Over the weekend, many Americans took to the streets to air their concerns about Trump’s second term—specifically, what they view as his creeping authoritarianism.
The boomers created today's failed state policies. And now they protest to keep their creation alive. Just a bunch of old white people concerned only about themselves and keeping what they've got regardless of how it all turns out for future generations. Boomers are the existential threat to this country.
Health care is a winning issue, and one of the few issues I agree with the Democrats on. (As the libertarian John Cochrane put it, cross-subsidies are the original sin of healthcare). But even there, I wouldn't trust the current Democratic leadership to create a better healthcare system, even though the bar is shockingly low. It would be like the Green New Deal and turn into graft and six figure jobs to absorb the surplus of elite overproduction.
The Democrat's focus on inequality - as opposed to poverty - is simply morally wrong. The Democrats are like a rural peasant farming community in the developing world (Banfield etc.). As soon as one person starts to get ahead, the community feels threatened and pulls him back to the pack by demanding make-work jobs, "loans", and gifts. The Democrats should be celebrating success and the creation of wealth, but temper that with the realization that although capitalism creates winners, it also creates losers. If AI is going to wipe out a bunch of jobs, let's have programs to ease people through the transition to a new career. (And by the way, does anything reveal the myopia of Democratic central planning that "learn to code" was a thing right up until AI threatened to take away the coding jobs?).
"The Democrat's focus on inequality - as opposed to poverty - is simply morally wrong."
THANK YOU.
I'm going to toss a little 12 step philosophy into the convo. One of the saying's I like is "help is just the bright, shiny side of control".
Most people don't mind other people getting rich. I think deep down, most people admire them for doing so. You can't talk inequality (as it's currently branded) without moralizing against those who have gotten wealthy. There's also an implied aspect that their wealth will be diminished to provide equity. Deep down, I think most people feel a little squeamish about this.
It's been said ad nauseum, but people don't want equality of outcome, just equality of opportunity. They don't want help, they want empowerment.
Right now, with inflation still bubbling under the surface, there's a gaping maw that the Democrats should be able to fill. But to do so, they need a platform that has ZERO to do with Trump, and zero to do with Republicans.
Abundance says "you can do it, we're here to remove barriers". Equity says "you can't do it without us". I suppose abundance makes too much sense for the current Democratic party to get behind.
All that said, the Dems need to ratchet down the language into something that guy at the party with the Che Guevara shirt on would be embarrassed to say. Focus on helping each individual becoming their own financial center where they're generating their own wealth, not siphoning off that of others, even if they're really yuchy people.
A vision to deal with the impact of AI on the average person would be very compelling. Except agin, and I feel like a very broken record I really don’t think I can trust the party that was in executive power when globalization was issued in in the 90s which devastated rural towns to have a clue how to help anyone with a change such as AI. they are too engaged in their own thoughts of progressive values to be grounded in how to make practical change for something like AI.
We could eliminate half of wealth inequality in one generation if we could get the average family to put as much into Individual Retirement Accounts as they put into car payments, which is $750 per month. But, is that what they want? No, they do not want greater equality. What they really want is a higher standard of living even if it means going into debt.
Sen. Ruben Gallegos (D-AZ) said, "Every Latino man wants a big-ass truck." Not a big-ass bank account or a big-ass 401k. He wants a big-ass truck even if it comes with a big-ass car note. If you doubt it, look at 401k participation rates. Half of workers eligible to participate in 401k plans actually enroll (source: Bureau of Labor Statistics). For state and local government workers, it's 19%.
Sixty percent of American households are living paycheck-to-paycheck. If paid larger paychecks, they would live larger paycheck to larger paycheck. And there is no objective way to say their choices are morally wrong, just short-sighted. What is morally wrong is expecting wealthier people to make up for your own improvidence.
Living beyond one's means is not limited to low income, but it's a lot easier to recover if you are making 3K a week. The jobs those guys have that buy the big assed truck used to pay well enough for a nice car, vacation, pension, health care in retirement too, tuition for the kids and maybe even a tiny vacation place on a lake.
Ruben said last week, that the idea was if things got bad you could just work like hell and dig yourself out of any hole. Now people work like hell and are falling further and further behind. Ruben said people tell him they are scared they won't make it.
My father paid 4% payroll tax in the 1950's, counting both the employee and employer share. There was no Medicare, so no Medicare payroll tax. I and most American workers pay 12.4% on all of our earnings up to $176K, which for most people is all of it. The Medicare tax brings the rate up to 15.4%. The payroll tax is the biggest one most people pay and it is now nearly four times higher than it used to be.
My parents also paid a 2% sales tax back then. I pay 8.75% in the same jurisdiction. He paid a 3 cent per gallon federal gasoline tax. I pay 18.4 cents per gallon and that's only the federal tax. The state tax raises it to 38.4 cents. The highest in the nation is in California, where the total is 87cents per gallon.
The big increase over the decades has been in the regressive taxes. It is harder to dig your way out of a hole if the tax collectors take one-third of every shovelful.
May I submit a clarification? A 3-cent gasoline tax in 1955 would amount to a 36 cent gasoline tax in 2025 so maybe gasoline taxes haven't grown as much as they seem, when you adjust for inflation.
These polls are so skewed. How about asking "Do you believe some races should be discriminated against and unqualified people should be promoted in a quota system in order to achieve 'equity'"? Or how about: "Do you want the government to provide health care for all even though it may mean long wait times for routine services, you can't pick your doctor, and trillions will have to be cut from other programs (environment, education, defense)?"
Why not short wait times and choose your doctor? We still pay double what similar countries pay and for worse outcomes. We die more. What if change were better not worse?
