Trump's ugly border wall and what will happen when innocents are impaled?

If you're an ardent Trump supporter, the president is not making things easy for you.  Published in The American Prospect by Paul Waldman 

Trump's hideous border wall

MaineWriter- has anybody considered the pictures of innocent immigrants who will undoubtedly be impaled by this ugly medieval structure?

Defending the indefensible: This is particularly true when it comes to his "big, beautiful wall" that was supposed to stretch from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, not just a physical barrier to immigrants but a symbol of all the hopes you poured into Trump's candidacy. Two years into his presidency it still hasn't risen out of the desert, it doesn't look like it's getting closer, and all the president offers you for his failure to deliver on his promise is excuses and misdirection.

For a brief moment last week, it appeared that some sense would prevail in Donald Trump's White House. Just as he had on multiple occasions before, the president threatened to veto the spending bill necessary to keep the government open unless he got funding earmarked for his border wall. But in the past Trump has always backed down, persuaded that it wasn't worth shutting down the government. That looked like what would happen this time as well: a temporary bill to keep the government open for a while, putting off the argument over the wall for another day. Without the votes to make it happen, he appeared to have no other choice.

That is, until this most capricious of presidents heard from the people with the most influence over him: conservative media figures. Trump may be casting off advisers left and right, but he still seeks the counsel of Fox News each and every day ("He spends ever more time in front of a television, often retreating to his residence out of concern that he is being watched too closely," reports The New York Times). And what he saw there changed his mind.

Trump probably thought he had gotten them all used to a cycle: Promise a showdown over the wall, then retreat, but claim victory anyway. This time, however, he made things bad by pledging in front of dozens of cameras in an Oval Office meeting with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, "I am proud to shut down the government for border security...I will be the one to shut it down. I'm not going to blame you for it." That raised expectations on the right too high, and when it appeared he would back off, there was a mini-rebellion. "It was supposed to be a 'big beautiful wall' with a 'big beautiful door.' Now it’s just an open door with no frame. Unreal. #BorderDisorder #GOPFail," tweeted Fox host Laura Ingraham. Trump's most loyal supporters "want their wall and they want it now," said Dan Bongino, guest-hosting for Trump's good friend Sean Hannity. Similar notes were sounded on conservatives talk radio. Trump was watching it all unfold, and realized he had to come through for his base, no matter the cost.

So now the government is shut down, a testament, Trump no doubt hopes, to his commitment to the wall. But one can't help but wonder: Have Trump's supporters noticed how the wall keeps shrinking, to the point where it's a shadow of its former imagined splendor?

First it was supposed to cover the entire border, but not anymore. Then for some reason Trump decided that it's not a wall at all, but "artistically designed steel slats." He even sent out a picture of it on Twitter.  

Ah yes, so beautiful.

And what about the most important part of the entire promise Trump made in 2016, that Mexico would pay for the wall? Make no mistake, that was the very heart of the pledge, making clear that it was not just a physical barrier but a symbol of our restored strength. This is something Trump has always been acutely aware of; in a phone call on January 27, 2017, just a week after he took office, Trump begged then-president Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico to stop saying that Mexico wouldn't pay for the wall. 

"If you are going to say that Mexico is not going to pay for the wall, then I do not want to meet with you guys anymore because I cannot live with that," Trump said, explaining that "this is the least important thing that we are talking about, but politically this might be the most important." Peña Nieto refused to budge, saying that "this is an issue related to the dignity of Mexico and goes to the national pride of my country."

Peña Nieto was no fool. He knew that paying for the wall would be a national shaming for Mexico, which was precisely the point. Trump promised his supporters that Mexico's humiliation and subjugation would be the vehicle for the restoration of their own dignity and pride.

And what does Trump say now? He can't possibly admit that it was a preposterous idea from the beginning and anyone who believed it had to have been an idiot. So the brain trust at the White House came up with an answer to the inevitable question: Mexico is paying for the wall! How? Because we made some minor adjustments to NAFTA, and if that works out there might be some increased exports to Mexico, and that means they paid for it so he kept his promise. All White House staffers are now required to repeat this bit of laughable nincompoopery.

So the big, beautiful wall across the entire border that Mexico will pay for is now some steel slat fencing in certain places that Mexico is not paying for. Mission accomplished?

