No incumbent president pulling 55 percent on the economy and unemployment can be counted out for reelection, however anemic his overall job approval might be.
SEE ALSO: AOC comes to Rep. Omar’s defense
In fact, this poll is a reminder of how solid Trump’s 2020 prospects would look if he was a bit less … Trumpy, for lack of a better word.
It’s mostly Republicans driving that number but he’s at 53 percent approval on the economy and 56 percent on unemployment among independents, a group that gives him an overall job approval of just 35 percent. Those are also the only two out of 14 categories tested in which Trump has majority approval among indies. Maybe my point above should be reframed: Given how dimly independents view him on most matters, the economy and jobs are the only things giving him a fighting chance next year.
His overall job approval in the RCP poll of polls is also on the rise, and not just relative to the lows of the shutdown period. Since mid-March 2017 the highest number he’s posted in average job approval was 44.7 percent, which he touched briefly before the midterms last year thanks (I assume) to intensifying partisan fervor before the big vote. He’s at 44.2 percent today, though, and was at 44.4 percent yesterday. A few more good polls and he’ll touch 45 percent for the first time in two years. A clean-ish bill of health from Mueller might do it for him.
Why now? The economy’s been terrific since he was sworn in. There’s no obvious reason why his economic approval should be hitting new highs lately based on the GDP or unemployment numbers alone. Could it be the rebound in the stock market since December that’s driving it? The shutdown briefly drove the S&P 500 beneath 2,400 points on Christmas Eve but since then it’s regained more than 10 percent.Alternate theory: Maybe this is the first stirrings of the 2020 dynamic in action. Trump benefited enormously in 2016 from facing an opponent who was widely disliked and distrusted herself. For the first two years of his presidency he lacked that contrast; his job approval was a pure referendum on him. Now, with the Democratic presidential field starting to fill out, his job approval may not be entirely a reflection of his own performance but also partly a measure of how voters think he compares to the top tier of the other party.
@Meremortal, #99:
There are none to name. Which is the point.
So you tell me: What stimulus measures will be available when this party inevitably craps out, and we won’t be able to reduce interest rates because they’re already as low as possible, nor will we be able to reduce taxes because we were already running a trillion-dollar-per-year deficit when the economy was booming?
We were better off with slow and steady growth than with another stimulus-induced binge facilitating yet another high-end cash grab. Immediate usually gratification comes at a price.
@Greg: I think you assume Obama knew what he was talking about when he said his pathetic economy was “the new norm”. It’s wasn’t and there is no reason to assume the economy will require constant “stimulating” as it did under his dismal direction.
Slow and steady was sustainable. Boom and bust isn’t. So back to the question:
What stimulus measures will be available when this party inevitably craps out, and:
(1) we won’t be able to reduce interest rates because they’re already as low as possible,
(2) nor will we be able to reduce taxes because we were already running a trillion-dollar-per-year deficit when the economy was booming?
Trump is a fraud. If a right-leaning conservative republican like Joe Walsh can suddenly open his eyes, maybe the GOP can also return to its senses.
@Greg: 2-3% is normal 1-2% is weak. Plus, as I said, Obama only achieved that by quantitative easing; printing new money and loaning it at 0.0%, which is why pretty much only Wall Street benefited.
We can reduce spending, if Democrats would join the government. We could cut spending subsidizing illegal immigrants if the Democrats would cooperate. There is LOTS we can cut, including the size of the government.
Pure and simple, Obama was a failure. Trump is succeeding and his economy only LOOKS like it is running out of control compared to Obama’s dismal, lethargic, no-growth embarrassment.
@Deplorable Me, #104:
So, we can respond to the next recession—which is defined as a prolonged downward trend in private sector consumer spending, industrial production, and trade—by simultaneously reducing federal spending, all of which soon flows into the private sector in the form of consumer purchases, and government orders for goods and services that are produced and sold in the private sector.
Perhaps then we can then rely on windmills to keep the wheels from slowing down to a stop, because there’s not much else left to reverse the trend.
@Greg: Reduce spending to stop wasting the taxpayer’s money. That’s who makes the money, you know… not the government. We don’t waste money as a hedge against being able to react to a recession. We waste money because otherwise worthless politicians have to buy votes.
@Deplorable Me: #106:
No one is directly answering the question because no one here has an answer to it that makes the least bit of sense.
That should tell you something about the true nature of the “Trump economy” that rational economists figured out a long time ago: It’s a sham and a scam.