Summary of this comment: Healthcare in the US can be affordable. I strongly suspect that insurance companies and hospitals have chosen to make it otherwise.
I live in California and we switched to Kaiser about 18 months ago. The difference was shocking: with our PPO, we'd have to wait months to get an appointment for routine care. Example: my daughter needed to see an ENT and I called in mid-May. They told us the soonest they could book her as a new patient was late September. Waits were almost as long if I didn't have an appointment with a doctor even if this was your regular physician.
We switched to Kaiser in June of last year. The first time I called, I needed to see a doctor about a potential new problem and they said, "We can see you at 2 pm today, or tomorrow afternoon or Friday morning."
They can do this because Kaiser doesn't schedule routine office visits more than 2 months in advance (at least, not at the facilities where I am). So slots don't fill up the way they do at Stanford, Sutter Health, or El Camino Medical Group. Kaiser also keeps a small number of office appointments open that I can't see as a patient. I have to get on the phone, describe why I need to go, and then get scheduled. This is why I was able to get an appointment so quickly. They also hold slots for important tests like scans.
Most importantly, they control costs. A medicine I take cost $200 per month before the switch (WITH insurance). Now it's $20 for a 3 month supply. And once you pay your deductible, you don't pay *at all, for anything.* Ours is $3,000 for the family annually. Oh, and our premiums are half of what they were before.
Kaiser has less expertise in more exotic things like rare diseases. They also don't cover more exotic stuff like laser surgery to remove eye floaters (as I learned recently, and was not surprised). This is part of how they keep costs down. I can live with that, because they're so good otherwise.
For 80-90% of medical needs, routine or otherwise, they're great. Their facilities are modern, their equipment is modern, the medical staff are as good as anywhere else, and I don't ever want to go back to our old plan.
If Kaiser has taught me anything, it's that a well-organized system can be cost-effective. We could do this with rare diseases and for systems outside Kaiser if we wanted to. Problem is, we don't. Or, the people running the medical care show don't or aren't up to the task.
Michael, your advice betrays the Democrat's core problem. You suggest focusing on healthcare and affordability because those are what poll well. But the party has no new ideas to address these issues. Doubling down on Obamacare subsidies only highlights that the promises of the Affordable Care Act were false, and promising to bring down costs and inflation just begs the question of why these things skyrocketed under Biden and Harris's policies?
We are all talking about single payer now except you, I suspect. The current system is even less defensible than it was in 2009. A lot of the issues brought up to defend the medical insurers then, and in 1993 won't work today, and the independent physicians were largely eliminated by Obamacare.
3x Trump voter here and I haven't voted for a Democrat since 1992. But even I have given up on the current system. It just sucks and the only feasible 'solution' is to turn it into a heavily regulated bureaucracy with the government as the single payer. There are various reasons why that would suck less. I'm hopeful that with that in place, buying extended coverage ala Medicare Advantage would be possible and more affordable.
To say that strategy has not worked is a massive understatement. For those who do polls, Trump is ahead of both Obama and Bush at this same point in their second terms; he has actually ticked up a point since the shutdown started; and there have been 80,000 net new R gains since August, with Rs gaining 30,000 and Ds losing 50,000. In New Mexico---just the latest---Rs gained 21,000 since last Nov., slashing the D lead there by one-third. Now, that's in a very blue state. I would argue that any time Trump is invoked in ANY bad way, it hurts Ds with the majority. Maybe not "some" of the base, but with the majority. But, I disagree that "health care" is a winning issue. A true fix won't be an improved O-care but a vast news reshaping that will provide catastrophic health care insurance, then focus on reducing actual costs everywhere else to where, as it was when I was young, you just pay your doc in cash. That's the goal, anyway.
Now we know that losing a political election can send millions of Democrats into the five stages of grief. The good news is fewer and fewer are suffering as many have moved through the stages or given up and left the Democrats party. The bad news is that the US lacks an effective party in opposition.
The five stages off grief.
1. Denial - Democrat seem to have completed this stage.
2. Anger - ‘No Kings’ rally
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance
The party has a long way to go. History shows it can take decades for a party to get back in power. The quick fix is latching onto a charismatic person. The hard way is to govern well what you already control to build prosperity, trust and credibility.
It is one thing for a party out of power to point out problems not being addressed by the one in power. Quite another to know what to do if your campaign works.
Healthcare costs are so high in the US because Americans are so generally unhealthy, and there is so much more that medicine can do nowadays than before, and we are uncomfortable telling people that that whiz bang therapy is not available to them, because they're not rich and their basic insurance doesn't cover it.
The 800 dollars a month we paid to BCBS didn't begin to cover the $750k they spent on my wife's (unsuccessful) cancer treatment.
You are correct about the general unhealthiness of Americans; however, America is not the only unhealthy Western country (though I admit we are the most unhealthy). The question is, why?
The healthiest countries in the world are in Asia and Northern Europe (with the exception, as always, of Switzerland).
Is it American work culture? Well, Japan and Singapore are two of the healthiest countries in the world, yet they (along with Korea, also in the Top 10) work just as many hours as we do, if not more. Is it diet? Maybe. China and India, the two largest countries on Earth and rising economic and military powers, have notoriously poor diets and high rates of diabetes, heart disease and cardiovascular issues (i.e. diet/lifestyle diseases).
The average life span for men and women in those countries is about the same as it is in the U.S.
Yet, the U.S. spends, on average, 2 to 3 times as much as any other country does on healthcare.
