Will 2026 finally be the year when a critical mass of Americans wakes up and realizes that Republicans always screw up the economy?

Donald Trump inherited an economy from Joe Biden that was perhaps not firing on all cylinders but was in pretty good shape all the same.

For the third straight time, a Democratic president handed a Republican president an economy that was at the least pretty good, and at most (Bill Clinton) really humming along very nicely. And, for the third straight time, the Republican has made things worse. Which also means that Democratic presidents have to clean up messes left by their GOP predecessors.

  • Furbag@pawb.social
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    2 months ago

    I’ve been waiting 20+ years for Republicans to wake up. They will never wake up. So many uncrossable lines have been crossed and yet they still maintain their momentum and people fall over themselves to vote for them in elections.

    The problem is twofold:

    1. Most people are chronically unaware or ignorant of who represents them. Even terminally online political junkies often don’t do any research into the candidates they vote for, and they don’t follow up on whether or not their campaign promises were fulfilled. They lock in and vote R all the way down the ballot. To be completely fair™ and balanced™ - Democrats are also guilty of this and will happily vote for the D all the way down the ballot which is how we end up with progressive candidates running 3rd party in primaries losing to DINO incumbents.

    2. There is too much disconnect between which parties in government are responsible for which policies. Many people believe the president has far more power than they actually do. In reality, outside of executive orders and appointing SCOTUS judges, the largest political impact a president has is to be a veto on legs. Congress are the ones who truly hold the power, but because you are represented by one U.S. house representative for your district and two senators for your state, it’s easy for people to think that their vote for those seats, win or lose, has little impact in shaping national policy. But even when their party has a majority (albeit slim), Republicans rarely draft any kind of legislation that is aimed to help their constituents or fulfill their campaign promises. People never check their reps voting records to see that they barely show up for their jobs, and that when they do, it’s usually to cast a deciding vote against something that would help their constituents tremendously if passed. It all circles back around to people not bothering to do research or follow up with their votes in any way.

    Voting to a lot of people is a team sport, and if their team is winning then all is right with the world. The bad things are happening because the others caused it, or are preventing it from being fixed. It can never be because they made a bad decision and voted in someone terrible into office. It’s always someone else’s fault. If good things are happening, it’s because they made the right decision all along and they are succeeding in spite of opposition - no need to even bother checking if the guy who represents you voted in favor of the good thing or not!

  • jtrek@startrek.website
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    2 months ago

    They won’t.

    Many of them are stupid. Many are poorly informed.

    But many of them are operating with stupid axioms. They would rather suffer and die personally if it meant those people got it worse.

    If you offered free health care, guns, and hamburgers to everyone but it meant that black people got it too, a lot of Americans would say no

    The Confederacy should have been burned to the ground, its leaders and supporters hanged and their bodies left to rot in the sun.

    • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.cafe
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      2 months ago

      They are easily manipulated by propaganda, and Republicans have weaponized that for years, leading to where we are today. They’ve used that propaganda superiority to define and control the messaging for decades, all of it negative and self-serving.

      So the Dems should do the same thing, but with POSITIVE propaganda, and pound them relentlessly with new messaging, accompanied with positive reinforcement, and take control of the definitions and messaging.

  • WesternInfidels@feddit.online
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    2 months ago

    You know, it’s interesting, I’ve been now around long – you know, I think of myself as a young guy, but I’m not so young anymore. And I’ve been around for a long time. And it just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans … We’ve had some pretty bad disasters under the Republicans. – DJT 21 March 2004

  • A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Republicans dont care about the economy, they care about their wallets. They will keep voting for any red tie that makes them pay one penny fewer in April and call anyone who disagrees foolish.

    I can’t stand these people and im fuckin drowning in them

    • Gigasser@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      What will likely happen is that when we finally get a Democrat in next election, all the bad shit Trump caused will just be blamed on the Democrats who just got into office.

      • GreyEyedGhost@piefed.ca
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        2 months ago

        Literally happened when Trump arranged for the military to pull out of Iraq…during the next president’s term. I don’t remember if it happened after he lost the election or not, but Biden got blamed for how the pullout with no time to prepare went, anyway…

        • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz
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          2 months ago

          That was Afghanistan, but that’s exactly what happened. If I remember correctly trump committed to the pullout after the election. Literally causing incalculable suffering just to spite his opponent

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    “When will Americans conservatives…”

    More than half the country has already figured this out.

    Also, it isn’t about the economy. If it were about the economy, the right would be losing their shit over the wild spending, the exploding deficit, massive spending on ICE and wasteful detention centers, stupid wars driving up energy costs and anything tangential to that, job losses, on and on and on…

    It’s not about the economy. It’s about fascism, racism, nationalism, homophobia, misogyny, fake christianity, and all of the rest of the hotbutton issues the Right have effectively captured and turned into an ideology. As long as they have those things delivered to them by the truckload, everything else gets a pass.

  • UltraMagnus0001@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Just read an article that says fox news has about 3x more viewership than CNN or NBC and the article was stating that CNN was up 11%.

  • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Conservatism heavily relies on lifestyle marketing. You’re not voting for promises, but for a lifestyle.

      • Thebeardedsinglemalt@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Their mantra is FREEDOM, despite wanting to do nothing but take away everyone else’s.

        But the freedom they’re talking about is Freedom To…not Freedom From…

        As in freedom to be an unrepentant racist, homophobic , transphobic asshole.

        Meanwhile the otherside is losing their freedom from hate, torment, persecution…

  • Thebeardedsinglemalt@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Not saying it was all Clinton, but Bush inherited a great economy, which he nuked by deregulating Wall Street.

    Obama inherited that, did all the best to right the ship.

    The orange kid-fucker tried taking credit for the state of the economy within months, and got laughed at. his shitty policies and robbing the nation let the economy slip but his complete bumblefuck of COVID lead to another crash

    Biden inherited that, did whatever he could but the reds lead by that ancient fuck mitch outright said they would block any and all meaningful legislation just to make him look bad.

    orange rapist somehow sleezed his way back in and is now on a blatant power grab, openly embezzling money, and the economy is 1 bad day away from a total collapse…which I am almost expecting.

    Why don’t right leaning people see this? Because anyone over 40 joyously watches focks nooz, oann and all those other blatant propaganda outlets while the rest listen to blowrogan and other right-winger propaganda podcasts (usually dark-funded by Russia, Israel, etc).

    • Pacattack57@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Bush had a lot of other major issues that affected the economy. Mainly being a puppet for his father and the other cronies obsessed with oil in the Middle East. As usual Americas obsession with the Middle East is both hindering and actively destroying us.

  • Iusedtobeanalien@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Biden had the post COVID and global inflation crises to deal with, every nation suffered the same, some more than others, the US less than most. He didn’t do too bad.

    Trump doesn’t give a rats ass about the economy, his entire purpose was to enrich himself and his friends.

    • 7101334@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Biden (and now Trump) also had that pesky little commitment to giving billions of dollars to a genocidal apartheid ethnostate with free healthcare.

      • Iusedtobeanalien@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Israel controls America’s politicians because the supreme court enabled systemic political corruption by foreign states

        That really needs to be repealed

        Supreme court decisions that harm national security should be reviewed by the military and a special politically balanced court, the system places too much power in the hands of too few individuals. Lifelong jobs for politically appointed justices are you nuts. It’s a platform for tyranny.

        • 7101334@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          Israel controls America’s politicians because they are either quietly-corrupt feckless liberals or openly-corrupt fascists. Sure, fuck the Supreme Court too 100%, but you shouldn’t absolve people for the blame of their own actions / decisions. The politicians still choose (mostly) to take the money.

          Otherwise I agree yeah.

  • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I think even if this was on billboards and schools started to teach this basic fact, it would take decades for it to finally sink in.

    I cannot tell you how many “non political” people tend to believe it, too. I could see dumbass cult members parroting nonsense talking points about how magical Republicans are on the economy, but the fact that people that barely pay attention believe it is just exhausting.

    Far too many idiots think: “the government should be run like a business, and Republicans bend over the hardest for business, therefore we should put a Republican in as a President-as-CEO, preferably someone also from the world of business”.

    It’s all so very fucking stupid, starting with the very premise…

    • brygphilomena@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 months ago

      Republicucks always said they were fiscally conservative. It’s always been what they touted as a defining characteristic when you took idealogy tests.

      Turns out, that was all lip service. At least for the last few decades.

      • HulkSmashBurgers@reddthat.com
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        1 month ago

        That’s just the double speak they use to justify not spending money on stuff they don’t like (social programs). They gladly spend money on defense (welfare for the wealthy).

      • JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca
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        2 months ago

        Oh conservatives have always loved to spend money, just on things like weapons for “defense” and not like, people.

    • spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.worksOP
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      2 months ago

      In the presence of continued propaganda from the GQP and the duplicity of the Fourth Estate supporting and distributing that propaganda I don’t think it will ever sink in.

      Oligarch owned mainstream news providers have become Republican disinformation tools - slightly veiled versions of Fox News held to no standard at all. Facts have little chance against widespread lies repeated constantly almost everywhere.

      • zd9@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        The liberal media helped fascism grow in the 1920s and 1930s in America. They also did the same the second time in the mid 2010s to now.

        edit: seems quite a few don’t like to acknowledge reality

        • FiniteBanjo@feddit.online
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          2 months ago

          There have been less than 48 DNC senators for over 13 years now, the majority of the 2010s to now, so I’m interpreting this as you somehow thinking the GOP are liberals…?

            • FiniteBanjo@feddit.online
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              2 months ago

              Ooooh, okay, I get it, you’re saying the liberal media somehow enabled fascism while not being fascists themselves?

              • zd9@lemmy.world
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                2 months ago

                Take a look at the Behind the Bastards link I shared in another comment in this chain. You too can learn all about it.

                • FiniteBanjo@feddit.online
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                  2 months ago

                  Nah you don’t have enough credit in my book for me to click your links. I accept your resignation, sucks to suck.