It’s an artificial boom created by applying unsustainable stimulus measures to an already recovered economy, which will leave the nation up a creek without a paddle when it inevitably burns out.
Equally obvious is the fact that the permanent high-end tax cut that helped to bring about the binge also serve to funnel a hugely disproportionate share of the loot thereby acquired into the pockets of those who set the scam up and supported it.
They will end up collectively enriched to roughly the same extent that the national debt will have unnecessarily grown, but will predictably blame it all on government programs that they don’t personally benefit from.
@Greg: Nothing applied is unsustainable. You believe the Obama lie that his flaccid economy is “the new normal”. You liberals are deathly afraid of the Trump economy because you can’t match it. His economy is going to defeat any liberal socialist lying idiot you pit against him. Try your BS on those who believed Obama’s economy was “booming”. People with eyes, ears and brains are not susceptible.
A trillion-dollar-per-year deficit on top of a $22.2 trillion cumulative debt is unsustainable. The only excuse for doing that is to apply a temporary stimulus measure in a time of economic emergency. The permanent tax cuts that are making the nation’s richest people far wealthier are being paid for with the nation’s credit card, and the proposed solution when it all hits the fan will be to cut all the programs that everyone other than the richest depend upon, to one degree or another. That’s what the current republican “solution” boils down to.
Stable, slow and steady growth built upon an economic base with a long-term future is far better for the nation than a series of economic binges that rapidly add to an already serious debt problem.
Rush Limbaugh may now say otherwise, but he’s one of the people who profit enormously by promulgating that lie. The same is true of Donald Trump.
@Greg: How much of that debt was Obama’s contribution, to which you made NO objection? Tell your anti-American Democrats to cooperate on budgets and cut wasteful spending.
You don’t care about debt; you simply want something to bitch about.
@Deplorable Me, #110:
Were you blind to the sentence that read, The only excuse for doing that is to apply a temporary stimulus measure in a time of economic emergency?
Increasing federal spending, even at the cost of a higher deficit, is one of the emergency tools available to respond to a dangerously slowing economy. It’s the only thing that kept many whinny, memory-impaired red state governments afloat during the train-wreck-of-a-recession that was already over a year old at the point Obama took office.
The other emergency stimulus tool is tax cuts, even at the cost of higher deficits. When it’s done unnecessarily on other occasions where deficits are already a serious problem, the guaranteed outcome is a economic boost that soon burns itself out, at the cost of deficits that are even worse than before.
I’ve always cared about the debt, because it ultimately threatens what I’ve accumulated through my own work and conservative spending practices. So call it selfish self interest. But give me a kitchen sink, and I’ll throw that at Donald Trump also. He’s a thoroughly contemptible person and a threat to every principle I believe in. He’s a threat to most of the values and principles traditional conservatives believe in, though there don’t seem to be many of those left. If they’re still out there, they seem to be terrified to speak. They should start talking. Trump gives all clear-thinking principled people a common ground for agreement.
@Greg:
Greggie Goebbels, you love to throw out these b/s comments such as the one above. It really says nothing. But you’re a Socialist, so why are you so concerned with “traditional” conservative values and which you never said what you think those “traditional” conservatives values are.
Every thing you post reads like some b/s from the Workers of The World website. It is all Socialism all the time. Perhaps you just love the sound the keys on your keyboard make while you type bilge.
You’re an idiot, Greggie Goebbels. And like your namesake, will go down in flames.
@retire05, #112:
I can’t remember the last time you had anything to offer in the way of an intelligent response that actually addressed any substantive point or opinion expressed by anybody. Why do you even bother to pretend you’re responding to a particular post? Nothing you said in #112 is even remotely related to the comments in #111. Have you nothing to offer in the way of a rebuttal?
I wouldn’t know, as I don’t frequent the website.
On a related note, when did a Democratic Party president ever publicly recognize the anniversary of the establishment of a communist dictatorship by deferring a point of his own avowed foreign trade policy affecting that nation?
The anniversary being celebrated was accompanied by the brutal mass executions of between 200,000 and 2 million Chinese land owners.
Maybe we should have our own Vice President ask China’s Premier for a favor in return. They could do something nice for us next year in recognition of the 4th of July.
@Greg: For $10 trillion of debt, we got NOTHING. You talk about squandering stimulus capability, that is EXACTLY what Obama did. All he stimulated was political contributions to him by giving his contributors taxpayer money to donate. He left behind ruin and wreckage. Nothing proves this more than how the economy rebounded the instant he was gone. Trump didn’t have to do a thing but NOT be Obama.