To me, the biggest issue with healthcare in America, and why I think you see similar outcomes in the U.S., India and China, is stress, specifically, the stress of lack of security and instability. People who feel like the walls are closing in and the floor is wobbly and ready to crack under their feet at any moment are always stressed out. Stress in turn causes lack of proper sleep, which causes more stress on the heart, not to mention anti-social/unhealthy activities (drug use, caffeine abuse, poor eating habits, lack of exercise, etc.). Add to this that Americans love our cars, and it is bad recipe.
What the people have learned, and the pandemic gave them a big boost in their understanding, is that Democrats tend to make more socioeconomic problems than they fix. I live in liberal land in a liberal college town and all these credentialed highly emotionally unregulated Q-Tips and partnering young passionate idealists lacking life-wisdom, heavily female, lack any trace of real problem-solving capability. There is a lack of pragmatism... lack of critical thinking that factor all criteria and factor long-term consequences. They chase their feelings to a spiral downward in sub-optimized outcomes. This has always been a problem with left-leaning people as this is how they are wired for some reason. They are the part of the population with the lowest emotional regulation capability. That is why they connect with young people because young people are full of hormones and don't have enough experience yet in life to know what is worth getting riled up about, and what is a distraction for them to be good spouses, parents and workers.
Why is it so much more a mess these days?
1. The raging success of the US economy combined with the domestic private sector strangulation due to de-industrialism, globalism (offshoring jobs and global competition) that has been exacerbated by massive immigration of low-wage workers... it has put these emotive, unaccountable, low-productive merit, credentialled academic types that tend to be Democrat, in a higher income and wealth class. And with the money comes the ability to buy political power. Class elites of the Gilded Age were industrialists. Class elites of today are over-educated, anti-industrialists. They are grifters, rent-seekers, looters and gamblers. They don't involve themselves in inventing, making, building, growing, fixing and selling any real products. That difference has shifted our political representation to a much higher percentage of people that are not qualified for leadership roles if we expect our leaders to lead us toward constant improvement and not constant decline from a long list of sub-optimized decisions.
2. The Democrat machine, having maximized its only real positive idea platform to tax and spend, has adopted a completely negative campaign strategy. It is one of negative branding, character assassination, and emotional terrorism. The leaders of the party, grifters that seek millions in their bank accounts by quid pro quo work and insider trading whispers, have taken this strategy to the extreme within the legacy media, Hollywood and tech... to constantly enflame anger, frustration, disgust and hate all directed at conservatives and Republicans... Trump is like cocaine to them... they are addicted to it and the strong emotions it feeds the beast. Democrats are so gaslit they cannot think critically.
3. Republicans are not yet unified in fighting this beast. They have been wusses worried about making females dislike them and thus not getting the female attention they crave almost as much as they crave more money in their bank accounts. The analogy is that they continued to open the door for the woman behind them while she screamed at them and attempted to scratch their eyes out... and then went home to work collectively in female rage to destroy men in general for oppressing them with all that door opening.
But what the beast and its handlers are really protesting here. They built up a machine over the last several decades... one fueled by all sorts of corrupt money pathways and dirty and dark partisan maneuvering... and the Trump Administration is dismantling that machine piece by piece. The Democrats can see it and feel it. They know that their success over the past few decades was only because of the machine. They have no ideas left in the tank because they have already spent the nation into near bankruptcy. There is no more tax and spend capacity left. And so, they can only rely on No Kings protests to get their media pals to create hyperbole content to try and shift more moderates to their emotive party.
They are throwing a tantrum of desperation that their party is over. It needs to be dismantled and reformed but they don't have any skill for building a new type of machine that would appeal to the voter. So they double down on their negative behavior with the broken belief that people will still hold the door open for them as they scream spittle and attempt to scratch eyes out.
Another very good posting. Agree about health care being a problem for the Rs, and will say more in a different comment. Right now, I want to talk about the polling data. Specifically: "Trump’s second-term approval rating has come down from its post-inauguration high."
I watch Real Clear Polling carefully. I used it last October to predict Trump's margin, three and a half months after having used the Bureau of Labor Statistics' unemployment data to call the election for Trump -- but not the margin. Some things to say now:
1. Every president's numbers come down from the Inauguration Day high. Trump's second-term RCP average is higher than the last two two-term presidents' averages at this point in their second terms.
2. I have doubts about Trump's average right now. I think the dispersion is too wide for the average to be valid. AP/NORC -24% v Insider Advantage +6%? Really? Come on. I know, I know: That's why you have an average, but I still think it's too wide.
3. I started by saying that I called Trump's margin by using the RCP average. That's true, but I adjusted it to compensate for that average's errors in '16 and '20. Unfortunately, RCP doesn't publish the composition of the second-term polls on Bush Jr. and Obama, so I'm flying blind. If I do the statistics thing and omit the outliers (any result >10%), Trump is -1.7%.
Something calling itself the National Association of Independent Pollsters says Trump is +1.3%. NAIP is a coalition of three pollsters that have tended to be pro-Trump: Insider Advantage, Rasmussen, and Quantus Insights.
I'm neither here nor there on them, but can't go with either that number or my own adjusted -1.7% because I don't know what numbers comprised the averages for Bush Jr. and Obama. My gut feel says -2%, but that's a guess inside of a fog bank.
BOTTOM LINE
I think Trump's numbers have been more or less stable since the inevitable post-inauguration dropoff. The average shows that too. My doubts are about the actual number as opposed to the trend. I think that, going forward, the condition of the economy will drive it more than anything else. And I fervently agree that these "No Kings" rallies are pointless.
Anyone recall the old Maxwell Smart series from the 1960s? Remember the Cone of Silence? If I were inside the Democratic Party's cone, I'd call them the "No Favors" rallies because they're doing the Ds no favors.
