#LT...right on!
If Trump loses...bring it on!
3
What's a recession like? It's like any time you have progressive-socialist Democrats running things.
An Obama reprise.
6
Warning: Socialists in mirror may be closer than they appear.
11
Maybe your brilliant Nostradamus can give all us an advice how to deal with the coming rapture that his religion have been predicting for centuries.
9
Meanwhile, and, of course, in plain sight but nowhere mentioned, the climate will continue to march towards our extermination as a species while we continue to just play our same parlor games of politics and media.
454
You forgot to mention the volcano erupts and the dams explode.
7
Since the American people don't know what Trump Organization profitable advantage arising from the Trump occupation of the White House is hidden in Trump's income tax returns and business accounting financial records what happens to Trump in a recession is unknown.
Because black lives don't matter in America as much as any white life like Melania Trump we can't know how doubly devastating a white recession will be to African Americans aka Great Depression.
15
We should not need a recession to get rid of the worst human(?) being to ever occupy the White House.
40
I tell you what happens
In a recession
Things recede
Like your hairline
Like hair loss
Hair doesn't grow
Below a certain point
This is my point
Of which I'm certain
You may not know
Or care, Ross
The bottom line
Things recede
In a recession
That's my impression
3
“With a bad economy and a liberal Democrat in the White House, conservatives could well return to the scripts of the Obama era, rediscovering (with whatever absurd hypocrisy) the perils of deficits and big spending”
When will the myth that democrats are the party of deficits go away? This myth is not consistent with the facts (https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2019/jul/29/tweets/republican-presidents-democrats-contribute-deficit/). Spending may or may not be greater under Dems but they pay for the spending. It is hard to have a reality based discussion on the effect political parties have on the economy when basic facts are ignored!!!
46
The deficit is ballooning under republicans. The only president to balance that deficit was a liberal. Too bad your article misses this point. So there is more chance of a budget being balanced under Warren or Sanders, than Trump or Pence.
Republicans are just liars.
56
Get real people, President Trump is going to win!
7
In a recession you can be sure the racism and xenophobia and other forms of bigotry would continue.
21
Here’s my prediction. The main stream media will talk endlessly about the coming recession (the nyt only has 2 recession articles today- much more to come!). CNN and others will mention the word “recession” about 100 times per day just like they say the word “racist” about 100 times per day. Eventually people will get a little nervous and pull back on spending which will lead to some type of a recession. This is a perfectly legal foolproof way to get rid of Donald trump. Millions are actually hoping, if not praying, for a recession which, as your article properly predicts, will destroy trumps reelection chances. How sad
16
Small correction:
The /electoral college and gerrymandering/ will keep Trump from being defeated in a landslide, not polarization.
16
Wow. Even this guy knows his party is the clown car of American politics.....
20
Let's see....Obama couldnt get anything done in Congress, so he issued lots of executive orders. Same with Trump. And what would a Democratic president do?.....exactly the same. Countermining all of Trump's orders. The pendulum swings back and forth. Forth and back. Until......Zzzzzzzzzzz. And then one day, America wakes up to find itself.....headed no where fast. Except the wealthy are rolling in ever more dough.
8
Trump or no Trump, I know my neighbors better now. "Conservative populism" (read: nativism, to put it nicely) will be with us long past the "evaporation of his boom," which belongs to him no more than the bulk of the 2018 tax cuts belong to me: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=oEFq
10
Mr. Douthat seems to forget that this administration is not normal. A recession? What recession? Trump will never admit that there is one, even if there is one. It will be fake news according to him, and he will blame every Tom, Dick, and Harry for spreading “lies”. Job losses will continue to be job gains. Negative growth will continue to be positive. And even if the evidence becomes so overwhelming that he cannot ignore it, it will be the fault of the Moslems, the Hispanics, the Feds, the Democrats, even the Turks if he has to find another culprit; anyone and everyone except him.
His Tweets will overwhelm any real economic data and his base will believe them.
Just this morning, one of his economic geniuses was arguing with a straight face that the yield curve is not inverted. It is flat. As if there is such a thing as a flat curve.