@Greg:
And you have posted a substantive point when? Not since you have been posting here.
I wasn’t responding to what you posted. I was commenting on the vagueness of your comment which was just a generalized comment with no substance, basically your standard m.o.
In such a generalized mess of comment, there was no particulars or substance to comment on. It is like everything else Democrats say; no specifics, just sound bites.
Maybe there should have just been an announcement that an ornament featuring Mao would be placed on the White House Christmas tree like the last administration did.
Oh, wait, are you saying you want to keep what you feel you earned? How can that be? You are quite supportive of wealth redistribution, yet now your saying you don’t want the Socialists redistributing your wealth? Of course, I remember how you said you wanted higher taxes so the government could have more money but when I suggested you send the IRS more than you were required to do, you balked at that idea saying why should you.
You want to learn to debate? Then be specific in your comments. Generalizations don’t work and is simply nothing more than a talking point.
Yes, you’re an idiot, Greggie Goebbels.
@retire05: Census Bureau data shows that 1.2 million households started making over $50,000 between 2016 and 2018.
At the same time, dependency on welfare programs decreased, with the number of people on food stamps dropping by almost 6.7 million between 2017 and 2019.
What was different during this period of time than before?
What’s different is the application of unsustainable emergency stimulus measures when the economy was already recovered, the GDP was already growing, job growth was already in its 75th consecutive month, and quarterly corporate profits were already experiencing a historically unprecedented winning streak. There was no need for any of it, other than to facilitate another epic high-end cash grab financed with the national credit card. It’s a robbery-in-progress.
The economy has been put on amphetamines at the cost of pushing deficits back up to one trillion dollars per year, even with the party still in full swing.
Never once has anyone here commented on the fact that “conservative” talking head Rush Limbaugh has recently proclaimed that debt and deficits don’t really matter. Clearly Trump and the cowed GOP don’t give a flying flamingo about it either. Why should they? It’s all the democrats’ fault, right?
Trump has slowly cooked the conservative movement like an unwary frog in a pan, gradually shifting away from all traditional conservative values and principles while keeping their attention focused elsewhere. He’s even got the frog angrily defending and justifying both him and the cooking process.
Realization will eventually come, but it will probably come too late.
@kitt: Well, Obama’s brilliant economic plan just started kicking in, of course. He couldn’t do any of that in 8 years, it only started showing benefits the moment Obama no longer had the power of his pen and phone over the economy. Isn’t that obvious?
September 13, 2019 – Trump again dangles a promise of tax cuts
Just stay there in the pan, OK? You’re really gonna like what I’m cooking up here.
@Greg:
You’re not just an idiot, you’re mentally disturbed.
Are you quoting your psychiatrist?
@Greg:
Democrats threaten the entire economy with utter collapse (just watch a dem debate)
September 11, 2019 – Trump’s tweet on Fed, negative rates and debt is called a ‘recipe for disaster’
Well, our self-described “very stable genius” says otherwise. But maybe he’s looking to refinance his own loans at greatly reduced rates. I wonder what rate Deutsche Bank is charging him for extending him hundreds of millions in loans when no other bank on the planet would touch him?
Trump still owes lenders including Deutsche Bank as much as $480 million
It sure would be interesting to see those tax returns.
@Greg:
Well, keep dreaming. It sure would be interesting to see that “mountain of evidence” all you liberals had that PROVED Trump colluded with Russians to win his election. When will one of you explain that total, blatant, bold-face lie? It would also be interesting to see the 33,000 emails containing her lies and corruption which she obliterated.
January 21, 2020 – ‘Who the hell cares about the budget?’: Trump tears into critics of mounting federal spending and debt under his watch
The deficit is now pushing one-million-million dollars per year, at a time when the economy is running like a doped racehorse. The dope in this case consists of permanent high-end tax cuts, suppressed interest rates, and spending a trillion dollars more per year than we have coming in. It’s a set up for a mega-catastrophe, but republicans are partying too hard to care. The morning after is going to be a real bummer.
File under News Nobody is Reporting…
January 6, 2020 – Federal Reserve Admits It Pumped More than $6 Trillion to Wall Street in Recent Six Week Period
Remember, children… When the blowup comes, the democrats did it. Most likely it was Obama.
@Greg: @Greg: Who DOES care about the budget? Certainly not Democrats who never pass on or worry about cutting wasteful spending. If they did, they would find willing Republican partners. But, Democrats only enjoy running up debt, not responsible spending.
We’ll all care if our dollars suddenly turn into Monopoly money.