I remember seeing a piece last spring where the author dug into the crosstabs of a poll that had Trump tanking and pointed out that Harris voters outnumbered Trump voters nearly 2:1 in the sample. You’d think pollsters would ask a few questions about how people voted (or didn’t) in the last presidential/off year election, compare the responses to the known results, and use that to gauge how accurate their sample is.
I just called up the average again, and it has moved to -6.9%. In particular, I think YouGov is garbage. I could do the really deep dive on this stuff, but see no reason to go further than I already did.
Here's a suggestion. why has Obama care failed to insure all uninsured Americans? Wasn't that the promise? If the only way Obama care works, even for only part of the insured is govenrment subsides, what then is the future of Obamacare? Another uncontrollable entitlement program?
If "democracy" is in peril, then why are the systems built to address the anti Constitution actions of Trump working? Whether the left wants to admit it or not, the SCOTUS is the final word. And so far, the majority of the time, they side with Trump. That is how the system was built to function.
People didn't want the left's type of democracy. Get in power and do the same things and you won't last long. Fool me once...
You keep saying do the same the same thing just message better. That is not your answer. How about actually worrying about how to govern and not just gaining power to become the Trump version of liberals.
The fact is, the left couldn't give a rat's ass less about this country and the citizens. Until you listen to the masses and not your radical fringe, you'll never be anything more than just another bunch of losers dragging this country down to ruin. I expected so much more from you folks. You promised so much more. But you slide deeper and deeper into the power abyss everyday.
Everyday, conservative media, Fox mainly, who has more watchers than all the Dem media put together, spreads that word. And Soros leads you down the Yellow Brick to obscurity. SMH
SCOTUS isn’t siding with Trump so much as they are siding with the Executive. It’s worth remembering that these same Justices sided with Biden and his administration’s decision to not enforce our immigration laws.
Democrats would have more credibility if they found common cause with libertarians and argued for Congress to pull back the powers it has willfully ceded to the Executive since the New Deal. But then of course they wouldn’t be able to use Executive power as they see fit once back in the White House.
I wish I could be more specific, but I remember seeing a poll last Spring which showed that a surprisingly large number of Americans understand the relationship between government spending and inflation. Look what the Democrats did during President Biden's four years in office: Trillions upon trillions of dollars spent on green energy projects and new infrastructure. These may or may not have been worthwhile projects. Some are very worthwhile. Some are just ways of transferring billions of taxpayer dollars to favored insider groups. Much of this spending fueled inflation. Then there is the question of the open border. It feels like the Democrats are in such a deep hole over these issues, that no amount of healthcare spending and income redistribution will get them back to the surface. We simply cannot afford another round of trillion dollar spending sprees or four more years of an open border. Suggestions about focusing on Healthcare spending and inequality seem like little more than distractions from what happened between 2021 and 2024. And that's too bad because Healthcare access isn't something which should be shoved aside. But I fear the Biden years have made that result inevitable.
On the economy the Democrats need to stop searching for the perfect poll tested message and focus on creating economies that work for everyone in the states where they have complete control. If you can do that then you will have no problems selling those policies nationally.
The Democrats are also going to have to choose between a European style safety net or a relatively open immigration policy, because you simply can’t have both. The money just isn’t there. You’ll also need to come clean with the public about the need for European style taxes on the middle and lower middle class to pay for it, because again “the rich” simply don’t have enough money to pay for all the social programs the populist left is asking for.
I like your idea, Norm, that the Democrats need to demonstrate the success of their policies in the states where they have a heavy majority, like California. Women's suffrage and direct election of Senators originally started because some of the states did them, then most of the states, until Congress finally proposed Constitutional amendments to make these the national standard. If a heavily Democratic state like New York or Massachusetts could show the effectiveness of an idea such as a wealth tax, it would strengthen the case for this nationally. Or, if the wealth tax turned out to be a mistake, the state would repeal it and the nation would never adopt it.
I predict that health care will explode as the #1 issue as soon as the double hit of Medicaid cuts and premium hikes take effect. But there's more to it even that soaring costs, which I've been learning about firsthand with some sick family members...Even for people with decent coverage, the entire system has become such an infuriatingly convoluted, bureaucratic, dehumanizing, nonsensical mess. Simple tasks like finding a primary care physician, getting a referral to a specialist, and filling a prescription are often byzantine nightmares. Followup care after major surgery is done by AI robocall. It's truly dystopian.
This all speaks to the need for a single payer system that would simplify and streamline and I believe it could be a winning issue, just as it was for Bernie.
Single provider is even better. I've gotten care in countries where for medical needs you go to a hospital, and they take care of everything from there. All referrals, labs, follow up, and best of all it costs a fraction of what we pay.
It is unfortunate that Donald Trump’s efforts on behalf of Israel are simply not an issue that is at the top of anybody’s list of his accomplishments. The Democrat party offers absolutely nothing on any topic except to criticize trump! Between now and the 2026 midterms, everybody will stake out a position that they think will work. So the 2026 midterms will truly give a picture of where the American people are at. It will also set the agenda for the balance of trump’s administration. Even if the Democrats take back the house and Senate trump will still control the executive branch and will of course have the veto pen to stop any crazy Democrat legislation because I do not believe that they will have enough of a majority to override any veto! A lot will also depend on about five upcoming Supreme Court decisions. In fact, it is these decisions that will be more important than any legislation.
Yes, inequality would be a strong stance, but the No Kings march seemed to be mostly affluent people unconcerned about anything but DJT.
Running candidates like Jay Jones in Virginia does not help.
The boomers created today's failed state policies. And now they protest to keep their creation alive. Just a bunch of old white people concerned only about themselves and keeping what they've got regardless of how it all turns out for future generations. Boomers are the existential threat to this country.
