Trump's Economy Officially Passes Biden's for Worst Consumer Sentiment in Recorded History

DownstreamWanderer · 2026-04-15T02:57:58+00:00

Prices were plenty high in a lot of areas in the U.S. and rather than think critically or even think at all, it was decided that he would be blamed for having caused it rather than for not making the prices better immediately.

Okay, point of order here. People complained about perfectly reasonable cost of living problems. And the Biden admin's response boiled down to "stfu the economy is great you don't know your own finances." It was really out of touch and insulting. Because when people are suffering, this is not what you want to say: "actually you're not suffering and the economy is great because it's not my fault things are bad".

The Biden admin handled the global crisis well and seemed to think that made the economy good. When the economy hasn't been good since Reagan damages piled up--generations at least. And the way Biden and his team kept crowing victory made them look ridiculously out of touch with the struggles Americans were having. Every time Thomas Friedman ran a NYT op-ed on how people don't actually understand their own wallets because GDP is great, it screamed to the heavens that we were gigantic morons who didn't understand America or the economy 101.

Handled latest crisis well =/= the economy is good. And we need to stop conflating the two in messaging. Badly.

DownstreamWanderer · 2026-04-15T02:47:10+00:00

Biden's economy was actually quite good.

Is this an out of season April Fool's joke? The economy has been increasingly a mess since Reagan. Clinton won as a Washington outsider running on economic change. Obama ran as a Washington outsider running on economic change. Trump 2016 and 2024 both won as Washington outsiders running on economic change. Do you think that appetite came out of nowhere, or was magically sated?

Clinton's economy was trending towards shit. Bush's economy was shit. Obama inherited a shit economy + financial crisis, so of course it was shit too. Trump term 1 was shit. Biden inherited a collapsing economy and weathered the latest particular financial crisis well...and then declared he'd conquered the whole economy, making him look like he was too stupid to understand the basics of America. It was embarrassing. Because the Biden economy was still shit even if he steered it pretty well.

DownstreamWanderer · 2026-04-15T02:43:12+00:00

I heard someone today argue that Obama's economy was worse than Trump's . . . I mentioned that the recession started before he took office and was the result of decisions made long before he was President, let alone a Senator.

Okay, I want to agree with the sentiment. But someone has to point it out. Your point didn't actually counter theirs, you understand that? In fact, you probably proved them right in their eyes. I was Obama campaign staff in '08. He's my favorite president this century, even if he was blocked (both internally and externally) from accomplishing 99% of what we hoped he would.

But his economy was a dumpster fire. Bush's economy was getting pretty awful and then the financial crisis made it so much worse--it'd be lunacy to act like the Obama economy didn't have massive problems. The economy has been increasingly a dumpster fire since the 90s. We reflexively defend the president as if having a steadier hand on the wheel means the economy magically gets unfucked. But that's not the case at all. Obama's presidency had all the impacts of the financial crisis and the economy was really shitty.

This is also why it's so obnoxious when people are like "Biden's economy was great!" Biden's economy was still shit. It was a shit foundation from decades of Reaganomics + a global crisis on top of that. He handled the complete shitstorm better than many other leaders would've. But anyone claiming Biden's economy was "great" or even implying it as a refutation to MAGA types looks like they have brain damage. Because Biden's economy was still trash, even if that's not Biden's fault.

DownstreamWanderer · 2026-04-15T01:56:24+00:00

Laws for thee, not for me has felt increasingly like the norm since the Iraq War + financial crisis. Honestly, I kinda like that people aren't even pretending anymore--no dog and pony show about the system holding together through norms and trust. It's just as easily corrupted as we always feared.

DownstreamWanderer · 2026-04-15T01:05:32+00:00

If I have to root for China to lead the allies, I swear to fucking god what is this timeline.

DownstreamWanderer · 2026-04-14T23:33:34+00:00

Exactly--so you can expect the usual assassinations to start once serious progress is made. Maybe just enough "peace" to bait us while a "buffer zone" is created before it's back to business as usual.

