AP Photo – Kathy Willens
Listen To You Tell Me Texas Friday 12/16/16
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What if those who are predicting a disastrous Trump presidency – a veritable legion that includes very nearly every Democrat, nearly every Hollywood celebrity, nearly every member of the New York-Washington media and more than a few Republicans – are as completely wrong as they were with their predictions regarding his candidacy? What if Donald Trump actually continues to succeed?
What will happen?
Since it’s impossible to disprove a prediction, here is one worth considering: things start going well.
Businesses – particularly small businesses – confident for the first time that at the very minimum conditions won’t get any worse, poke their heads above the hedgerows and think about expanding again. Lower taxes, a repeal of Obamacare and a meaningful rollback of crushing business regulations all serve to re-oxygenate the muscle of American commerce. Revenues grow robustly for the first time in years.
Growing revenues fund raises and a hiring expansion. Workers come to be in greater demand putting those now idle back in the workforce. Household incomes at last begin to rise – something they haven’t done in more than a decade
Cash sitting idly on company balance sheets begins circulating through the economy again. Local independent banks get relief from the overbearing provisions of the Dodd-Frank banking law, allowing small business lending to pick up.
Buildings get built. Equipment gets replaced. New branches and new territories start being opened up.
Business valuations rebound, making it economically feasible to sell businesses to a new generation of owners. The resulting capital gains get plowed back into the economy rather than sitting locked up in a business that can neither expand nor sell out.
The quickening pulse of the American economy serves to stimulate the animal instincts of entrepreneurs. Parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends and venture firms more readily advance money to fund the dreams of a proven hard worker with a good idea.
In short, a whole lot of things that have always happened in the American economy – that haven’t been happening all that much lately – start happening again.
The resulting economic growth creates taxable activity that more than offsets any effect of rate cuts – creating tax revenues that reduce federal deficits.
That all happens at home.
Around the world, imagine bad actors in China, Russia and the Middle East starting again to think twice before making mischief – something they’ve gotten out of the habit of doing. Imagine our allies again trusting us and our foes again fearing us. Picture America resuming its leadership role in the defense of peace.
There is no guarantee that any of these things will happen. There is no guarantee that President Donald Trump will succeed in a job for which he has none of the traditional training.
A disastrous presidency remains a possibility.
But so, too, does a hugely successful one – despite what the sore losers on the left are now saying.
All to say that those making predictions of a failed Trump presidency would do well to remember their predictions about his “doomed” candidacy.
There is no doubt in my mind that TRUMP WILL succeed and in a BIG way.
What the left fears more than anything is his succeess. Because it will show how they have FAILED in so many ways for so many YEARS!!! The people will KNOW then that we have been lead down the garden path to nothing more than a patch of weeds!!!
“Very nearly every Democrat?”
WHO has wished for our President Elect what your Rush Limbaugh hoped for the new president in 2008?
Admittedly, some of Trump’s appointments so far are curious:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/13/opinion/rick-perry-is-the-wrong-choice-for-energy-secretary.html?_r=0
And Trump’s nonchalance about National Security briefings has many Republicans nervous:
https://t.co/BKvsBzo3os
But WHO comprises the “veritable legion” you cite?
The veritable legion that is trying to delegitimize the Trump victory by any means possible. It was the Russians. It was James Comey. Trump’s election isn’t legitimate because Clinton won the popular vote. The electors should vote their conscious in the Electoral College instead of voting as they are pledged. Etc., etc., etc.
As to Trump’s “curious” pick as detailed in the New York Times, if the New York Times tells me that something is wrong, I generally rest assured that things are on the right track.
And have you forgotten the revelation from a couple of years ago that Obama was missing more Daily Presidential Briefings than he was attending?
Rick Perry USED TO seem proud; but apparently not too proud to join Mitt Romney, Carly Fiorina, and other former Trump-trashers in the suck-up parade at The Tower. “Oops.”
Despite your previous criticism of the Bushes, we have yet to spot them on Lobbycam…although it’s tough to UN-see the Billy Bush tape.
Did you deign to READ the New York Times piece, or dismiss it when you spotted the link?
READ it. It could be used in an English class as an example of the word non sequitur.
And I didn’t use the word “wish.” The word was “predict.” The prediction of Trump’s failure is being made on a near hourly basis.
Not “wish” or “predict;” actually Limbaugh said, of Obama, “I hope he fails.”