The self-proclaimed “King of Dept” has a long history of walking away from failed projects to leave others holding the empty bag while he starts up a new one. This might work for an individual, but it’s not a workable model for a national economy.
@Greg: Id love to end the Fed go back to a gold standard. Weaning off it took time getting back would take time. Creating a monetary system backed only by faith was began by FDR takes United States off gold standard On June 5, 1933, and finish by Nixon in 1971.
The fed created under the Worst President in history ever Wilson a rabid racist and progressive Democrat.
Not one person in congress would have the skill to print money and keep the economy stable.
The Fed has always been unconstitutional.
Constitution gave Congress the power to coin (create) and regulate the values and weights of foreign and domestic monies. The fifth clause of the Article I, Section 8 gives Congress this power as well as the power to prosecute counterfeiters.
@Greg: Obama is the King of Debt, racking up $10 trillion without benefitting anyone but Democrat donors.
It’s always more complicated that the talking points suggest. That said, Obama inherited the worst and most prolonged U.S. economic downturn since the Great Depression. Trump is running trillion-dollar annual deficits after inheriting a recovered economy and 75 consecutive months of job growth under Obama; we’re running those trillion-dollar deficits during an economic boom, not during a disastrous economic downturn. Also, Obama’s deficits dropped dramatically as the economy recovered. What will happen to Trump’s trillion-dollar deficits when the next downturn comes?
National Debt Under Obama – Three Methods to Determine How Much Obama Added to the Debt
@Greg: What was the cause of the economy in the shitter? Nafta and really crappy trade deals around the world. Massive government growth. Massive increase in poverty a growing as jobs left the country.
The types of jobs created in the last admin part time no benefits. More people working in the government than in manufacturing. Downsizing and those people couldnt find an entry level job in their field because they had too much experience for the pay offered. An economy limping along on people using the equity in their homes to make the payments on their cars and credit cards, while giving up on the job market.
@Greg: Yeah, it’s always “complicated” when you have to try to justify absolute failure. Bottom line was, in a massive recession brought about by liberal social engineering, Obama and Democrats had no earthly idea how to restore the economy AND pursue a socialist agenda, so they pursued a socialist agenda. In the end, Democrats merely tried to redefine failure as success and claim victory… $10 trillion later.
The population of the United States is 327.2 million. We’re running a deficit of 1 million-million dollars per year, which works out to new debt of $3,056 each per year, added to each American’s current $70,650 share of the total national debt. ($188,054 each, for every taxpayer). That is now happening during an economic boom conjured up by applying unsustainable stimulus measures normally reserved for economic emergencies to an already recovered economy—not at the height of the worst recession since the Great Depression.
What’s happening is yet another epic high-end cash grab, facilitated using means that are setting the average American up for an even worse economic catastrophe that we saw the last time around. When the inevitable happens we’re going to lack the stimulus tools necessary to counter the downturn, because we’re presently tapping them out to finance the binge.
The proposed solution will involve deep cuts to basic social programs, which have been a target all along. You’ll see. Or maybe you won’t, since a lot of totally obvious things seem to be invisible these days. Denial is strongly encouraged and is becoming the norm.
@Greg:
What if the people can get a job and do better for themselves?
What if we make deep cuts in government itself?
Deep cuts in grants to NGOs.
Why is it you commies always go for the dependent citizens and not those that spend their days surfing porn or online shopping? It always seems you have no solutions except fear mongering and lies.
7 million lifted off food stamps should the program get an increase?
We are not unaware of the debt doubling by bi-partisan budgets through the last admin and this one.
You certainly fight tooth and nail to stop the investigation of billions of improperly distributed aid slushing back to politicians and their family and donors. That is bipartisan too. Its not just foreign aid its in every ABC department.
We just need to account for ever dime spent not let it just vanish at home and abroad.
People don’t seem to grasp that “social programs” include Social Security and Medicare.
The only way they can divert their revenue streams into private pockets is by creating a crisis situation, and then rolling out various privatization schemes as the solution.
I don’t see much evidence that “accounting for every dime spent” is a priority of the current administration. The Pentagon has failed both of its recent audits, but we keep upping its budget anyway. It gets 54 cents of every federal dollar appropriated.
@Greg: Look at the “New Way Forward” law sponsored by 44 Democrats in the House. It makes illegal immigration legal, gives health care to illegal immigrants, prohibits deporting illegal immigrants that commit serious crimes such has rape, murder, drug trafficking and, get this, even pays to bring back hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants that have been deported. All on the taxpayer’s dime.