But if Trump is wondering whether his base will accept it, he probably doesn't have to worry. Not because they're stupid enough to believe what he's telling them on a rational level, but because emotionally speaking, they have little choice. If you voted for Trump because of things like building a wall and having Mexico pay for it, are you going to now admit that you got swindled by America's most prominent con artist, just like any gullible enrollee of Trump University? That he was obviously lying all along and you were too dumb to see it? What would that make you?

It would make you a sucker, that's what. And nobody wants that. So don't be surprised when the next time your local paper does one of its regular "In Trump Country, Trump Supporters Still Support Trump" dispatches, little has changed.*

*MaineWriter-  I'm sooooooo glad to read this last sentence. In my opinion, the media that reports those ridiculous stories create massive assumptions about the populations being interviewed.  I was particularly angry with NBCToday when they sent a reporter to Kenosha Wisconsin to interview about four "suckers" who supported Donald Trump.  The interviewer made it appear as though there were no people in Kenosha, those who opposed stupid Donald Trump.  Guess what?  There are 100,000 (one hundred thousand) people who live in Kenosha!  Four people do not speak for Kenosha!

Democrats united against Donald Trump

Although getting a group of Democrats to support a single candidate is like the cliche about herding cats, the fact is, Donald Trump has done for the party what no other candidate in recent memory has been able to accomplish. Yup! Democrats are united against Donald Trump. We're called "The Resistance".

By Paul Waldman in The Week
One great election can't revive a political party, but Democrats are finally feeling pretty darn good right now. 

Although it's difficult for the Democratic party to unite around one political candidate, we are coalesced against Donald Trump.

And there's one man they (we!) have to thank for the reversal of the Democratic party's fortunes after "What Happened" to Hillary Clinton in the illegitimate 2016, presidential election: Donald J. Trump.

Imagine if Hillary Clinton had managed to secure an Electoral College victory to go along with her popular vote win a year ago. Had that happened, Ed Gillespie would probably be picking out furniture for the Virginia governor's mansion, and the state's Republicans would have reinforced their hold on the legislature. 

All over the country, conservatives consumed with rage at a Clinton presidency would be creating the second coming of the Tea Party, organizing protests, signing up volunteers, registering voters, and preparing for what would likely be a Republican wave election in 2018.

for this idea: As a recent meta-analysis of multiple political science studies concluded, efforts by campaigns during general elections at persuasion — changing people's minds on their vote choice — are pretty much a waste of time. "The direct persuasive effects of voter contact and advertising in general elections are essentially zero," the authors wrote. It's a somewhat complicated picture, but the takeaway is that the better use of resources is mobilization: not converting the other side's voters, but getting your own voters excited enough to get to the polls. This year's election certainly reinforced that idea, and Democrats are taking it to heart.

In a related development, you can't help but notice a new eagerness among elected Democrats to stop splitting the difference on issues and forthrightly advocate for policies that reflect liberal values, whether it's a living wage or protecting women's right to choose or universal health coverage — which is more likely to give their partisans something to vote for, even as they want to vote against Trump.

That's not to say there aren't still plenty of internal disagreements among Democrats over both strategy and substance, because there are. But years from now, we may say that 2017 was the year when dispirited Democrats came back to life and began renewing their party, enabling it emerge stronger than it had been in years. 

We may even say that President Trump was the best thing that ever happened to the Democratic Party. (MaineWriter- I disagree with this particular point of view but, nevertheless, I reluctantly accept the author's premise. In my opinion, Donald Trump is the worst executive leader imaginable for the USA, he's not even patriotic.)

Republicans use fanciful thinking about economic success

"...seven years under President Obama, the U.S. has added an average of 107,000 jobs a month. Under President Clinton, the economy added about 240,000 jobs a month."

Americans must look at the past before considering trusting Republicans to be in charge of our nation's economy.  

In the November 10th GOP "debate" between the line up of presidential wanna-bees, the responses from the candidates demonstrated a lack of knowledge about how to manage America's economy.  This isn't surprising given the Republicans have a poor historical record when it comes to the nation's economy. The Great Depression of the 1930s was a glaring example of when Republcian leadership of the economy missed the impending signals of the nearly decade long diasterous economic catastrophe.

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Economy has not prospered under Republican economics

In fact, the 2007-09 Great Recession was the result of the Republicans lackluster regulations (or the lack thereof) over housing mortgages.  

Paul Waldman wrote about the Nov. 10th "line up GOP debate", in The Washington Post.

