Election 2025

Before diving into my analysis of this past week's elections, I read my post election discussion from last November. Here is a link

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2024/11/election-aftermath.html 

A few of the points I made in that post stuck out as I read it. First, I reminded my readers that Harris lost Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin by a total of 250,000 votes. Out of the 150 million or so that were cast that is less than 1/2 of 1% of the votes cast. My point was that Harris wins the electoral college if those 250,000 Americans vote for her instead of Trump, regardless of whether she still loses the popular vote. That fact reminds me of the lie that Trump and his acolytes continue to tell about the 2024 election being some kind of mandate.

Another point I made regarding the possibility of a Democratic recovery had to do with how Trump governed, specifically in those critical areas of costs and immigration. 

I had created two posts meant to provide the new president with advice, both along the lines of Take the Win. What I meant was that as inflation continued to come under better control, as it had been the last year of Biden's presidency, take credit for it. Sadly, he decided to institute his crazy tariff obsession which has stalled progress on reducing inflation, is even causing an uptick. I am not exaggerating when I say that the Fed would have lowered interest rates sooner, and perhaps more often by now, if not for Trump's tariffs. The blame for that delay lies squarely at his feet.

As for immigration, the flow of illegals has practically ceased, but rather than stopping at the border, he has unleashed his own form of gestapo police in ICE clothing, masked, to boot. Here are links to those two posts. 

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2025/01/dear-president-trump-take-win.html

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2025/05/take-win-2.html 

Which brings us to the recent elections. While I agree on two fronts with the president, that the government shutdown and the fact that he was not on the ballot are two factors which lead to the beat down for the GOP, it is also certainly true that the victories by the various Democratic candidates were also a repudiation of the administration's policies, specifically the tariffs that are harming small businesses as well as everyday consumers, and the daily stories of ICE agents snatching undocumented people off the streets of America, some right in front of their kids as they are dropped at school, some at the actual immigration hearings where they are following the rules by appearing, and some at their places of work. 

Clearly, those people are not the worst of the worst. As I said in one of my posts above, showing ICE agents accompanying illegal immigrants from American jails directly onto deportation planes would have been a win. What is happening now, especially in conjunction with sending the National Guard, or actual soldiers into American cities, completely eliminates any credit he could have gained from sticking with his worst of the worst campaign rhetoric. And exposes the lie of that claim, as it is clear that there aren't millions of undocumented people committing crimes in America. Just a large quantity of people trying to make a better life for themselves and their families who violated the law by taking a shortcut into our country.

One might even speculate that providing a pathway to citizenship for anyone who has been in our country for four, six, ten or more years while emphasizing that anyone who enters illegally from now on will not be provided such a pathway, could have been a part of Take the Win.

But no, the reality is that Trump's true motivation is bigotry, pure and simple, and cruelty to send a message that "those" people should not come to our pristine (can you say white) shores.

Had Trump followed my advice, had chosen to Take the Win, his party would not have performed so badly. 

Further, if I am JD Vance or Marco Rubio, and think that they will automatically inherit the MAGA vote in 2028, I might think again. With Trump not on the ballot for that election, what makes them think they will do any better than those representing the GOP banner did this past week?

Now, of course, there is a whole year until the midterms in 2026, let alone the three years until the next presidential election. So much can and will happen in the meantime.

I expect a market down turn, not just because Trump's tariff policies are upsetting the economy, here and abroad, but because the AI driven market surge is due to peter out. In other words, we are in a bubble that will eventually burst. The only question is by how much and for how long. Should there be a 10-15% drop early in 2026, a drop that is not recovered until mid to late summer, the DEMS will certainly win back the House, and close that gap in the Senate. If the president thinks it tough to get his agenda passed now, it will get all the more difficult then. 

The real concern the White House and the GOP should feel is that the very demographics which helped them win in 2024, Latinos, young people, especially young men, and Blacks, switched sides this past week, by many percentage points. Should the economy continue to favor the rich, should unemployment push closer to 5%, should young people and minorities continue to find "affordability" to be a problem, whether the president acknowledges it or not, the 2026 midterm may look like the 2018 midterms when the Democrats regained the House by gaining 41 seats. Since, as of now, they only need 3, it is a fair bet that they will gain those seats. That if why Trump has ordered various red states, led by Texas, to redraw their maps to potentially create more GOP seats.

It is also why he is pushing Senate Republicans to nix the filibuster so he can push as much of his agenda in the next year as possible. While many seasoned GOP Senators know the folly of such an act, know that when they are in the minority they will lose any leverage they might have to slow a Democratic agenda from being fulfilled, Trump does not care about anything other than his perceived legacy. What happens to the legislative process, or to the country for that matter, is not a concern for a narcissist like Trump, only what he can do, NOW.

What is truly amazing is that day after day, the White House brags about how much money tariffs are bringing into our coffers yet claims there is no money to fund SNAP. As if this administration hasn't been moving money around since day one to reflect its priorities. As we speak, the DOJ is arguing that forcing the government to find the money to help American families buy food, Americans of all political affiliations, would do harm to the government, more harm than children and the elderly and the disabled and veterans would feel by having to skip meals. I would call it evil, except that, as I have stated many times, cruelty is the point. And to emphasize that point, with all caps and an exclamation point. Trump brags about his $300 million ballroom, and holds a party the night before SNAP benefits are to expires for all his rich friends. 

The good news, perhaps, is that the electorate is beginning to wake up, as this past week's elections seem to indicate. I am still hesitant to declare this the beginning of the end of the effectiveness of Trump's barrage of lies, as the WalMart Thanksgiving basket demonstrates. 

If you missed that particular prevarication, someone from WalMart, I assume, perhaps one of the owners who earns tens of million of dollars a year by underpaying their employees while forcing their vendors to operate with minuscule margins, told the president that the "basket" of items to create a Thanksgiving dinner cost 25% less than last year. The truth, of course, is that the basket from 2024 included many more items than this year's and that some of the items from last year were replaced with store brand items, not name brands. But, as has been famously said by many people before me, Americans aren't interested in details, so the story was presented on Truth Social, and in Fox outlets all around the country. 

Of course, I doubt that Trump has shopped for groceries in this century, but even some people who do their own shopping continue to believe these kind of lies, despite what the receipts from their own shopping trips tell them.

Please, Mr President, Take the Win.

Return the tariffs to pre-April numbers, then let people trained to negotiate complex trade deals work with our trading partners to correct the situations that need addressing.

Put your pardon pen aside, and stop sending the message that white collar crime is just all right with you.

Focus ICE on transferring illegal alien criminals from our jails to save local and state municipalities money, and transfer the real worst of the worst to their country of origin, even if you have to pay those countries to house them, as that rate will certainly be less than the cost here.

If you don't want to grant a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers or people who have been here for eight or ten years without breaking any laws, then at least let them be. Perhaps the next president will have a heart that doesn't need a microscope to detect.

Favor the fossil fuel industry, we know you love them, but leave the green energy systems and projects and incentives that are lowering the cost of energy by reducing the demand side of the supply-demand dynamic that controls the cost of all products alone.

Finally, golf.

Golf at your own courses, even if it costs the American taxpayers money, paid to your businesses, to provide security. Golf at your other favorite courses as well. Golf oversees. Golf in Greenland, Canada, Panama and at all those great courses that the Saudis have in their countries. I am willing to pay my taxes for you to break every record there is about rounds golfed by a president in four years. 

Just stop governing, we all know you don't like it, and Take the Win.