Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Martymark]

Are Trump's polling numbers flying the highest they've ever been because there's finally a plague on America worse than him?

[Acidbaron]

So according to the daily show, donny dumbo is refusing to properly help NYC because the govenor and the people are not nice to him.

Guess new york is not his voting base, so perhaps this is why the civilized parts of the US are not being taken serious. Guess some new yorkers are regretting voting for a manchild right now. Can a president be held accountable for neglect? Guess not.

[Milchshake]

By the time this goes to court, the courts will be under lockdown to prevent further infection.

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Creating division among democrats is good for what exactly?

Other than being allowed to throw childish tantrums that people don't admire your candidate as much and becoming part of another cult like sheep mentality. Four years of that on the republican side wasn't enough for you?

Then why has Bernie shifted gears and amplified the divisiveness of his campaign?

I've had enough of Trump. But I think Bernie enjoys knee-capping Democrats, it helps his anti-establishment brand.

Lucky him, three houses to self-isolate too.

[alexw]

Are Trump's polling numbers flying the highest they've ever been because there's finally a plague on America worse than him?

He has had a very small (4%) approval rating bump due to the rally around the leader effect, something that is always seen in times of crisis, at least initially.

What's notable though is just how small it is, which I can only presume is because of how disasterously he is handling the crisis. By contrast Bush went from 50% approval to 90% after 9/11.

That's the upside. The downside is when he is seen to have publicly failed to contain/solve the crisis, which is coming, which is when his approval ratings will tumble.

That happened to Bush over the Iraq war and 9/11, its going to happen to Trump once the mass deaths directly attributal to his incomptence start racking up.

[Breccia]

What's notable though is just how small it is

(snicker)

On topic: more sanctions on Iran. Almost certainly rocket-attack "headache" related.

Sanctions for attacking US forces is valid, although Iran almost certainly attacked because Trump unilaterally ended the Iran Nuclear Deal, to which they were complying. So there's plenty of blame for both leaders acting like children. My concern is the possibility for escalation.

[Edge-]

Is he implying all the people not agreeing with him are imaginary?

Probably.

But it's also the same argument Republicans have made to dismiss "libs" for years. Republicans being "Real Americans" in comparison to libs who are....uh...not, I guess.

[Lenonis]

Sure, when this is over, it is fair game. Trump is just so easy to manipulate, and so petty, that if he starts taking blame for this he is going to steer this car straight off a cliff.

Well...sure. But Trump is not going to get advice from MMOC, or any left source. So the left blaming him for this is not going to pierce his bubble.

[Spectral]

I'm not even going to post the You’ve got to be realistic, and you’ve got to understand that you don’t make the timeline, the virus makes the timeline

Everyone here knows who that is.

I love Tony Fauci and I've referred to him prior to this as an American hero (but I certainly am biased in favor of NIH immunologists), but this sort of shorthand just isn't correct. When considering regulatory and fiscal policies, you very much do choose the timelines. Those timelines need to be fit with the best available medical science and epidemiology, but determining acceptable economic costs relative to medical costs and how that should impact timelines is exactly what regulatory bodies are in the business of doing. Organizations like the FDA and EPA routinely put prices on lives, put prices on quality years of life, then use that to inform whether a regulatory burden is sensible or not.

The correct framing isn't that the virus determines the timeline, it's that you need to fit your timelines based on best practices related to mitigation of both fiscal and medical damage.

[Smitzelplix]

It really wasn't targeted at anybody. Just a general caution. I do get the concept, I am just concerned about doing it right now, because it is going to goad him to do something very stupid that is the opposite of what we need.

The important metric that needs to be controlled right now is how many lives are lost. We need to keep that number as low as possible. If we start hammering Trump on the economy, he is going to focus on that instead, because he is fundamentally a soulless individual who is going to focus on whatever is best for his political future. Trump already believes the economy is more important than lives, lets not encourage that by slamming him for unemployment numbers.

We know those numbers were going to be bad, we know why, and we just did the right thing by passing a bill to take care of those people as best we can.

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Sure, when this is over, it is fair game. Trump is just so easy to manipulate, and so petty, that if he starts taking blame for this he is going to steer this car straight off a cliff.

Like the cliff called Easter?

[Breccia]

Two things from NBC News.

One, Powell went on live TV and flat-out said this could be recession territory.

We may well be in a recession. But I would point to the difference between this and a normal recession. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with our economy. Quite the contrary. We are starting from a very strong position.

Hmm. I wonder how much stronger it would have been if we had the promised 3% GDP growth? Or if manufacturing wasn't contracting? Or if we weren't bailing out farmers because they were going bankrupt at record levels? I am not the expert, but I do disagree from "very strong" coming from someone who lowered rates to zero.

Two, when you read the article Coronavirus challenges states that rejected Medicaid expansion, leaves uninsured with few options, I want you to hold back on the "wow, you really shot yourself in the foot" comments. Instead, I want you to remember that Trump's ACA challenge is in the courts right now, and he wants to make that shit nationwide.

[Flarelaine]

Then why has Bernie shifted gears and amplified the divisiveness of his campaign?

I've had enough of Trump. But I think Bernie enjoys knee-capping Democrats, it helps his anti-establishment brand.

Lucky him, three houses to self-isolate too.

Just as a note, this puts Bernie below the Senate average, for both number of properties owned and their net worth.

Obama, Clinton and Biden are all living in some $10 to 15 million dollar waterfront mansions, while Bernie is living in a $500k house near a lake.