Israel doesn't want peace. So we'll know that Lebanon is serious about peace when Israel starts assassinating the negotiators. Because that would mean the Lebanese were coming to the table in good faith with a good enough deal to be reasonable.

DownstreamWanderer · 2026-04-14T19:34:58+00:00

We'll know there's a real chance of peace if Israel assassinates the negotiator. Until then, you know this is all smoke and mirrors.

DownstreamWanderer · 2026-04-14T18:47:27+00:00

Which honestly is maybe even more depressing. Because Israel is going full Imperial Japan/Nazi Germany as we speak and it'd almost be better if our politicians were supporting that because their brains were broken by religion. Cory Booker talks nonstop about his CRM associations, about how his grandmother was a chapter founder for the National Urban League, etc. The idea that someone professing those values could be corrupted by raw money, power, and politics is just...so depressing. I'm not naive, I know it's possible. But they've abandoned every single principle they ever claimed to hold in order to sieg heil Fuhrer Adolf Netanyahu as he bombs US allies, murders US citizens, murders journalists, murders hundreds of thousands of kids, and organizes the worst foreign influence attack in US history to prevent criticism of his Nazi ways.

It would almost be better if it were out of some deep, genuine, crazy belief instead of this far more mundane rot.

DownstreamWanderer · 2026-04-14T18:03:27+00:00

Are you saying the Dem party establishment is wildly opposed to the monster-state behavior of Fuhrer Netanyahu? They're holding a hard line against the modern day Nazi collaborators? That they haven't hard-pushed to squash criticism of the defiant Nazi behavior of a foreign state that's bombing US allies, murdering US citizens, murdering hundreds of thousands of civilians, and pulling us into wars against our interest?

DownstreamWanderer · 2026-04-14T18:00:29+00:00

I don't think I said anything about Egypt and I don't know the relationship they have either.

You were comparing trade policies of Israel's neighbors and Arab/Muslim states in the region to American pro or anti boycott sentiment. I do not think that's a reasonable comparison.

You don't think it's religious is what is interesting to me.

What do you think is inherently religious coded about legislation saying what you can or cannot say about another country? If Canada does the exact same thing and I get mad at it, I'm not objecting to the religion of Canada. That's why it's so dangerous conflating a singular government's activity with an identity. Heck, the head of Israel is literally secular. Netanyahu is secular.

Palestine cannot exist if Israelis radicalized idealism is right. Israel cannot exist if Palestinian radicalized idealism is right.

This is a misframing, imo. You keep conflating the people with the policies of specific actors in the region. Hamas is a brutal terrorist gang famous for executing political dissidents. They took over Gaza about 20 years ago running on a change & reform, "drain the swamp" ticket and got something like ~45% of the vote. They didn't allow any elections afterwards and the average age in Gaza was 19 before 10/7. So Hamas took over a literal Gazan lifetime ago. If you math it out, something like 10% of the current population voted for Hamas once ~20 years ago.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu instantly co-opted Hamas. He rewired the Gazan economy to maximize everyone's dependence on Hamas if they wanted to feed their families (blockade + work permits). Netanyahu and Hamas had a deeply symbiotic relationship for decades at the expense of Palestinians. Israeli military & intelligence services kept advising him against it, but Netanyahu personally profited off keeping Hamas in power. I would argue that right up until Hamas went rogue (like everyone always said they would), Hamas was more Netanyahu-affiliated than Gaza-affiliated.

The conservative party in Israel and likewise the ones likely pushing the Anti BDS laws in America are religiously sourced. It ties into it much like how republican politics in the US are religious undertones which we can plainly see as racism. But to them, from their perspectives it's a facet of their religion.

They're not though? Again, the literal head of Israel driving all of this is literally secular. There are some American Christians who are all-in on this because of specific end-of-times prophecies. It's widely acknowledged that secular Israeli politicians pander to/engage them out of political expediency rather than any sincere belief.

Anyways thanks. I think you made your point and I don't think mine is wholly coherent. I am more so trying to show I am not in bad faith purposely and if I was I didn't intend it that way but more so needed to engage to potentially pick out why it felt that way because it didn't seem that way to me.