That’s on top of free health care, free college, guaranteed wages and anything else Democrats can think of to give away.
Then there’s Obama’s $10 trillion in debt for nothing.
If Democrats would participate in governance instead of just trying to get rid of Trump, perhaps they could cut some wasteful spending (instead of adding more) and make better use of the record tax revenues they have been collecting, the deficit and debt can one day be addressed.
Let us know when you have something besides blaming Republicans and Trump for the mistakes your Democrats make.
@Deplorable Me:
Col. Vindman, who was butthurt because Trump rejected his talking points to the President of Ukraine, was just escorted out of the White House along with his twin brother who goes by the name Eugene. Col. Vindman’s back stabbing is no longer needed in the NSC which, btw, was designed to serve the President, and only the President.
Hopefully, a court’s martial is next in Col. Vindman’s future.
@retire05: I heard that, what took so long?
The goal is to shrink this office as it doubled under Barry.
.@SpeakerPelosi re Vindman: “I’m stunned by it. Stunned. I’ll talk to my colleagues about this because I know they have some concern about the interventions that the president has with our military. That’s such a shame. What a patriotic person. This goes too far.”
— Haley Talbot (@haleytalbotnbc) February 7, 2020
To addled to remember he is CIC
@Deplorable Me, #137:
You dodged all of the relevant facts there, didn’t you? I don’t recall Obama every trying to tell people that a million-million dollar per year deficit doesn’t matter.
After his stimulus measures pulled the economy out of its nose dive, he rapidly reduced annual deficits while still presiding over 65 consecutive months of continuous job growth.
Trump has pushed annual deficits back to a trillion per year even with a strong economy. The moment it turns, we’ll be left without any stimulus tools to respond. Taxes can be cut no further, nor can interest rates be reduced by any significant degree.
What do Donald Trump and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have in common? Their shared belief in Modern Monetary Theory and the crack-brained corollary that can be summed up in the phrase, “Debt doesn’t matter.”
Obama realized the need to back off on stimulus measures as soon as the recovery was stable, to slow the growth of debt; witness the fact that the deficit dropped dramatically as a result while job growth continued.
Trump has reinstated stimulus measures to produce an exploitable economic boom, with no concern whatsoever for the return of trillion-dollar deficits. He doesn’t call them stimulus measures, of course. He just spends dollars as if he owns the printing presses. (That’s actually part of Modern Monetary Theory.) If asked about deficits and debt, somehow they’re all Obama’s fault.
@Deplorable Me:
Right. Ask them anything that gets too close to the truth, and they immediately digress into some aspect of their ever-more-elaborate “Vast Left Wing Conspiracy” theory.
@Greg: The relevant fact is that while Obama ran up $10 trillion in debt, stealing most of it, and delivering NOTHING for the American people, you never said a word. If you want the deficit addressed now, tell your Democrats in the House to cut some spending.
@Greg: Treasury Department Turns Over Hunter Biden Financial Docs to Senate Republicans . yup conspiracy theory yup.
@retire05: Ambassador Sonland is being recalled
@kitt: Crumble, crumble. The deep state is being eroded.
@Greg: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-budget-foreign-aid-defense-border-wall-veterans-homeland-security?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A%20foxnews%2Fpolitics%20%28Internal%20-%20Politics%20-%20Text%29
Ball’s in the Democrat’s court. Put up or shut up.
Quote of the day: When Boomers Panic Sell The Stock Market Will Nosedive
Be aware. It’s a hair-triggered situation being countered with distractions. No one is addressing the underlying problems.
@Greg: All older investors sell their stocks and bonds gradually as they age. Baby Boomers are no different with the exception that states have moved to penalize them at every stage of their lives.
Look at CA trying to make a tax on vacant properties while giving renters new “rights” to stay even when there’s good cause to evict them.
CA is also proposing and “exit tax” if people with any assets try to move away from their high tax state.
Before we would liquify our stock assets we would move where the penalty forcing that wouldn’t exist.
Were Bernie or another commie to get elected and tried to confiscate all assets like stocks, just watch seniors leave the country!
So, with options, we wouldn’t liquify all assets.
Anyway, I cannot believe 30% of boomers really have all their eggs in one basket: stocks.
They probably misunderstood the question and therefore left off property, cash, gold, bitcoin and other savings.
@Greg: greggie, where did you get your economic education? When did you create a billion dollar company? Where did you earn your leadership capabilities? I suspect by your postings that the answer is no where. Couple lack of knowledge with stupidity and one can understand your comments.