People I know who went mostly have no kids.
Health care is a winning issue, and one of the few issues I agree with the Democrats on. (As the libertarian John Cochrane put it, cross-subsidies are the original sin of healthcare). But even there, I wouldn't trust the current Democratic leadership to create a better healthcare system, even though the bar is shockingly low. It would be like the Green New Deal and turn into graft and six figure jobs to absorb the surplus of elite overproduction.
The Democrat's focus on inequality - as opposed to poverty - is simply morally wrong. The Democrats are like a rural peasant farming community in the developing world (Banfield etc.). As soon as one person starts to get ahead, the community feels threatened and pulls him back to the pack by demanding make-work jobs, "loans", and gifts. The Democrats should be celebrating success and the creation of wealth, but temper that with the realization that although capitalism creates winners, it also creates losers. If AI is going to wipe out a bunch of jobs, let's have programs to ease people through the transition to a new career. (And by the way, does anything reveal the myopia of Democratic central planning that "learn to code" was a thing right up until AI threatened to take away the coding jobs?).
"The Democrat's focus on inequality - as opposed to poverty - is simply morally wrong."
THANK YOU.
I'm going to toss a little 12 step philosophy into the convo. One of the saying's I like is "help is just the bright, shiny side of control".
Most people don't mind other people getting rich. I think deep down, most people admire them for doing so. You can't talk inequality (as it's currently branded) without moralizing against those who have gotten wealthy. There's also an implied aspect that their wealth will be diminished to provide equity. Deep down, I think most people feel a little squeamish about this.
It's been said ad nauseum, but people don't want equality of outcome, just equality of opportunity. They don't want help, they want empowerment.
Right now, with inflation still bubbling under the surface, there's a gaping maw that the Democrats should be able to fill. But to do so, they need a platform that has ZERO to do with Trump, and zero to do with Republicans.
Abundance says "you can do it, we're here to remove barriers". Equity says "you can't do it without us". I suppose abundance makes too much sense for the current Democratic party to get behind.
All that said, the Dems need to ratchet down the language into something that guy at the party with the Che Guevara shirt on would be embarrassed to say. Focus on helping each individual becoming their own financial center where they're generating their own wealth, not siphoning off that of others, even if they're really yuchy people.
A vision to deal with the impact of AI on the average person would be very compelling. Except agin, and I feel like a very broken record I really don’t think I can trust the party that was in executive power when globalization was issued in in the 90s which devastated rural towns to have a clue how to help anyone with a change such as AI. they are too engaged in their own thoughts of progressive values to be grounded in how to make practical change for something like AI.
We could eliminate half of wealth inequality in one generation if we could get the average family to put as much into Individual Retirement Accounts as they put into car payments, which is $750 per month. But, is that what they want? No, they do not want greater equality. What they really want is a higher standard of living even if it means going into debt.
Sen. Ruben Gallegos (D-AZ) said, "Every Latino man wants a big-ass truck." Not a big-ass bank account or a big-ass 401k. He wants a big-ass truck even if it comes with a big-ass car note. If you doubt it, look at 401k participation rates. Half of workers eligible to participate in 401k plans actually enroll (source: Bureau of Labor Statistics). For state and local government workers, it's 19%.
Sixty percent of American households are living paycheck-to-paycheck. If paid larger paychecks, they would live larger paycheck to larger paycheck. And there is no objective way to say their choices are morally wrong, just short-sighted. What is morally wrong is expecting wealthier people to make up for your own improvidence.
Living beyond one's means is not limited to low income, but it's a lot easier to recover if you are making 3K a week. The jobs those guys have that buy the big assed truck used to pay well enough for a nice car, vacation, pension, health care in retirement too, tuition for the kids and maybe even a tiny vacation place on a lake.
Ruben said last week, that the idea was if things got bad you could just work like hell and dig yourself out of any hole. Now people work like hell and are falling further and further behind. Ruben said people tell him they are scared they won't make it.
My father paid 4% payroll tax in the 1950's, counting both the employee and employer share. There was no Medicare, so no Medicare payroll tax. I and most American workers pay 12.4% on all of our earnings up to $176K, which for most people is all of it. The Medicare tax brings the rate up to 15.4%. The payroll tax is the biggest one most people pay and it is now nearly four times higher than it used to be.
My parents also paid a 2% sales tax back then. I pay 8.75% in the same jurisdiction. He paid a 3 cent per gallon federal gasoline tax. I pay 18.4 cents per gallon and that's only the federal tax. The state tax raises it to 38.4 cents. The highest in the nation is in California, where the total is 87cents per gallon.
The big increase over the decades has been in the regressive taxes. It is harder to dig your way out of a hole if the tax collectors take one-third of every shovelful.
May I submit a clarification? A 3-cent gasoline tax in 1955 would amount to a 36 cent gasoline tax in 2025 so maybe gasoline taxes haven't grown as much as they seem, when you adjust for inflation.
These polls are so skewed. How about asking "Do you believe some races should be discriminated against and unqualified people should be promoted in a quota system in order to achieve 'equity'"? Or how about: "Do you want the government to provide health care for all even though it may mean long wait times for routine services, you can't pick your doctor, and trillions will have to be cut from other programs (environment, education, defense)?"
Why not short wait times and choose your doctor? We still pay double what similar countries pay and for worse outcomes. We die more. What if change were better not worse?
Summary of this comment: Healthcare in the US can be affordable. I strongly suspect that insurance companies and hospitals have chosen to make it otherwise.
I live in California and we switched to Kaiser about 18 months ago. The difference was shocking: with our PPO, we'd have to wait months to get an appointment for routine care. Example: my daughter needed to see an ENT and I called in mid-May. They told us the soonest they could book her as a new patient was late September. Waits were almost as long if I didn't have an appointment with a doctor even if this was your regular physician.
