Trump and his band of clowns (the scary kind, not the fun type) have been in power for a little over 2 months now and it’s turning out to be both worse and much better than I thought. Worse because it seems that every single day this incompetent moron digs himself deeper and deeper into a hole. His approval ratings are in the toilet; lower than any president in history at this point in their term. Ordinarily the American people take a “wait and see” attitude for the first hundred days or so, which keeps polls from tanking. And while it seems that the Trump loyalists are still hopeful that this bozo will start to fulfill his campaign promises, the majority of the country is beginning to realize just how badly they were misled. And it’s not just that his approval rating is in the toilet, but his disapproval rating is stratospheric. Since lack of approval may not translate to active disapproval, high ratings in this area are even more indicative of what a train wreck this administration is shaping up to be.
Trump is in full-throated blaming mode. Obama, Hillary, the Press, paid Democratic “agitators,” nefarious people from within his own administration who are leaking stories to the press and everyone else in sight is to blame for the mess in his administration. It apparently is beyond him to accept any responsibility, when it’s pretty plain that his own arrogance, stupidity, poor management skills, lack of ability to build a consensus (or even awareness that he needs one), and general incompetence are at fault. Look in the mirror, Donnie boy. I saw a photo of Steve Buscemi at a rally protesting one of the myriad boneheaded things Trump has done, standing next to a sign with a quote from The Big Lebowski that said “Shut the f**ck up Donny, you’re out of your element!” I’m a fan of that show anyway, but I got a kick out of how perfect John Goodman’s line (as Walter) to Buscemi’s Donny fits in a rally protesting Trump.
Anyhow, with all that weight on the “worse than I expected” side, it might be hard to see any rays of hope, but in fact there are. Trump’s massive failure to fulfill his campaign promise to “repeal Obamacare on my first day in office” is the first and most visible example. I’m not sure the whole thing can be laid at Trump’s feet because the Republican majority led by Paul Ryan drafted the “replacement” (if it could even be called that), and the Republicans are so fractured that they couldn’t agree on what was important to them. The far-right fringe of the party, the so called “Freedom Caucus” is made up of 32 members in the House and their position is that the Federal Government has no business in determining anything to do with health care; that should be left up to states and market forces. What they want is immediate repeal of the Affordable Care Act, putting us back to a market-driven insurance system and eliminating health care for the 13-million or so who didn’t have it before ACA. Presumably they would then work on the “replace” part, where Congress would come up with something. Presumably. The Freedom Caucus wasn’t happy with the plan Ryan came up with because it didn’t repeal ACA immediately. The moderates in the Republican party, able to look out their respective windows and see how unpopular they would be if they eliminated healthcare insurance for up to 24 million people (the OMB’s best estimates of the effects of Ryan’s bill), also balked, so it seems that Ryan managed to come up with a bill that nearly no one in his own party could support. Trump (The Great Deal Maker) weighed in with his much-touted ability to make deals and failed miserably, so Ryan pulled the plug on the bill to avoid an embarrassing down vote.
Add that cluster f**ck to Trump’s disasters in selecting people for his cabinet. (Remember that “Lock Her Up” Flynn resigned in less than a month when it became public that he lied to Vice President Pence about talking to Russians; it’s especially interesting to note that, apparently, Trump knew he lied to Pence; it only became an issue when the general public found out. So it was OK to lie to Pence as long as the public didn’t know.)
And the list of failures is growing. So Trump is finding out that he can’t just wave his arms around and make things happen. It turns out that being President is different than being CEO (SHOCKER!!) and he can’t bully people like he did in his business enterprises. There are actually rules that have to be followed.
And it seems that those rules, coupled with the well-known pattern of the government to move slowly on almost everything, means that many of the things Trump has promised to do may not actually happen. Another good example is his promise to “bring back all the coal mining jobs” to Appalachia. I get that the people living there are in abject poverty, and voted for him because they believed his promise to restore their jobs. But here’s the thing: the reason their jobs went away had nothing to do with government regulations, EPA, or Liberals. It was because of market forces. Coal is simply no longer needed the way it used to be. Natural gas is much cheaper and has been for years, so most of the power companies have switched away from coal to natural gas in their power plants. So even if the regulations against coal-driven pollution were completely eliminated, the market for coal is a fraction of what it used to be. Those jobs aren’t coming back. Trump, assuming he’s as smart as he claims, had to have known that and was cavalierly manipulating the emotions and preying on the hopes of the Appalachian voters. He lied, in other words.
