It’s smart politics. GOP stepped on their weenies with their draconian, liberty-hating abortion restrictions, and Dems are driving a truck through it to the win column. Economy and border are broadly more important, sure, but hot button issues win elections.
High prices for housing, staples, and gasoline, to name three, come largely from two things: a supply chain *still* screwed up by Covid, the global shutdown, and logistics system still not operating efficiently worldwide; and supply-and-demand. It happened on Biden's watch because Biden inherited almost all the the fallout from Covid. If Trump wins next year, he will inherit the economic problems, and prices will remain high until demand and supply chain issues work themselves out. Presidents politically get the blame and the credit for what happens on their watch, but our economy is so massive no president can do much to alter it.
The border mess is a collective failure of Congresses and both parties beginning with Ronald Reagan. None of them did anything to fix legal immigration, and I blame them all for that. We cannot have open borders and be a sovereign nation, they are mutually exclusive.
Also on the border, most of the illegals do not swim the Rio Grande or walk across the "open border," an open border that doesn't exist in reality--we are arresting and deporting more illegals now than we did under previous administrations. So the big beautiful Trump wall would not have solved the problems while costing trillions to erect.
Most illegals and contraband like fentanyl come in through the international trucking system, because millions of semis cross our southern border every year and most of them get only a cursory examination, if any. That was the case under Trump, it remains the case under Biden. If we quit allowing Mexico to ship products into our country, much illegal people and goods would stop. So would billions of dollars of agricultural and other imports this country demands. Gotta choose, one or the other. Or hire enough Border Patrol to hand-search every truck, and that's ... unlikely.
Did Biden pump too many billions of dollars into the economy during Covid? Probably. But what was the alternative, let people starve? People were out of work for two years. Landlords were out of rent money for two years. Businesses had no traffic for two years. The federal subsidies kept people and businesses afloat, and I am willing to suffer the inflationary aftereffects for a while to allow them to have lived through the shutdowns that made the real unemployment rate a zillion percent.
The shutdown ITSELF is a separate issue, because shutting down our entire system is what caused the chain of events that led to the mass unemployment and need for the bailout. Sure, we can blame Biden in retrospect for doing it, but only in retrospect--that first year of Covid, nobody knew what the hell was the right approach. Since most of the world did the same thing, I'd argue that if Trump had won the election, he'd have shut us down, too, given what we knew at the time.
The second year of shutdown was ridiculous, and for that I blame Biden fully. At the time I called for opening the country back up after the first year was over, and if we had, it might have mitigated some of the aftershock. But, governing is imperfect.
Now that we have solved the problems of the world via social media, I bid you a warm good night.
And the democrats have convinced the electorate that abortion is more important than the economy and an open border.
I don’t like it because I believe that my two issues affect more people.
But here we are.
It’s smart politics. GOP stepped on their weenies with their draconian, liberty-hating abortion restrictions, and Dems are driving a truck through it to the win column. Economy and border are broadly more important, sure, but hot button issues win elections.
This will settle in another year when each state has spoken...and we'll still have sanctuary cities, unaffordable housing and staples.
High prices for housing, staples, and gasoline, to name three, come largely from two things: a supply chain *still* screwed up by Covid, the global shutdown, and logistics system still not operating efficiently worldwide; and supply-and-demand. It happened on Biden's watch because Biden inherited almost all the the fallout from Covid. If Trump wins next year, he will inherit the economic problems, and prices will remain high until demand and supply chain issues work themselves out. Presidents politically get the blame and the credit for what happens on their watch, but our economy is so massive no president can do much to alter it.
The border mess is a collective failure of Congresses and both parties beginning with Ronald Reagan. None of them did anything to fix legal immigration, and I blame them all for that. We cannot have open borders and be a sovereign nation, they are mutually exclusive.
Also on the border, most of the illegals do not swim the Rio Grande or walk across the "open border," an open border that doesn't exist in reality--we are arresting and deporting more illegals now than we did under previous administrations. So the big beautiful Trump wall would not have solved the problems while costing trillions to erect.
Most illegals and contraband like fentanyl come in through the international trucking system, because millions of semis cross our southern border every year and most of them get only a cursory examination, if any. That was the case under Trump, it remains the case under Biden. If we quit allowing Mexico to ship products into our country, much illegal people and goods would stop. So would billions of dollars of agricultural and other imports this country demands. Gotta choose, one or the other. Or hire enough Border Patrol to hand-search every truck, and that's ... unlikely.
Did Biden pump too many billions of dollars into the economy during Covid? Probably. But what was the alternative, let people starve? People were out of work for two years. Landlords were out of rent money for two years. Businesses had no traffic for two years. The federal subsidies kept people and businesses afloat, and I am willing to suffer the inflationary aftereffects for a while to allow them to have lived through the shutdowns that made the real unemployment rate a zillion percent.
The shutdown ITSELF is a separate issue, because shutting down our entire system is what caused the chain of events that led to the mass unemployment and need for the bailout. Sure, we can blame Biden in retrospect for doing it, but only in retrospect--that first year of Covid, nobody knew what the hell was the right approach. Since most of the world did the same thing, I'd argue that if Trump had won the election, he'd have shut us down, too, given what we knew at the time.
The second year of shutdown was ridiculous, and for that I blame Biden fully. At the time I called for opening the country back up after the first year was over, and if we had, it might have mitigated some of the aftershock. But, governing is imperfect.
Now that we have solved the problems of the world via social media, I bid you a warm good night.