We switched to Kaiser in June of last year. The first time I called, I needed to see a doctor about a potential new problem and they said, "We can see you at 2 pm today, or tomorrow afternoon or Friday morning."
They can do this because Kaiser doesn't schedule routine office visits more than 2 months in advance (at least, not at the facilities where I am). So slots don't fill up the way they do at Stanford, Sutter Health, or El Camino Medical Group. Kaiser also keeps a small number of office appointments open that I can't see as a patient. I have to get on the phone, describe why I need to go, and then get scheduled. This is why I was able to get an appointment so quickly. They also hold slots for important tests like scans.
Most importantly, they control costs. A medicine I take cost $200 per month before the switch (WITH insurance). Now it's $20 for a 3 month supply. And once you pay your deductible, you don't pay *at all, for anything.* Ours is $3,000 for the family annually. Oh, and our premiums are half of what they were before.
Kaiser has less expertise in more exotic things like rare diseases. They also don't cover more exotic stuff like laser surgery to remove eye floaters (as I learned recently, and was not surprised). This is part of how they keep costs down. I can live with that, because they're so good otherwise.
For 80-90% of medical needs, routine or otherwise, they're great. Their facilities are modern, their equipment is modern, the medical staff are as good as anywhere else, and I don't ever want to go back to our old plan.
If Kaiser has taught me anything, it's that a well-organized system can be cost-effective. We could do this with rare diseases and for systems outside Kaiser if we wanted to. Problem is, we don't. Or, the people running the medical care show don't or aren't up to the task.
Michael, your advice betrays the Democrat's core problem. You suggest focusing on healthcare and affordability because those are what poll well. But the party has no new ideas to address these issues. Doubling down on Obamacare subsidies only highlights that the promises of the Affordable Care Act were false, and promising to bring down costs and inflation just begs the question of why these things skyrocketed under Biden and Harris's policies?
We are all talking about single payer now except you, I suspect. The current system is even less defensible than it was in 2009. A lot of the issues brought up to defend the medical insurers then, and in 1993 won't work today, and the independent physicians were largely eliminated by Obamacare.
3x Trump voter here and I haven't voted for a Democrat since 1992. But even I have given up on the current system. It just sucks and the only feasible 'solution' is to turn it into a heavily regulated bureaucracy with the government as the single payer. There are various reasons why that would suck less. I'm hopeful that with that in place, buying extended coverage ala Medicare Advantage would be possible and more affordable.
To say that strategy has not worked is a massive understatement. For those who do polls, Trump is ahead of both Obama and Bush at this same point in their second terms; he has actually ticked up a point since the shutdown started; and there have been 80,000 net new R gains since August, with Rs gaining 30,000 and Ds losing 50,000. In New Mexico---just the latest---Rs gained 21,000 since last Nov., slashing the D lead there by one-third. Now, that's in a very blue state. I would argue that any time Trump is invoked in ANY bad way, it hurts Ds with the majority. Maybe not "some" of the base, but with the majority. But, I disagree that "health care" is a winning issue. A true fix won't be an improved O-care but a vast news reshaping that will provide catastrophic health care insurance, then focus on reducing actual costs everywhere else to where, as it was when I was young, you just pay your doc in cash. That's the goal, anyway.
Now we know that losing a political election can send millions of Democrats into the five stages of grief. The good news is fewer and fewer are suffering as many have moved through the stages or given up and left the Democrats party. The bad news is that the US lacks an effective party in opposition.
The five stages off grief.
1. Denial - Democrat seem to have completed this stage.
2. Anger - ‘No Kings’ rally
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance
The party has a long way to go. History shows it can take decades for a party to get back in power. The quick fix is latching onto a charismatic person. The hard way is to govern well what you already control to build prosperity, trust and credibility.
It is one thing for a party out of power to point out problems not being addressed by the one in power. Quite another to know what to do if your campaign works.
Healthcare costs are so high in the US because Americans are so generally unhealthy, and there is so much more that medicine can do nowadays than before, and we are uncomfortable telling people that that whiz bang therapy is not available to them, because they're not rich and their basic insurance doesn't cover it.
The 800 dollars a month we paid to BCBS didn't begin to cover the $750k they spent on my wife's (unsuccessful) cancer treatment.
You are correct about the general unhealthiness of Americans; however, America is not the only unhealthy Western country (though I admit we are the most unhealthy). The question is, why?
The healthiest countries in the world are in Asia and Northern Europe (with the exception, as always, of Switzerland).
https://ceoworld.biz/2025/06/17/ranked-the-healthiest-and-unhealthiest-countries-in-the-world-2025/
Is it American work culture? Well, Japan and Singapore are two of the healthiest countries in the world, yet they (along with Korea, also in the Top 10) work just as many hours as we do, if not more. Is it diet? Maybe. China and India, the two largest countries on Earth and rising economic and military powers, have notoriously poor diets and high rates of diabetes, heart disease and cardiovascular issues (i.e. diet/lifestyle diseases).
The average life span for men and women in those countries is about the same as it is in the U.S.
https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/life-expectancy/
Yet, the U.S. spends, on average, 2 to 3 times as much as any other country does on healthcare.
To me, the biggest issue with healthcare in America, and why I think you see similar outcomes in the U.S., India and China, is stress, specifically, the stress of lack of security and instability. People who feel like the walls are closing in and the floor is wobbly and ready to crack under their feet at any moment are always stressed out. Stress in turn causes lack of proper sleep, which causes more stress on the heart, not to mention anti-social/unhealthy activities (drug use, caffeine abuse, poor eating habits, lack of exercise, etc.). Add to this that Americans love our cars, and it is bad recipe.
