So Shooter came across this interesting chart and thinks that while it does tend to support the pundit's opinion, something else sticks out that hardly gets mentioned in the media.

Now mind you, this is a pundit's opinion, not Moses bringing us the 10 commandments, but it should give supporters and unsupporters a lot to think about for the next two years.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/10/con...p-trump-get-re-elected----if-it-holds-up.html

Basically, what the chart does is look at consumer confidence in the first months of an administration, and what becomes clear is that if consumer confidence is high, the President gets reelected. If consumer confidence is falling, they get booted.

Huh. It seems Bill Clinton was right. It's the economy, stupid.

Apparently, all the rest is just spew.

But here's the thing that really struck Shooter when he studied this graph. Trump has seen consumer confidence climb from "pretty good" to "fantastic!" since he took office. Trump inherited decent consumer confidence but even more striking, he has taken it to new highs.

Only Bill Clinton saw consumer confidence climb after he took office, but we also have to recognize that when he took office, there wasn't much direction to go but up.

Trump has seen consumer confidence take off from an already good place.

According to this pundit, Trump just may already be unbeatable in 2020.

Shooter doesn't buy that.

But, as long as the wheels don't come off of the economy before the election, Shooter thinks Trump will be pretty much unbeatable.

 

Newsweek, 4/10/18

a new analysis of all Fortune 500 companies found only 4.3 percent of workers will receive a one-time bonus or wage increase tied to the business tax cuts, while businesses received nine times more in cuts than what they passed on to their workers, according to Americans for Tax Fairness, a political advocacy group devoted to tax reform. The analysis also found that companies spent 37 times as much on stock buybacks than they did on bonuses and increased wages for workers...

this [analysis shows] that 433 corporations out of the Fortune 500 have announced no plans to share their tax cuts with employees.”

The newest projections by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that the Republican tax plan led to, in part, a 2018 deficit $242 billion higher than previously estimated.

---------

If Trump is to keep the support of white Republicans who are not rich he will need to deliver on social issues. If the Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision has not been reversed by 2020 Trump will be in trouble with the religious right. If it has been reversed Trump will be in trouble with the majority of Americans, including many Republicans, who support Roe v Wade.

 

You didn't read the article, or really understand the post, did you?
According to this pundit, if consumer confidence is high and/or improving in the months AFTER a candidate becomes president, their reelection is all but a given.

Abortion, taxes, war, the debt, scandals, lies and broken promises are irrelevant if you buy into this pundit's argument.

Well, we'll see about that.

But what struck Shooter as more important, President Trump is the ONLY president who has entered office with good consumer confidence, and built on that. Like, to the moon, built on that. The only other President to have consumer confidence rise just after they were elected was Clinton. But, Clinton started with a consumer confidence factor of just over 40. No place much left to go but up.

Now Trump, he started with a consumer confidence factor of 130, and now it's over 160. the highest is't ever been with these presidents is 180.

Now Obama, he started really low, like at 30. And over 4 years, he got it up to 60. And got reelected for his trouble.

Hell, Trump has already, in less than 2 years, raised consumer confidence by 30 points, and he started way up there, at 130.

See the point?

Shooter thinks unsupporters really need to start cranking, find a candidate who can beat Trump, and figure out in the process how to destroy consumer confidence.

Yammering about abortion won't do it.
Gnashing teeth over ILLEGAL Immigrants won't do it.
Spewing about sex scandals won't do it.
Howling about lies, and eating habits, and skin tone, and hair won't do it.

 

It is easy to "boost consumer confidence" when you promise the world and have no real plan to give it. Trump promised jobs and tax cuts yet those jobs are not appearing and the tax cuts are not benefiting the average person or even most businesses.
And at this point I do believe that Ocasio-Cortez or Sanders could win.

 

You're one of the best Pelosi spokespersons I have seen.

Locally, everywhere I look, I see help wanted signs.

 

A good economy is the most important thing for our livelyhoods. If it's rolling along well, people won't want to rock the boat and take a chance on the unknown. Trump will easily get re-elected.

So far, I wouldn't say the stock market is doing great this year though. Time will tell.

 

It's like they say....it's not the heat, it's the stupidity......

 

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is more qualified than Oprah Winfrey. Even Oprah is ahead of Trump for 2020.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will not be old enough to run for president until 2025, That will give her time to learn about the presidency. Meanwhile, she has plenty of charisma.

 

But, as it says in the article you reference, if consumer confidence dips in the third year of a President's administration, history (Carter and Bush #1) shows that reelection is unlikely.

"A mounting trade war with key U.S. economic partners and ballooning budget deficits are among the factors that could derail any economic improvements seen during the early parts of Trump's presidency."

Add to that the fact that his big tax cut primarily benefited the wealthy and corporations, with no "trickle down" to the masses, I don't see how consumer confidence could remain high. Those who still support Trump continue to surprise me though.

One good thing the Democrats have going for them is that Clinton won't be running. I voted for her, but she was not my first choice. It wasn't that she was unqualified. It was that my views were more in line with Sanders and I was fully aware of all the "Hillary hate" that was out there. It never made any sense to me, but I can't deny it exists. In that sense, any Democratic nominee will be more viable than Clinton.

