[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by Got Stripers

https://www.businessinsider.com/trum...o-2020-2019-12

Trumps wins and failures as president really depend on your view of the policies. I’m not a pro life guy, I’m all for pro choice, so stacking the justices in my mind is a failure. His environment policies absolutely s*cked. Space force while sounding goofy at first is probably necessary to balance the potential threat from China primarily when it comes to protecting our property in orbit. Tax policy was wonderful if your a big corporation or one of the 1% ers, I’m really hoping Biden can avoid the filibuster and get his tax plan threw, it’s long overdue that these companies and rich pay their fair share. Not a lot of wins in my opinion, but I’m sure Trumps base feels otherwise.

"Trumps wins and failures as president really depend on your view of the policies."

You can say that about every president, right?

"I’m all for pro choice, so stacking the justices in my mind is a failure. " You mean stacking the court with the conservatives he nominated? In my opinion, there's a lot of misinformation about what it means to be a liberal judge vs a conservative judge. Conservative judges (if they are fair minded, which not all are) won't always advocate for the conservative cause, they will advocate to adhere to what the law actually says, not what they wish the law said. During her confirmation hearings, Justice Barrett listed a few decisions she made which were contrary to her personal beliefs, but which were consistent with the constitution. I don't want the Supreme Court to outlaw abortion, I want them to do what the constitution says, and refer the question to the states (since it's not in the specified list of things that the federal government is responsible for). Send it to the states where it belongs, and then some states will allow it, some won't, depending on who the citizens elect. These things are not supposed to be decided by 9 people who aren't elected, and they're appointed for life meaning they aren't answerable to us.

"His environment policies absolutely s*cked."

I respect why you'd say that. I don't agree, which doesn't mean I don't care about the environment, because I do. But I notice two glaring things. First, none of the dire predictions made by this community have come true, which tells me their models are flawed, I don't know what other conclusion you could reach. Second, many of the most influential leaders of this movement have carbon footprints you'd expect from a small country - mansions, yachts, private jets). I don't think they believe what they claim to believe, and again I don't know what other conclusion you could reach. I say spend the money, do lots of honest research, and let's take reasonable steps to make things cleaner, but I don't care to hear about AOC's green new deal.

"Tax policy was wonderful if your a big corporation or one of the 1% ers"

A common Trump attack, but it's just not true, not to the extent they claim. I'm not a corporation, I'm not a 1%-er, I work in a cubicle (not a corner office) of a huge company, my wife stays home, we have 3 kids, we have literally lived paycheck-to-paycheck since my wife stopped working. Trumps tax cuts reduced my tax liability by about $250 a month. That loosened the noose around our necks. We used it to buy a camper, which my kids and I sleep in almost every night in the driveway all summer, and which we take on every vacation now. We wouldn't have bought it if not for those tax cuts. We can reasonably debate if less should have gone to the rich an d more to the poor, but you can't say it only helped the rich.

"long overdue that these companies and rich pay their fair share." Another common democrat rallying cry, but the truth is a bit murkier. If you actually do the math, and assume that all the rich make no changes and make the same income, and just pay the higher marginal tax rate, how much more revenue are we talking, compared to our current annual budgets?

I actually did a mathematical exercise once, I looked the total compensation of the Walmart CEO, and determined that if he worked for free and we gave his salary+bonus to all US workers, it worked out to something like $40 per year for each worker. The math doesn't work. There aren't that many rich people, and they aren't that rich, not enough to make a big difference. That said, I won't lose any sleep if we tweak those tax rates a bit as there's some unfairness in there, but it's absurd to think we can tweak the tax rates on people who won't know the difference, and solve any meaningful problem. It's more like a rounding error.

"Not a lot of wins in my opinion, but I’m sure Trumps base feels otherwise"

Not just his base. Gallup does a poll every 4 years during presidential elections, asks Americans if they're better off than they were 4 years ago. When they did the poll in 2020, during the pandemic, a record-number of Americans (58% I think) said they were better off. Gallup has done this poll for decades, and never before had more Americans said they were better off.

There's a reason for that. People liked the tax cuts, the insanely low unemployment (especially for blacks, which would have been celebrated as an historic win if any democrat president had pulled that off), his dealing with terrorists, his not getting us involved in questionable wars, his criminal justice reform (which liberals have wanted for decades, and which Obama could easily have done when the democrats controlled congress, but he chose not to), his talk of securing the southern border (his actions fell way short), the stock market records, his work in the middle east (we'll see how that plays out now), his giving companies incentive to repatriate trillions of dollars that had been banked elsewhere..

It's not just right-wing radicals that approve of those things. CNN and MSNBC won't ever say it, but those are populist ideas. That's why I believe that a likeable republican who advocated for those things but who didn't have Trumps endless list of character flaws, would be tough to beat - in normal times. The pandemic may be enough to make people put those things aside.