Category
In the month before Obama took office, more than 660,000 jobs were lost. During the Bush Presidency, the total number of jobs gained was near an all-time low of 160,000 annually. Comparatively, Obama has added nearly 10 times that amount, with more than 1.3 million jobs gained each year. During the height of the Great Recession, the U.S. unemployment rate was at a staggering 10 percent. The unemployment rate is now under 5 percent.
Clinton knows full well the perils ahead. The biggest threat is the Congress that she’ll have to go to with her big spending package. A GOP-controlled Congress will be as hostile to her big budget and tax increases as it was to Obama’s. With a big White House win, Clinton is on far more solid ground when she tries to follow through with the pledge. This will give her the breathing space needed to get parts of her jobs, education, healthcare, and infrastructure overhaul programs through.
The time and hassle obstacles pretty much guarantee that the likely fill-in candidate would be GOP VP contender Mike Pence. Now the RNC voters don’t have to choose him just because he is the VP candidate, but the time factor, the fact that he got generally high marks for his one debate joust with Democratic VP contender Tim Kaine, and the fact that he’s a GOP party insider, make him a near shoo-in for the fill-in spot.
It is becoming clear as the election nears that the Clinton base is relatively narrow and getting narrower. The stubborn “Berniecrats” and distrustful independents are a problem with a neat solution in doubt as the election nears. Yet another problem is the early assumption of solid support from non-white Americans has shown to be weaker than expected. The vaunted Clinton ground game may have been limited in key markets by the distraction caused by a much stronger primary campaign that drained assets meant to be used in the massive run-up to the November election.
The most recent version of the report, released Monday, Feb. 22, by the Council of Economic Advisers, also noted the nation’s economy also extended the longest streak of job growth on record, and that wage growth in the last 12 months was the strongest it has been since the Great Recession. The combination of increased jobs and wages helped boost consumer confidence about the economy to its highest level since 2004, according to the report.
Trump has now emerged as the likely Republican nominee come this fall’s election. The Republican establishment — through Super PAC's supporting Jeb Bush — burned through more than $130 million in an effort to stop Trump, yet he continues to surge in the polls. Donald Trump’s appeal, however, should not come as a surprise if it is seen in sociological terms.
So the question that once seemed absolutely ludicrous to think let alone ask is now a question that can be seriously asked and even to an extent answered. Just how would Trump govern? There’s little reason to think Trump is suited to patient, give-and-take negotiation and compromise to get his initiatives through Congress. His style is to bellow, bully, and harangue to get his way. As for the issues, Trump has been on the political scene long enough to have enough of a paper trail to piece together from his statements in debates and interviews and speeches a fairly accurate picture of what he will say and do on the big-ticket issues.
Media reporters and experts cover, weigh and analyze each day’s events, and that’s appropriate. But many of them use the day’s events to issue pronouncements about the future, picking winners and losers in an off-year election 11 months away or deciding who’s ahead in a presidential race three years from now. It’s like a movie critic reviewing an entire two-hour film after looking at one frame. Some of this is intrinsic to modern journalism. News is what’s happening right now, or just happened, or is about to happen.