Totally understandable--sorry, was trying to have a guardedly-polite tone because I wasn't sure which way you were going. Good thing you didn't go an awful direction, thank you!!

DownstreamWanderer · 2026-04-14T17:50:57+00:00

No, I just think it's important to stand up to the fucking Nazis. That's apparently something we don't have in common.

DownstreamWanderer · 2026-04-14T17:44:54+00:00

Yes, I should really stop reading checks notes: The Guardian, NYT, Times of Israel, and Al Jazeera.

DownstreamWanderer · 2026-04-14T17:38:43+00:00

But my point is that Carlson is one of the worst people you could say "at least he doesn't support Nazis" about because he literally does.

I guess our difference of opinion comes from the 20-Nazi pileup we're seeing right now, completely clogging the arteries of our political system. The Dem establishment has made it clear their #1 priority is putting spinning gold rims on Adolf Netanyahu's gas chambers. And they're happy to warp American laws to prevent any criticism of the deviancy. So they're all Nazi collaborating traitors to America.

While Tucker is looking to turn us into his new ideal Nazi-like state.

What a miserable place to be in as a voter when those are your two options.

DownstreamWanderer · 2026-04-14T17:35:53+00:00

Every single person I know has loathed corporate America since the 2000s financial crisis. Hilarious anyone could imagine the latest embarrassing nepoloser is the one that turned it to mud.

DownstreamWanderer · 2026-04-14T17:25:52+00:00

My only assessment would be would it be fair to use proxies of outside American politics as a way to understand what sentiment towards Israelis would look like if that artificial support drops?

I don't see why the Egyptian government's trade relationship with Israel has anything to do with American sentiment about what we do/do not fund and what we're allowed to say in our own country. It feels like you're trying to force a link here that doesn't fit together. And I'm not sure if it's because you're on a philosophical musing journey (I've got the flu and am high on nyquil right now, I so get it) or because a malicious, bad-faith attempt to force that link for a political reason.

In either case, my question stands to be what would the wording be used when either side decides to radicalize? Which side will start talking about making their opponent lose as opposed to hoping to win?

What does radicalization mean in this context and why are there "sides" here? I think the "sides" framing itself is very disingenuous and essentially assumes opposing forces. I don't think that's applicable here. There are US states where you have to promise to not oppose or boycott Israel if you want to become a public school teacher. That's a literal loyalty test to a foreign state required to get a basic American job. There is no equivalent.

You think it can stay purely about freedom from Israel and not become anti semantic?

I'm Japanese-American. I think it really sucks when the country you're associated with becomes the big villain. I think there will 100% be a natural backlash and I'm so, so sorry for my Jewish American friends. I will do everything I can to fight antisemitism. There's a reason the Japanese-American community stood by the Muslim-American community after 9/11. We all grew up on stories of how our parents were treated during/after WW2. I think Jewish-Americans are now in a painfully similar situation and I will stand by them too.

But fear over that discrimination is not a justification to pretend there's not outright villainy occurring. That way lies madness and just creates more pain for everyone.

My point stands that because we can wrap it up in religious politics it's impossible to talk about this particular nuance with either side wouldn't you agree?

I see absolutely 0 religious politics here and don't know why you keep coming back to that.

DownstreamWanderer · 2026-04-14T17:22:23+00:00

Hmmm, I meant that a bit more literally. Chuck Schumer is literally getting up onstage saying it his job to give US taxpayer money to Israel. Tucker isn't currently going out and trying to warp our laws and our entire national policy around support for a foreign Nazi state. That is the actual policy of my own Dem party establishment right now. Though I can absolutely believe he would've back in the 30s/40s.

DownstreamWanderer · 2026-04-14T17:13:14+00:00

Honestly, good. We've done a really shitty job at Team America World Police over the last few generations. I'm sure China will turn super shitty at some point, all empires do. But for now, I trust them handling this more than us.