What the people have learned, and the pandemic gave them a big boost in their understanding, is that Democrats tend to make more socioeconomic problems than they fix. I live in liberal land in a liberal college town and all these credentialed highly emotionally unregulated Q-Tips and partnering young passionate idealists lacking life-wisdom, heavily female, lack any trace of real problem-solving capability. There is a lack of pragmatism... lack of critical thinking that factor all criteria and factor long-term consequences. They chase their feelings to a spiral downward in sub-optimized outcomes. This has always been a problem with left-leaning people as this is how they are wired for some reason. They are the part of the population with the lowest emotional regulation capability. That is why they connect with young people because young people are full of hormones and don't have enough experience yet in life to know what is worth getting riled up about, and what is a distraction for them to be good spouses, parents and workers.
Why is it so much more a mess these days?
1. The raging success of the US economy combined with the domestic private sector strangulation due to de-industrialism, globalism (offshoring jobs and global competition) that has been exacerbated by massive immigration of low-wage workers... it has put these emotive, unaccountable, low-productive merit, credentialled academic types that tend to be Democrat, in a higher income and wealth class. And with the money comes the ability to buy political power. Class elites of the Gilded Age were industrialists. Class elites of today are over-educated, anti-industrialists. They are grifters, rent-seekers, looters and gamblers. They don't involve themselves in inventing, making, building, growing, fixing and selling any real products. That difference has shifted our political representation to a much higher percentage of people that are not qualified for leadership roles if we expect our leaders to lead us toward constant improvement and not constant decline from a long list of sub-optimized decisions.
2. The Democrat machine, having maximized its only real positive idea platform to tax and spend, has adopted a completely negative campaign strategy. It is one of negative branding, character assassination, and emotional terrorism. The leaders of the party, grifters that seek millions in their bank accounts by quid pro quo work and insider trading whispers, have taken this strategy to the extreme within the legacy media, Hollywood and tech... to constantly enflame anger, frustration, disgust and hate all directed at conservatives and Republicans... Trump is like cocaine to them... they are addicted to it and the strong emotions it feeds the beast. Democrats are so gaslit they cannot think critically.
3. Republicans are not yet unified in fighting this beast. They have been wusses worried about making females dislike them and thus not getting the female attention they crave almost as much as they crave more money in their bank accounts. The analogy is that they continued to open the door for the woman behind them while she screamed at them and attempted to scratch their eyes out... and then went home to work collectively in female rage to destroy men in general for oppressing them with all that door opening.
But what the beast and its handlers are really protesting here. They built up a machine over the last several decades... one fueled by all sorts of corrupt money pathways and dirty and dark partisan maneuvering... and the Trump Administration is dismantling that machine piece by piece. The Democrats can see it and feel it. They know that their success over the past few decades was only because of the machine. They have no ideas left in the tank because they have already spent the nation into near bankruptcy. There is no more tax and spend capacity left. And so, they can only rely on No Kings protests to get their media pals to create hyperbole content to try and shift more moderates to their emotive party.
They are throwing a tantrum of desperation that their party is over. It needs to be dismantled and reformed but they don't have any skill for building a new type of machine that would appeal to the voter. So they double down on their negative behavior with the broken belief that people will still hold the door open for them as they scream spittle and attempt to scratch eyes out.
Another very good posting. Agree about health care being a problem for the Rs, and will say more in a different comment. Right now, I want to talk about the polling data. Specifically: "Trump’s second-term approval rating has come down from its post-inauguration high."
I watch Real Clear Polling carefully. I used it last October to predict Trump's margin, three and a half months after having used the Bureau of Labor Statistics' unemployment data to call the election for Trump -- but not the margin. Some things to say now:
1. Every president's numbers come down from the Inauguration Day high. Trump's second-term RCP average is higher than the last two two-term presidents' averages at this point in their second terms.
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/approval/trump-obama-bush-second-term
2. I have doubts about Trump's average right now. I think the dispersion is too wide for the average to be valid. AP/NORC -24% v Insider Advantage +6%? Really? Come on. I know, I know: That's why you have an average, but I still think it's too wide.
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/approval/donald-trump/approval-rating
3. I started by saying that I called Trump's margin by using the RCP average. That's true, but I adjusted it to compensate for that average's errors in '16 and '20. Unfortunately, RCP doesn't publish the composition of the second-term polls on Bush Jr. and Obama, so I'm flying blind. If I do the statistics thing and omit the outliers (any result >10%), Trump is -1.7%.
Something calling itself the National Association of Independent Pollsters says Trump is +1.3%. NAIP is a coalition of three pollsters that have tended to be pro-Trump: Insider Advantage, Rasmussen, and Quantus Insights.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/docs/2025/IA_Final_Sept_PDF.pdf
I'm neither here nor there on them, but can't go with either that number or my own adjusted -1.7% because I don't know what numbers comprised the averages for Bush Jr. and Obama. My gut feel says -2%, but that's a guess inside of a fog bank.
BOTTOM LINE
I think Trump's numbers have been more or less stable since the inevitable post-inauguration dropoff. The average shows that too. My doubts are about the actual number as opposed to the trend. I think that, going forward, the condition of the economy will drive it more than anything else. And I fervently agree that these "No Kings" rallies are pointless.
Anyone recall the old Maxwell Smart series from the 1960s? Remember the Cone of Silence? If I were inside the Democratic Party's cone, I'd call them the "No Favors" rallies because they're doing the Ds no favors.