Always helps when you put these things in perspective. You can click their names to see the pictures.

We have another thread for this.

[Thepersona]

That is one interpretation, and it would be very good news if true, because it dramatically limits the potential damage this could cause. If the lethality rate is really around 0.5% it puts the upper limits of deaths in the US at ~1 million. If Italy is the accurate predictor of the upper limit, the maximum death rate is closer to 35 million. It also means we are closer to the peak then the data currently suggests.

However I certainly wouldn't count on that interpretation. The hypothesis partially explains what we are seeing, but not completely. If that was actually happening, we should see severe cases popping up almost randomly everywhere, with no clear traceability of infections (Because the disease could have routed through a dozen non-symptomatic carriers between each serious case). But this isn't really the case, as severe cases seem to be mostly clustered, and with clearly identifiable vectors for when they got infected.

So I suspect the truth is somewhere in the middle. The total number of us cases is probably 2-4 times more then the current test positives, but probably not hundreds of times greater. The expected mortality rate is probably higher then 0.5%, but a lot lower then 10%. Either way, due to the way we are collecting data, we really can't be sure, and it certainly isn't worth risking billions of lives to find out. Because if it really is 0.5%, with already widespread infections, then reopening the economy actually makes a lot of sense, because we are pretty close to the peak already (We still wouldn't see the peak for several weeks, once the people that are currently infected start showing signs). But I don't think that is really true.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/24/ital...ial-tally.html

Italy may have an absurdly high mortality rate because 600k+ people are infected and the vast majority is asymtomatic or show very mild symptoms.

[Zan15]

That is one poll. There have been like 3 since then released which showed him with a increase in approval of his handling of the crisis. Most recently a Gallop Poll.

sorry you mean

"that is just one bad poll we are going to ignore...….."

Come on be realistic and honest you listed a SINGLE poll when his approval rating shot up before there was even a 2nd or 3rd. You didn't wait for #2 and #3

[noremorze]

hahaha and trump's approval rating is now the highest I've seen. The whole corona thing is blowing up fast, he doesn't have a clue what he's doing and yet he's doing an increasingly good job according to some. I'm flabbergasted.

[Deadite]

hahaha and trump's approval rating is now the highest I've seen. The whole corona thing is blowing up fast, he doesn't have a clue what he's doing and yet he's doing an increasingly good job according to some. I'm flabbergasted.

That is mental. Is he doing some shit that is not being reported on out side the US or something?

[alexw]

hahaha and trump's approval rating is now the highest I've seen. The whole corona thing is blowing up fast, he doesn't have a clue what he's doing and yet he's doing an increasingly good job according to some. I'm flabbergasted.

Rally around the leader effect. Go check out the approval rating for Bush after 9/11. The surprising thing isn't that Trump's approval rating has risen but that the rise has been so tiny. If he was anywhere close to being half-way competent he'd be up +20 points rather than have the small rise he is seeing.

It's going to turn to shit for him though once we start getting thousands of casualties per day, which we'll be seeing in less than 2 weeks.

[Bdatik]

That is mental. Is he doing some shit that is not being reported on out side the US or something?

No, but he's only received like a 3 point bump and is still within his normal approval rating.

[noremorze]

Rally around the leader effect. Go check out the approval rating for Bush after 9/11. The surprising thing isn't that Trump's approval rating has risen but that the rise has been so tiny. If he was anywhere close to being half-way competent he'd be up +20 points rather than have the small rise he is seeing.

It's going to turn to shit for him though once we start getting thousands of casualties per day, which we'll be seeing in less than 2 weeks.

I guess as an outsider even a tiny rise is just weird to see, given how he has been handling it so far. I would have expected it to go down. Thanks for clarifying.

[Thekri]

That is mental. Is he doing some shit that is not being reported on out side the US or something?

No. It is just basic human nature. When people are scared and in crisis, they tend to not question their leadership very much. Because nobody really knows what the right thing to do is, they are happy to follow whoever seems pretty confident about their ideas.

That said, this is an extremely small boost to ratings compared to literally every other crisis America has been in. The definition of these phenomena in political polling is called "The Rally 'round the flag effect". It can be absolutely massive, after 9/11 it carried George Bush from 51% all the way to 90% approval.

In comparison, despite the scale of the crisis, Trump's is tiny, and it has barely moved the needle on his approval. While it moved to the top end of the range of his approval ratings, it hasn't moved above it. In other words, if you hated Trump before, you probably still hate him. If you loved him before, you still love him. This isn't suprising, and a clear mark of a President that has been so divisive that he has alienated half of America so badly that he cannot possibly lead them in any crisis.

[noremorze]

No. It is just basic human nature. When people are scared and in crisis, they tend to not question their leadership very much. Because nobody really knows what the right thing to do is, they are happy to follow whoever seems pretty confident about their ideas.

That said, this is an extremely small boost to ratings compared to literally every other crisis America has been in. The definition of these phenomena in political polling is called "The Rally 'round the flag effect". It can be absolutely massive, after 9/11 it carried George Bush from 51% all the way to 90% approval.

In comparison, despite the scale of the crisis, Trump's is tiny, and it has barely moved the needle on his approval. While it moved to the top end of the range of his approval ratings, it hasn't moved above it. In other words, if you hated Trump before, you probably still hate him. If you loved him before, you still love him. This isn't suprising, and a clear mark of a President that has been so divisive that he has alienated half of America so badly that he cannot possibly lead them in any crisis.

Thanks for clarifying and putting it in perspective aswell, appreciated.