The approach of the midterm elections can now be measured in hours, and television, if you still watch standard TV, is filled with attack ads telling you just how terrible the other side is. It seems like an exercise in futility as our current acrimonious political divide leaves most voters quite sure of which side they’re already on. This means these commercials, and rallies, and any other form of campaigning, is designed for Independents, Undecided Voters, and whatever registered voters there are that are going through a crisis of faith with their stated Party. How many people does this make? Hard to say, but politicians seem to think that there’s still enough votes to grab that aren’t yet set in stone to make an important difference. So what do you run with to convince people? For Democrats, it seems to be a referendum against Trump and the quickly approaching death of human decency. This sounds biased I know, but how else do you describe an administration that has: Tripled down on banning people from distinctly Muslim countries, separated children from parents who are just trying to find asylum at our southern borders, forced in a Supreme Court Justice who is clearly biased and has provably lied under oath, and now has vilified a group of families trudging through South America to apply for asylum from dangerous gang violence as invaders that need to be defended against by a three to one ratio of our militia? For Republicans, the motivator as always is fear. Fear of Muslims, Latinos, Transgender people… whoever they can find to touch the hot buttons of racist America. Oh, and taxes. It seems like every election, Republicans raise their skirts at the horrible taxes those nasty Democrats are going to impose on you. Of course, Democrats are really only interested in taxing people who can afford it, and providing relief for people who can’t, the exact opposite of the Republican approach to taxes. However, there’s one thing Republicans at one point thought would work in their favor: The Booming Economy. Ten weeks and at least a dozen unbelievable stories ago, Republicans wanted this to be the main message for midterms. Look at the numbers. Unemployment’s way down, GDP numbers are up, the stock market’s breaking records! All of this may be true, but with a caveat for any positive thing they can mention. Unless you’re a CEO or have an already great financial portfolio, chances are things aren’t booming for you.
Perhaps the best known “yeah, but…” applies to the Unemployment rate. Republicans are over the moon at how low it is, the lowest in nearly fifty years, and that’s a wonderful thing. We’re all Americans and nobody is wishing for unemployment to skyrocket just to prove a point. However, most people already know or are choosing to ignore the fact that the rate drop started in 2009, after yet another Republican created Recession. Unemployment’s been dropping ever since and by the end of 2016 was down to 4.7%. So Trump is telling us to bank our future based on Republicans dropping Unemployment a whopping 1% in two years. Yes, credit should be given for not only keeping it lower but driving it even further down, but Trump likes to make it sound like it was all him, when at best all he can claim is that he didn’t fuck things up, in this case. If Trump’s message is Republicans have done a great job with unemployment and a vote for Democrats would take us in the opposite direction, well, don’t buy that. A study of the numbers in a longer context than last January tells a different story.
Let’s look at GDP growth. Trump couldn’t wait to announce the numbers when the second quarter reached 4.1% In fact, he broke tradition (again) by talking about the numbers before they were released. It’s a great number, and again, there’s no wish here for the U.S. to fail just to make Trump look bad, it’s simply that the GOP has a history of celebrating all the good numbers without accounting for things like details or context. Trump and son couldn’t wait to brag on Twitter that this quarter’s numbers were higher than anything Obama accomplished. Just one problem… That’s not true. At all. Obama hit 4.6% in late 2011, 5.1% in the 2nd quarter of 2014, and 4.9% in the 3rd quarter of 2014, all without announcing it with a big “you’re welcome”. Trump’s claim that he has done better with growth in the first two years than Obama ever did is, like most of what he says, pure horseshit. Trump also ignores any factors that might take away from his victory laps. GDP is a projection. Any yields that come from it are based on continued performance. If the economy took a major tumble sometime soon, as many economists are predicting it will, some of the ramifications of that 4.1% will not come to pass. There’s also “real” GDP, which accounts for inflation and measures over a given year and not just a quarter. The “real” GDP for the year ending in quarter 2 of 2018 was 2.8%, and yes, that means Obama’s numbers are smaller as well. Economists will tell you that there are other factors involved. Trump’s trade wars have yet to be reflected in GDP numbers, although quarter 3 is down to 3.5%, still not bad by most accounts, but certainly not the trend Trump was predicting. One factor that might explain the high quarter 2 number is farmers and companies pushing out as much product as they could before the trade war went into effect. This would inflate GDP briefly due primarily to pure panic, and explains the drop in the next quarter. The big question is will the GDP continue a downward trend? With the stock market taking a dive in recent weeks, and large companies confirming that they’re keeping most of the tax cuts for themselves and not driving up workers wages significantly, it seems likely.
But these are all statistics, and statistics are boring. How is your life affected? If things are going remarkably well for you, then perhaps disregard, but there are things that affect the average American worth looking at, in addition to official numbers like GDP. For example gas prices. At the end of 2016, gas was the lowest it’s been since 2004. The national average was $2.14. By the end of 2017, it was at $2.52. Gas took another jump above that just a couple months ago, although it’s starting to level back down. How long will that last? Hard to say. While the U.S. has become the largest crude oil supplier in the world, we don’t seem to be seeing the benefits of that at the pump. It doesn’t help that Trump has had a hard-on to get out of Obama’s Iran nuclear deal for years. Now that he has pulled out of it, and is imposing sanctions on Iran, supply fears have helped keep prices higher. The bottom line is it now costs more to fill up your car than it did at the end of 2015. Pretty hard to pin that one on Obama, or Hilary Clinton.
It was actually Newt Gingrich who made an interesting point about statistics vs. feelings, although he made it after being backed into a corner. He had been asked by CNN’s Alisyn Camerota how he could stand by Donald Trump’s statement that crime was worse than ever. First, he argued that crime was up in select cities, but met a firewall of facts. FBI statistics showed that violent crime was down overall across the country, and had been trending down for 25 years. Gingrich’s answer: that’s not how people feel. Camerota was of course dismissive about this argument. The facts were the facts. Gingrich pointed out that as a politician, he serves the people and if the people don’t feel safe, it doesn’t matter what the statistics are. It’s a valid point. Yes, in this case the former Speaker of the House was defending a political neophyte who was bald-facedly lying to scare voters, but there’s truth to his pretext. There’s no excuse for outright lying about statistics, but there are cases where statistics don’t matter as much. We’re in a robust economy, or so the figures say. But if you’re at all on the fence about your congressperson, senator, mayor, or town dogcatcher, ask yourself a key question you may have heard a version of before: Are you really doing better than did two years ago? Do you wince every time you have to fill your car up? Are there still a number of storefronts in your city/town that have been for lease forever? Are you surprised to see major chains like Toys R Us and Sears go bankrupt? Donald Trump lies. Provably, and often. He’s lied specifically about jobs, and saving plants and factories from closing down and moving to cheaper locations. He’s introduced ridiculous tariffs that are being retaliated on at our farmers’ expense. If he and his republican enablers are in total control of everything released by the government, might he be able to lie about the very state of the economy? Perhaps that’s taking things too far, but it doesn’t make it any less important to look at your own microcosm. You, your family and friends and co-workers. Are any of them doing really really well? Because if none of them are, then don’t vote based on the statistics you heard about. Vote based on your reality, because if things aren’t really that great now, sticking with the GOP could make things get much much worse.