Republicans still can’t explain why their economic ideas keep failing

Paul Waldman wrote:

Watching last night’s debate, I experienced a moment of breathless anticipation when one of the moderators, Gerard Baker of the Wall Street Journal, asked Carly Fiorina a version of what I think is the single most important economic question the Republican presidential candidates should have to answer.

Let’s look at what Baker asked, and then we’ll look at how I’d put it, and what the candidates did and didn’t say:

“Now, in seven years under President Obama, the U.S. has added an average of 107,000 jobs a month. Under President Clinton, the economy added about 240,000 jobs a month. Under George W. Bush, it was only 13,000 a month. If you win the nomination, you’ll probably be facing a Democrat named Clinton. How are you going to respond to the claim that Democratic presidents are better at creating jobs than Republicans?”

As Brian Beutler noted afterward, that is exactly what Democrats will be saying next year. 

So how did Fiorina respond? She told the story of a woman she met who worries about her economic situation, then said, “Yes, problems have gotten much worse under Democrats,” which is the opposite of the truth, then went on to decry how government has been “crushing the engine of economic growth for a very long time.” In other words, she didn’t answer the question. 

But its essence is this. The Republican candidates all propose variations on the same theme, which is that the way to boost the economy is to cut taxes and scale back government regulation of business. 

In other words, here’s the plan all the Republicans agree on:

1) Cut taxes, particularly for the wealthy.

2) Scale back regulations on business.

3) Watch the economy boom.

The trouble is that we’ve been testing their theory for some time now, and it isn’t holding up well. That’s particularly true of its flip side, which is that tax increases and more regulation inevitably strangle the economy. 

President Barack Obama has increased taxes and regulations, and job growth during his presidency has been solid. Unemployment is now at a mere five percent; you may remember that in 2012, Mitt Romney said his economic plan was so great that he could bring unemployment below six percent by the end of 2016. It’s true that wages have been stagnant, but that’s a condition that goes back decades. Even if you grant that the economy isn’t what we’d like it to be right now, the Republican theory predicts that the Obama policies would have produced not an incomplete recovery from the financial collapse, but outright economic disaster. Their theory also says that we should have had a huge economic boom during George W. Bush’s administration, and another economic disaster under Bill Clinton, who also raised taxes and increased regulations. None of those things happened.

And today, there’s simply no meaningful way in which the proposals of the current crop of GOP candidates differ from what George W. Bush did. There are some differences in the details, particularly the more fantastical proposals that no one takes seriously, like bringing income taxes down to a 15 percent rate for everyone. But those are differences of degree, not kind; they’re just about how deeply you want to cut taxes, not whether tax cuts pave the path to economic glory, which all Republicans accept. The essential strategy is the same: Cut taxes and cut regulations, then enjoy unending prosperity for all.

As Paul Krugman recently observed, the Democrats running for president are much more modest in the predictions they make about the effects their economic policies will have than the Republicans are. The Democrats will give you lots of reasons why it’s a good idea to raise the minimum wage, or change overtime rules to include more workers, or invest in infrastructure, but what they don’t do is say, “If we follow this plan, GDP will surge by eleventy zillion percent!”

Republicans, on the other hand, reliably predict that their formula of lower taxes and fewer regulations will produce an economic supernova. Jeb Bush says that he can bring about sustained GDP growth of four percent; the last president to average growth that high was Lyndon Johnson. Mike Huckabee says his plan will bring six percent growth, because why the hell not?

We heard similar things during the debate. Marco Rubio said that if we could reform taxes and regulations, repeal Obamacare, and do a couple of other things like expand vocational training, “we will be able to increase wages for millions of Americans and we will be able to leave everyone better off without making anyone worse off.” Ted Cruz said that if we can cut taxes and regulations and return to the gold standard (seriously), then the result will be “incredible economic growth.” Jeb Bush said that we can get to his four percent growth if we cut taxes and “repeal every rule that Barack Obama has.” And that’s without even getting into Donald Trump’s ideas.

But Republicans still haven’t answered the basic question: Why does the Republican theory about what moves the economy keep failing? Something tells me they never will.

In Maine Writer jargon, Republicans who believe cutting taxes will improve the economy are engaged in fanciful political thinking. These candidates have forgotten how our nation is fighting an international war.  It's irresponsible to fight evil ISIS and international terrorism while, at the same time, cutting taxes. Moreover, care of our American Veterans and support for a strong middle class require sharing the wealth through taxation.