I remember seeing a piece last spring where the author dug into the crosstabs of a poll that had Trump tanking and pointed out that Harris voters outnumbered Trump voters nearly 2:1 in the sample. You’d think pollsters would ask a few questions about how people voted (or didn’t) in the last presidential/off year election, compare the responses to the known results, and use that to gauge how accurate their sample is.
I just called up the average again, and it has moved to -6.9%. In particular, I think YouGov is garbage. I could do the really deep dive on this stuff, but see no reason to go further than I already did.
Here's a suggestion. why has Obama care failed to insure all uninsured Americans? Wasn't that the promise? If the only way Obama care works, even for only part of the insured is govenrment subsides, what then is the future of Obamacare? Another uncontrollable entitlement program?
If "democracy" is in peril, then why are the systems built to address the anti Constitution actions of Trump working? Whether the left wants to admit it or not, the SCOTUS is the final word. And so far, the majority of the time, they side with Trump. That is how the system was built to function.
People didn't want the left's type of democracy. Get in power and do the same things and you won't last long. Fool me once...
You keep saying do the same the same thing just message better. That is not your answer. How about actually worrying about how to govern and not just gaining power to become the Trump version of liberals.
The fact is, the left couldn't give a rat's ass less about this country and the citizens. Until you listen to the masses and not your radical fringe, you'll never be anything more than just another bunch of losers dragging this country down to ruin. I expected so much more from you folks. You promised so much more. But you slide deeper and deeper into the power abyss everyday.
Everyday, conservative media, Fox mainly, who has more watchers than all the Dem media put together, spreads that word. And Soros leads you down the Yellow Brick to obscurity. SMH
SCOTUS isn’t siding with Trump so much as they are siding with the Executive. It’s worth remembering that these same Justices sided with Biden and his administration’s decision to not enforce our immigration laws.
Democrats would have more credibility if they found common cause with libertarians and argued for Congress to pull back the powers it has willfully ceded to the Executive since the New Deal. But then of course they wouldn’t be able to use Executive power as they see fit once back in the White House.
Point taken. I just love to troll the left with SCOTUS agrees with Trump.
I wish I could be more specific, but I remember seeing a poll last Spring which showed that a surprisingly large number of Americans understand the relationship between government spending and inflation. Look what the Democrats did during President Biden's four years in office: Trillions upon trillions of dollars spent on green energy projects and new infrastructure. These may or may not have been worthwhile projects. Some are very worthwhile. Some are just ways of transferring billions of taxpayer dollars to favored insider groups. Much of this spending fueled inflation. Then there is the question of the open border. It feels like the Democrats are in such a deep hole over these issues, that no amount of healthcare spending and income redistribution will get them back to the surface. We simply cannot afford another round of trillion dollar spending sprees or four more years of an open border. Suggestions about focusing on Healthcare spending and inequality seem like little more than distractions from what happened between 2021 and 2024. And that's too bad because Healthcare access isn't something which should be shoved aside. But I fear the Biden years have made that result inevitable.
On the economy the Democrats need to stop searching for the perfect poll tested message and focus on creating economies that work for everyone in the states where they have complete control. If you can do that then you will have no problems selling those policies nationally.
The Democrats are also going to have to choose between a European style safety net or a relatively open immigration policy, because you simply can’t have both. The money just isn’t there. You’ll also need to come clean with the public about the need for European style taxes on the middle and lower middle class to pay for it, because again “the rich” simply don’t have enough money to pay for all the social programs the populist left is asking for.
I like your idea, Norm, that the Democrats need to demonstrate the success of their policies in the states where they have a heavy majority, like California. Women's suffrage and direct election of Senators originally started because some of the states did them, then most of the states, until Congress finally proposed Constitutional amendments to make these the national standard. If a heavily Democratic state like New York or Massachusetts could show the effectiveness of an idea such as a wealth tax, it would strengthen the case for this nationally. Or, if the wealth tax turned out to be a mistake, the state would repeal it and the nation would never adopt it.
Thanks but I can’t take credit. The idea that the states are our “laboratories of democracy” is older than I am.
I got curious and went to look it up. Credit goes to Justice Brandeis in a 1932 dissenting opinion. At least according to Wikipedia.
Hello. Why don't you folks quit relying on polls and rely on what your readers say? Why?
I predict that health care will explode as the #1 issue as soon as the double hit of Medicaid cuts and premium hikes take effect. But there's more to it even that soaring costs, which I've been learning about firsthand with some sick family members...Even for people with decent coverage, the entire system has become such an infuriatingly convoluted, bureaucratic, dehumanizing, nonsensical mess. Simple tasks like finding a primary care physician, getting a referral to a specialist, and filling a prescription are often byzantine nightmares. Followup care after major surgery is done by AI robocall. It's truly dystopian.
This all speaks to the need for a single payer system that would simplify and streamline and I believe it could be a winning issue, just as it was for Bernie.
Single provider is even better. I've gotten care in countries where for medical needs you go to a hospital, and they take care of everything from there. All referrals, labs, follow up, and best of all it costs a fraction of what we pay.
It is unfortunate that Donald Trump’s efforts on behalf of Israel are simply not an issue that is at the top of anybody’s list of his accomplishments. The Democrat party offers absolutely nothing on any topic except to criticize trump! Between now and the 2026 midterms, everybody will stake out a position that they think will work. So the 2026 midterms will truly give a picture of where the American people are at. It will also set the agenda for the balance of trump’s administration. Even if the Democrats take back the house and Senate trump will still control the executive branch and will of course have the veto pen to stop any crazy Democrat legislation because I do not believe that they will have enough of a majority to override any veto! A lot will also depend on about five upcoming Supreme Court decisions. In fact, it is these decisions that will be more important than any legislation.