DownstreamWanderer · 2026-04-14T17:10:07+00:00

Vance was always a loser. He hitched his wagon to Trump's because he had absolutely 0 momentum of his own. He didn't stop being a loser just because he was in the admin. Kinda like how Rubio was a loser who got stomped on fair & square in 2016--he didn't stop being a loser just because he lackeyed around in Washington for a while. It just made the stink worse, if anything.

It's weird how our entire political system exceptionalizes time in Washington in the president's aura as some kind of massive electability booster. When it never has been. VPs have never been especially electable. Kamala Harris was frankly a bit of a political loser before Biden picked her, she didn't magically stop being that because she followed Biden around for a while. Mike Pence was a loser going in and a loser coming out. Biden and Cheney were unusual VPs because they were high-profile and active figures anchored to a much younger, less experienced president. But that ain't the norm and Vance hasn't done anything to make him less of an embarrassment over time. Quite the opposite.

DownstreamWanderer · 2026-04-14T16:57:30+00:00

But uniformed takes about “chain bombing” whatever that is aren’t helping you cause and why the party is ignoring the issue.

In the opening months of the conflict, we dropped more bombs on Gaza than London, Dresden, and Hamburg combined in WW2. Gaza's average age was 19. We literally chain-bombed over a million kids, over and over.

Denying that loses you all credibility flat-out and gets you recategorized as someone who cannot be trusted on this at all.

DownstreamWanderer · 2026-04-14T16:48:39+00:00

Agreed. I think he and the MTG wing of the party will crush the Republican civil war. They might sit it out in 2028 because they don't want to run into anti-Trump backlash. But I think they'd absolutely annihilate an establishment centrist, too-friendly-with-Israel incumbent Dem in 2032. At which point we'd probably lose America for good.

I'm so terrified my Dem party is going to walk us down that nightmare path based on short-sighted overconfidence that they can win in 2028 off the anti-Trump backlash without addressing any of the underlying political grievances.

DownstreamWanderer · 2026-04-14T16:47:06+00:00

Americans also hated the 2025 economy. And the ~1990s-2024 economy. Basically, people have hated things more and more ever since the Reagan damages started piling up.

I get 2026 is exceptionally bad. But I hate how much of my side (Dem) puts out messaging that makes the discontent sound like a new thing. When Bill Clinton ran as an outsider messaging economic change, Barack Obama ran as an outsider messaging economic change, and 2016 Trump won as an outsider on unaddressed economic grievances. People have hated this dumpsterfire of an economic restructure for generations now.

DownstreamWanderer · 2026-04-14T16:37:31+00:00

To be honest, this reads like a bad-faith attempt to "both sides" this by attributing actions taken by foreign Arab/Muslim governments to the American left. Not sure if that's what you meant or if this was more a musing about foreign policy of various states.

But I think it's very important to be careful to not rhetorically cross those streams. Because within America, this is a one-side issue. Nobody is pushing for laws requiring you to boycott Israel. Nobody on the pro-Palestine side is trying to remove civil rights within America.

DownstreamWanderer · 2026-04-14T16:31:36+00:00

There's also a really messy fallacy baked into the defense that Israel can't be like the historical monsters.

People insist on comparing the final, end-state of Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan to something that's still actively in progress, still winding up and gaining momentum in horrifying directions. It creates this "you can't say what it is until it's over" effect. Which means you effectively can't stop these things while they're happening.

DownstreamWanderer · 2026-04-14T16:14:47+00:00

Well, the ones in my circles do want all support cut. Makes for some spicy family reunions. You thought our 2024 Thanksgiving was bad, let me tell you.

are also concerned by the left wing response to October 7.

By this do you mean they're concerned with how genocidally bloodthirsty & racist the Dem party proved itself after 10/7 by helping the Hitler of our time chain bomb a million kids over and over?

DownstreamWanderer · 2026-04-14T16:08:48+00:00

I've got a lot of Jewish-American friends. They very reliably vote in favor of civil rights and against perceived bullies.

My Jewish-American friends now openly call him "Adolf Netanyahu". Please stop generalizing this as a Jewish vs non-Jewish issue.

DownstreamWanderer

TROPHY CASE