What a surprise.
So even if Trump and his cronies get away with gutting the EPA and eliminating most of the regulations that protect our environment, it appears that existing forces may make those steps moot. And that’s a good thing.
About BigBill
Stats: Married male boomer.
Hobbies: Hiking, woodworking, reading, philosophy, good conversation.
It’s both worse and better.
Trump is in full-throated blaming mode. Obama, Hillary, the Press, paid Democratic “agitators,” nefarious people from within his own administration who are leaking stories to the press and everyone else in sight is to blame for the mess in his administration. It apparently is beyond him to accept any responsibility, when it’s pretty plain that his own arrogance, stupidity, poor management skills, lack of ability to build a consensus (or even awareness that he needs one), and general incompetence are at fault. Look in the mirror, Donnie boy. I saw a photo of Steve Buscemi at a rally protesting one of the myriad boneheaded things Trump has done, standing next to a sign with a quote from The Big Lebowski that said “Shut the f**ck up Donny, you’re out of your element!” I’m a fan of that show anyway, but I got a kick out of how perfect John Goodman’s line (as Walter) to Buscemi’s Donny fits in a rally protesting Trump.
Anyhow, with all that weight on the “worse than I expected” side, it might be hard to see any rays of hope, but in fact there are. Trump’s massive failure to fulfill his campaign promise to “repeal Obamacare on my first day in office” is the first and most visible example. I’m not sure the whole thing can be laid at Trump’s feet because the Republican majority led by Paul Ryan drafted the “replacement” (if it could even be called that), and the Republicans are so fractured that they couldn’t agree on what was important to them. The far-right fringe of the party, the so called “Freedom Caucus” is made up of 32 members in the House and their position is that the Federal Government has no business in determining anything to do with health care; that should be left up to states and market forces. What they want is immediate repeal of the Affordable Care Act, putting us back to a market-driven insurance system and eliminating health care for the 13-million or so who didn’t have it before ACA. Presumably they would then work on the “replace” part, where Congress would come up with something. Presumably. The Freedom Caucus wasn’t happy with the plan Ryan came up with because it didn’t repeal ACA immediately. The moderates in the Republican party, able to look out their respective windows and see how unpopular they would be if they eliminated healthcare insurance for up to 24 million people (the OMB’s best estimates of the effects of Ryan’s bill), also balked, so it seems that Ryan managed to come up with a bill that nearly no one in his own party could support. Trump (The Great Deal Maker) weighed in with his much-touted ability to make deals and failed miserably, so Ryan pulled the plug on the bill to avoid an embarrassing down vote.
Add that cluster f**ck to Trump’s disasters in selecting people for his cabinet. (Remember that “Lock Her Up” Flynn resigned in less than a month when it became public that he lied to Vice President Pence about talking to Russians; it’s especially interesting to note that, apparently, Trump knew he lied to Pence; it only became an issue when the general public found out. So it was OK to lie to Pence as long as the public didn’t know.)
And the list of failures is growing. So Trump is finding out that he can’t just wave his arms around and make things happen. It turns out that being President is different than being CEO (SHOCKER!!) and he can’t bully people like he did in his business enterprises. There are actually rules that have to be followed.
And it seems that those rules, coupled with the well-known pattern of the government to move slowly on almost everything, means that many of the things Trump has promised to do may not actually happen. Another good example is his promise to “bring back all the coal mining jobs” to Appalachia. I get that the people living there are in abject poverty, and voted for him because they believed his promise to restore their jobs. But here’s the thing: the reason their jobs went away had nothing to do with government regulations, EPA, or Liberals. It was because of market forces. Coal is simply no longer needed the way it used to be. Natural gas is much cheaper and has been for years, so most of the power companies have switched away from coal to natural gas in their power plants. So even if the regulations against coal-driven pollution were completely eliminated, the market for coal is a fraction of what it used to be. Those jobs aren’t coming back. Trump, assuming he’s as smart as he claims, had to have known that and was cavalierly manipulating the emotions and preying on the hopes of the Appalachian voters. He lied, in other words.
What a surprise.
So even if Trump and his cronies get away with gutting the EPA and eliminating most of the regulations that protect our environment, it appears that existing forces may make those steps moot. And that’s a good thing.
About BigBill
Stats: Married male boomer. Hobbies: Hiking, woodworking, reading, philosophy, good conversation.