: But it’s secondary. It’s macroeconomic. You need to focus on micro – consumer wages, costs, fairness. Anchor everything on those, and you build outward to include immigration and the other stuff.

    Mamdani did not win because he’s DSA, or because he’s male, or Muslim or of Indian heritage. He won because he went straight to voters on economic issues. And note, he got a lot of upper income voters as well, because there are enough of us middle/upper income voters that understand that social unrest is bad for everyone, and if paying more taxes or whatever is the cost to avoid it, it’s a cheap price to pay.

    And I suspect there is a market for unfair pain being inflicted on large corporations. Again, almost nobody was outraged by Luigi. Everyone at the very least understood where he was coming from, even if they thought it was a bad thing. I would err on the side of taking a kilo of flesh out of the corporations when maybe only a pound is needed, rather than the other way around. Big, meaningful, direct economic benefits to low/middle income earners

    tl;dr: Maslows hierarchy of voter needs says that rent needs to be paid before we can help immigrants or the trans community, etc. That’s the order you need to work in. Even democracy is secondary to not being homeless.

  130. 130.

    Gretchen

    @Martin: Yes! Pundits keep saying crazy socialist Mamdami is going to doom the Democratic Party. While he’s telling people he has plans to make your rent, groceries, and transportation to work more affordable – things actual people are actually worried about. They ask how will this translate to red America? They’re worried about the price of rent, groceries and transportation too?

  131. 131.

    The Audacity of Krope

    @Martin: You need to focus on micro – consumer wages, costs, fairness.

    I like to see that, myself.  I’ve seen it tried sometimes. They work to make reformers cross every t and dot every I on the plans even though policy emerges from collaborative processes.

    One issue like that which has been on my mind is the minimum wage. It needs to be pegged to inflation so price gouging can be disarmed as a weapon against higher employee earning.

    Also, immigration is very much a kitchen table issue to many, many people.

  132. 132.

    Martin

    @Gretchen: Yep. I don’t see any reason that an Elise Stefanik or a Pat Ryan can’t run basically the same campaign. When polled 40% of national republicans supported Mamdani’s tax on corporations, free child care, and rent freezes for low income voters. That a LOT of republican support for supposedly socialist policies.

    And when I have previously spoken of authenticity in the campaign, one of the concerns that voters raised on Harris was her shift from Medicare for All as an issue in 2020 to not pushing hard on healthcare in 2024. That’s a pretty traditional poll-tested shift by candidates but we seem to be less tolerant of candidates doing that in part because we now don’t know what she really supported. Cuomo shifting to mimic Mamdani’s campaign style has fallen flat on its face – everyone knows that’s bullshit. Clintons ‘Pokemon Go to the polls’ is still a fucking meme. I think that’s another part of the generational shift where almost anyone ready for federal office has gone through years of the consultant fluff cycle of how to not be yourself and instead be this caricature of a politician, and voters kind of hate that shit. We don’t pattern off of actors any longer, we pattern off of social media and people being themselves, which is what young people are conditioned to do. I don’t remember a single social media piece by the Harris campaign where she was the one holding the camera. AOC does that shit constantly.

    I love the first 5 minutes of this video so much. Mostly because of his expression of the physical manifestation of a person philosophy of work – which is an observation that cleared a mental/emotional roadblock I’ve had for so long I can’t even tell you, but the following discussion of how Adam Savage shoots his show. A guy with TV and film experience who can do the most professional setup out there, shoots on his iPhone front camera with audio from his phone. Why? Because it creates a kind of intimacy with the viewer that pulls you in as though you’re having a direct conversation. And it’s subtle but it’s pretty powerful. Younger people have a more visceral sense of that, and I think that’s a big part of why there’s such a strong call for younger politicians that haven’t yet been groomed into the political industrial complex.

    And so if you can talk with voters rather than at them, and tap into the things that are keeping them up at night with direct solutions, I think that works regardless of where you are on the political spectrum. I think it’s the DSA folks that exhibit it the most because they come from outside of that political industrial complex. I mean, Cuomo’s campaign was a joke, but it was administered by the Democratic book.

  133. 133.

    Martin

    @The Audacity of Krope: If voters signal they want solutions on immigration, then by all means move it up to the top. But when voters tell you their top issue is the economy, deliver on the economy. Don’t point to the unemployment rate and tell them everything is fine. If they tell you it’s immigration, listen to what they are saying, and deliver on that. Limiting the flow of immigrants isn’t the end of the world. It’s a much better outcome than what we’re going through now.

  134. 134.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @Jackie: yeah, I’m in Safari and I wasn’t seeing any new comments loading for a while (although Bluesky seems slow as well, but maybe that’s because most of the US east coast is in bed and the Australians are still at work and the Europeans aren’t awake yet?)

  137. 137.

    Paul in KY

    @Martin: She really stepped on her metaphorical dick with that statement. Maybe she didn’t have that ‘fire in the belly’ to be POTUS? Cause if you can make hay by trashing the current POTUS (who’s from your party) you have to do it. Nothing personal…It’s just business.

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