 

Trump has plenty of time to muck up the economy with his simple minded delusions about better trade deals paying off the national debt and bringing back factory jobs that have been lost to robots.

 

As usual, the Master of Facts can explain.

Affluent Republicans, like shootersa, love their tax cuts. They only complain about the deficit when a Democrat is president. They know that if the Democrats come to power their taxes will go up. If Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez grabs hold of them they will be socked with taxes.

Poor white Republicans love Trump because he hates the same people they do. They want all the people they hate to be even worse off than they are.

 

Oh, Distant Lover assumes facts not in evidence. First, you assume Shooter is an "affluent Republican". Second, you assume "Poor white Republicans love Trump because he hates the same people he does"

Shooter is comfortable, economically. Tax cuts, or tax increases mean little to Shooter now that he is retired, unless some knucklehead decides to tax Social Security and retirement funds at a rate higher than other income. That would be political suicide.
And Shooter does not vote party lines. He leans Republican, but is really a Libertarian; has been ever since Carter was in office.

Second, those "Poor white Republicans" are the depolorables; you know, the truck driving, beer drinking, gun toting, genetically ambiguous, gaping hinds in flyover country, etc. etc. who voted against Clinton. They didn't particularly want the pompous gas bag in office, but the alternative of an arrogant career corrupt robber in the oval office was simply not acceptable.

What has happened is that those deplorables have been pleasantly surprised to see President Trump actually do what he said he'd do. And that has been reflected in Trump's popularity polls.
*not_secure_link*thehill.com/hilltv...ectory-of-trumps-approval-rating-differs-from

You see, most Presidents see their popularity decline once they get into office. Trump, as with most things about his presidency, isn't fitting the traditional molds. He has seen his popularity slowly increase.

This isn't about hating groups of people. You see, deplorables, most of them, understand bigotry better than arrogant liberals who find it easiest to group people by stupid stuff, like race, or sexual preference, or residence, and then demean them and villianize them, or put them on a pedestal and worship them.

The majority of deplorables just want their elected officials to do the fucking job they were elected to do, and stop putting their business before ours. They don't care if it's a man, woman, minority, rich or poor, Republican or Democrat. Just do the fucking job.

Here's something for you to ponder; The Democrats are running with promises of raising taxes on "the rich". How are they going to explain the distinction of "rich" to those stupid gaping hind deplorables, who are simply to stupid to grasp just how badly they fucked up voting against unsupporters man (woman)?

 

And they define "rich" being persons making over XXX amount per year. Well, us retired folks don't make anything per year.
It's just what we pull out of our accounts that are taxed, and we can control that.

Tax the rich, feed the poor, till there are no, rich anymore. That was some 40-50 years ago, yes?

 

"So was hillary in your biased polls. They mean nothing."

1) Even with Russian meddling and voter suppression, Clinton won the popular vote by 3 million.

2) Before the election, the general public, including the folks who did the polls, were unaware of the Russian meddling.

 

We've been over this AD NAUSEUM. We can't allow New York and California to elect our officials, and the electoral college does just that.

Besides, those 2.8 million votes came from ILLEGAL immigrants, not that they counted anyway.

 

I am well aware of how the electoral college works. But if it is such a fabulous system, why has no other democracy on the planet adopted a similar system? Other countries have similar conflicts with populous cities vs low population rural areas, but they've stuck to a simple 1 person, 1 vote. To top it off, a state gets all its electoral votes no matter how many voters make it to the polls. Theoretically, you could have zero votes cast for President in NY and 100% voter participation in Florida, and each would still get 29 EVs. How the hell does that make any sense?

Regarding your 2.8 million votes coming from illegal immigrants, I'll just say PROVE IT.

 

Nah, I don't have to.

It's a fabulous system because NY and Cali don't elect our officials. That would be disastrous. And there ain't a finer country than ours.
Perhaps they should adopt our system

 

Do you really want to know how the economy is doing? Forget the cherry-picked internet facts, forget the fake news being force-fed you by the elites. Just look around your neighborhood. Are houses for sale? Do you have new neighbors? Are your neighbors buying boats? Recreational vehicles? When people buy boats and recreational vehicles things are going great again. Recreational vehicle, boat, motorcycle, and home sales tanked when Obama became president, they remained poor for 8 years, they are up substantially at the current time. Things are looking up, everyone realizes this. Mr Smith is confident President Trump's policies will continue to improve the economy. The tarriff battle will result in more great economic news for the consumer. Anyone who says it can't get any better than this just hasn't looked around their neighborhood.

 

If you want to live by the economy that's fine. But when the insane clown tanks our economy for no reason other than his own ego you die by the economy, agreed? No excuses.

And back when the economy was improving under President Obama the most important statistic of all to the PR hacks and their socks was "the direction of the country." So how is that indicator going?

Right direction: 38.9%

Wrong direction: 53.6%

--14.7

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/direction_of_country-902.html

 

There is no proof, or even credible evidence of that.