And Tweeted to their knees by the President!
…and PLEASE never stop posting here. @loppar…!
This is a fair question, even setting aside and controlling for ridiculous Obama Derangement Syndrome.
Once the dust settled on the stimulus, Obama spent no meaningful capital on economic issues, especially after 2012, and it’s inexplicable.
This is an interesting question, TB.
I have always thought that the President burned up FAR too much “Political Capital” far too early.
Your thoughts?
Unquestionably. The partisan stimulus was an ominous sign - and then pushing all his chips on the monstrosity known as the Affordable Care Act, the hill upon which the Democratic Party died.
Imagine if Obama had worked to achieve a solid bi-partisan stimulus that both parties could take credit on (and also jointly own if it didn’t go well). Then he would have had the goodwill to propose massive health care reform, but be able to do it smartly, and get a good bill, even if it was along more partisan lines, since he had earned trust.
Instead, it was the partisan Hail Mary on every single play.
Obama came into office with tremendous capital and goodwill - and he flat out blew it. That isn’t up for debate - the Democratic Party is a shambles, and has almost no influence as a result of Obama’s tenure.
It’s a weird thing to say about a President that served eight years, but Obama actually peaked as a candidate.
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Would you venture a guess as to whether or not there are contingencies built into these plans, especially the more recent ones made in the past year or so?
I would think that the political/business climate and the potential changes that could occur would be factored in to these types of plans, but it would be purely speculation on my part.
Yes. There are contingency plans for everything. I’ve worked on such adverse scenarios, from adverse changes in the legal environment (more regulation) to decisions driven by political populism… Even extreme scenarios such as a Soviet-style appropriation of assets in some markets.
That is the reason when Brexit happened and the UK political elites were blindsided with the result, the first thing the Government did was sit down with the representatives of the Big Four accounting companies as they had contingency plans for the Leave vote.
But I’m telling you, it’s pretty much business as usual. Paradoxically, from my experience, as jobs are a major part of Trump’s program (he has program?) they companies will drive an even harder bargain for keeping these jobs in the US.
That would have been possible only if the GOP were willing to work with him, and as we have discussed before, they weren’t. ‘Oppose Obama at every turn’ was the plan they went with.
“We know that congressional Republicans pursued a conscious strategy not to cooperate with Democrats on the stimulus, voting in unison in the House against it. Very early on, Dave Obey, then chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, asked his counterpart on the committee, Republican Jerry Lewis, to get his leaders and rank-and-file to provide Republican ideas to include, and non-starters to exclude, in a stimulus plan and was told that there were orders from “on high” not to cooperate.”
Gotta disagree here too. The GOP played Obama like a fiddle, leading him on with promises of bipartisanship that later vanished.
“[Senate Finance Committee] Chairman Max Baucus, in the spring of 2009, signaled his desire to find a bipartisan compromise [on healthcare reform], working especially closely with [Chuck] Grassley, his dear friend and Republican counterpart, who had been deeply involved in crafting the Republican alternative to Clintoncare. Baucus and Grassley convened an informal group of three Democrats and three Republicans on the committee, which became known as the “Gang of Six.” They covered the parties’ ideological bases; the other GOPers were conservative Mike Enzi of Wyoming and moderate Olympia Snowe of Maine, and the Democrats were liberal Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and moderate Kent Conrad of North Dakota.
[…]
What became clear before September, when the talks fell apart, is that Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell had warned both Grassley and Enzi that their futures in the Senate would be much dimmer if they moved toward a deal with the Democrats that would produce legislation to be signed by Barack Obama.”
(ibid)
Apparently he does. He has held back on the details publicly, but it seems that when heads of industries meet privately with him they come out of it wanting to continue and expand operations in the US.
You really believe that? It’s been happening for several years, as this 2015 article will attest and I’ve told you why.
The only difference is that except the bland graph in the link you’ll see a celebratory Trump tweet taking credit for a long term trend that started during someone else’s presidency.
Well, no, we didn’t reach that conclusion - we left it with you needing to do some more reading, and plenty of information establishing that Team Obama wasn’t interested in bipartisan compromise on the stimulus.
Or on the Affordable Care Act. Massachusetts sends a Republican to stop this trainwreck from being passed, and Democrats had to resort to parliamentary witchcraft to pass it over the momentum against it. And the entire moderate wing of the Democrats and the “ascendant” Democratic majority paid for it with their political lives.
I understand that the revisionism is in a sense therapeutic - but this blame game against Republicans (for whom I hold no particulat love or admiration) without acknowledging that Obama was just as bad and really worse isn’t supportable.
Oh, and speaking of revisionism, this bit about Obey (unsourced) occurred after the initial meeting between Cantor and Obama - the “I won” meeting.
After Obama’s numerous missteps, there has been great effort to paper over them as something other than missteps. But it’s too late in the game to not have an honest accounting - and the final results (devastation of the Democratic Party) have to be accounted for.
I believe it has some influence. I know that some return has been occurring, as there has been a growing sentiment that we need to pull more jobs back from overseas/stop offshoring for a couple of years.
Aside from his presence, there is also the exit of our current pres. and the decimation of the Democrats. If you look a little further back, like '06 to '09, when the dems were talking about taking “excess profits” from large publicly traded companies, you can see what companies are talking about when they speak of a friendly business environment returning.
So I think he’s a factor. Not the main determining factor, but yes, a factor.
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Excepting, of course, the support I provided.
Allow me to source it:
Obey recalled a conversation he had with his Republican counterpart shortly after Democrats swept Congress and the White House in 2008. In trying to craft a stimulus package, then-ranking member Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., told Obey “sorry Dave, but orders from on high; we can’t play,” Obey said, which made him realize “no matter what we did, they were going to kick the hell out of us.”
http://dc.wispolitics.com/2015/01/congressional-republicans-need-to-prove.html
You have to remember that Obama did not know his ass from first base when it came to creating jobs in a free economy. He thought that creating jobs meant making government larger and employing more people. So, naturally he doubted Trump could do anything. Obama considers himself the smartest man on the planet and he couldn’t do anything so naturally no one else could either.
My gosh he was so bad at so many levels…
Not-to-worry, Zeb!
You KNOW what will be happening in less than 20 days!
(Do I have to say it?)
How can people honestly have a problem with Trump speaking to the people directly through social media? Why give the dishonest media complete control ?
I’m sure it’s Probably just people over 50 who can’t handle change and those who already hate him.
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/816452807024840704
This has nothing to do with the “dishonest media”, raj…and everything to do with Trump’s continued insistence on pissing all over the Intelligence Community. (…“So called” hacking?).
Unbelievable.
Well…I have come to expect it. So…if you don’t mind
The tweeting drives the mainstream liberal media insane. The must be saying behind closed doors “My gosh we are unable to put a spin on Trumps comments.”
Ha ha ha…Keep tweeting Trump. As odd as it is I think he is on to something.