A sentiment that I shared. His “success” with Obamacare is killing small businesses like mine.
https://thinkprogress.org/heres-how-many-people-could-die-every-year-if-obamacare-is-repealed-ae4bf3e100a2#.69ncyh9ob
Some academic or group of academics in the left-leaning Urban Institute publishes a number that is by any objective standard unknowable and we are to take it as Gospel? Really?
By what method did these people come up with 27,000 or 36,000? How is it that they have the capacity to see so clearly into the future?
Where is their evidence? The provisions of Obamacare took effect in 2014. Do these think-tankers have data to show that 27,000 to 36,000 fewer people are now dead thanks to the Affordable Care Act?
Whenever a liberal program is threatened by actual adult supervision the cry goes up that thousands will become ill, die, starve, etc., etc. It never happens.
An example is the Welfare Reform Act of 1996. Even many libs now concede that it worked and try to ascribe authorship of it to Bill Clinton — even though he deserves credit only for signing it (and that under duress). Yet prior to its passage, libs cried that thousands of welfare recipients would wind up homeless and starving — something that never came to pass.
The best anti-poverty program (and the least burdensome way to be insured against sickness and accident) is a good job. Good jobs are born of strong economic growth which is born of strong business confidence.
Since 2011. Obamacare has been where business confidence has gone to die. Its demise will be a good thing — most particularly those on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder looking for a way up.
A sentiment you shared? Isn’t the point of your commentary that we should ALL wish the new president well?
No, that is not the point of the piece. The point of the piece is that Donald Trump stands a very good chance of being a very good president despite the predictions of those who are so angry that he won.
I am certainly wishing him well in that regard but I am under no illusion that we are ALL wishing him well. Those who are adamantly and vehemently opposed to the things that he promised as a candidate are not hoping that he will succeed in getting them done. That’s fair enough. I hoped from day one of the Obama presidency that he would not “succeed” in “fundamentally transforming” America.
It’s called the OPPOSITION party for a reason.
I was completely against trump, I don’t like the man and was given no choice, to vote for him or face something even MORE unbearable. That said I think so far he’s breaking less than even in my estimations.
While I strongly applaud his nominating Sessions and Mattis, I find it bitterly amusing that some of his other nominees are from his campaign booger man, the dreaded Goldman Sachs, you know the one he accused Ted Cruz and his wife of being stooges for? And how about his nominee Mnuchin, former employee of George Soros, Elaine Chao, wife of the biggest RINO in the Senate? And lets not forget Rex Tillerson, supporter of the TPP, whose strong influence as a BSA head opened the Boy Scouts to openly practicing homosexuals.
But none of this surprises me, because the man said months back in Las Vegas that he’d have to be “a little bit establishment”. Only IMHO he’s gone far beyond a little bit and hasn’t drained the swamp but is just restocking it.
Excellent piece Mr. Gleiser.
The United States of America hasn’t had such renewed hope, promise, and potential going into a New Year and a new Presidential administration, since Ronald Reagan on January 20, 1981.
Seems to me that the curtain has been drawn on the once great Democrat party; sadly, it has devolved by having a very extreme leftist leadership which opposes patriotism, lawful conduct, religion, and the constitution. These desperate attempts to overturn the election have revealed to the American people how truly corrupt this party has become; this post-election behavior reminds us of Venezuela or other banana republics that simply arrest or “neutralize” their political opponents. Shame on the leaders of the Democrat party who are unwilling to accept the results of the election, and too willing to condone attempts to coerce the electoral college, as well as the other shady tactics to subvert the will of the American people. I hope that moderate Democrats will remember how their leaders have reacted to this last election, and inflict further repudiation in the next one. For those who are somewhat concerned about some of Trump’s cabinet selections, let me offer just a small bit of consolation with 3 important words: SUPREME COURT JUSTICE(S)!
There are many important things Donald Trump can help make happen. Being a businessman myself, I want to see what a man with business experience can accomplish. We know what a community organizer can do and same for political hacks/crooks like the Clintons. I hope and for now trust that a President Trump will not disappoint us. One thing I don’t want to see Trump do is govern by fiat as did Obama. Trump should lead within the framework of his constitutional powers. Much of what the nation needs must come from congressional action. Trump should call on congress to deliver and, assuming citizens agree with the president’s call, citizens will then need to do their important part by putting their congressional reps feet to the fire. President Trump will need all the public backup he can get if he is to accomplish our many important goals.