And even if after all this, Trump happens to lose the election, he will not disappear. He may be forced to physically leave the White House, but he will establish his own shadow government at Trump Tower and continue to haunt the nation with his lies and his tweets.
Worried about Uber going bankrupt? I am worried about the nation with or without Trump in the White House.
15
Our democracy is rigged. Not only do Democrats need a lot more votes to produce a majority in the Senate (without which nothing major will get done) or win the presidency, the Cambridge Analytica scandal has shown us how susceptible voters in swing states have been manipulated, lied to and turned into enraged single issue Republican voters.
These converted people will vote again next year and so far there is no reason to believe these targeted psychological attacks haven’t continued.
Republicans will always go one step further to win, I’m afraid Trump will prevail again with the use of dirty methods.
15
Meanwhile the impacts of climate change, not mentioned at all in Douthat’s piece, will become MORE pronounced and dire, and spilling impacts to everything he discussed.
8
"What Happens in a Recession?"
In the last few decades, America elects a Democrat, and they clean up the mess.
34
You say: "the recession would also set the stage for Trumpism’s eventual return." I beg to disagree, with you, Ross.
Have you heard the "Democracy" song of Leonard Cohen (1992)?
I suggest that Trumpism may encourage a new democracy wave.
"Democracy is coming to the USA"
-------------------------------------------
I think the insanity of Trump, coupled with a recession, could
trigger a new democracy wave, in the workplace, etc.
Please check out the "Democracy" song of Leonard Cohen,
and please comment on the song, in your column. THANKS
"Democracy is coming to the USA"
------------------------------------------
1
A glass neither half empty nor half full, simply flavored with hemlock. Drink and be merry for tomorrow ...
1
Logical, plausible, and quasi-systemic, but of course speculative. Therefore, while a good starting point, it is important to point out what has been left out. (I'm starting to appreciate Ross' viewpoint more in recent years. Don't know what's going on with that.) I can't be the only one who had to beat down my occasionally-appearing lower self to consider: "Hmm, maybe a recession is worth it if __(you know what)." Ross mentions no breakthrough ideas lurking outside of traction circles that perhaps very frightened people and politicians will be more open to considering. While he elsewhere acknowledges climate change, he sees it as low priority and doesn't mention it here. Continued bad news will make denial or lazy acceptance embarrassing. Climate change will change many things, including political and social "certainties." Combining these two things, some critics of the Green New Deal may stop their mindless caricaturing of it as "socialism," find the areas already within it they already could like, and they, along with the centrists, may negotiate with the progressives to pass something they all can live with (or realize they must), and then make it work! And the voters will support that. It is not impossible, and what choice do we really have? And that's not it for big and apparently impossible challenges-although they better not stay that way. We're going to have to learn to talk to our politically different neighbors, come up with new foreign policy approaches, very etc.
1
Having a bad day, Mr Douthat? You could have made it worse by imagining Stephen Miller at the top of the Republican Party ticket in 2028. There's lots to worry about; for now, let's just get the grifter-in-chief out of office.
5
Lovely predictions, Mr. Douthat. Thank you.
One small hope you didn't mention. Might it be in the cards--the moment Mr. Trump walks out of the White House (after that putative defeat), he is beset by scowling law enforcement officials bearing any number of WARRANTS?
"Sir. . .you're gonna have to come along with US. . .. "
I know, Mr. Douthat, you are "on the right." While personally--happy birthday!--I just became a Democrat a few weeks ago.
But what you call the "absurdity" and "hypocrisy" of the right--has been SO glaring, SO unabashed, SO "in your face"--
--my OTHER small hope is: they may find themselves utterly discredited as a political party.
That is, at a time of massive social pain and disruption--the scales will fall from the eyes of millions. Elderly ladies in Mississippi--unemployed auto workers in Detroit--will exclaim, "These guys are nothing but shills for the rich! They never WERE anything else. They exist for the Koch brothers."
Oh where is the equilibrium of my childhood and youth? TWO political parties--one slightly to the LEFT of center, one to the RIGHT of center. More or less civil to each other. Capable (from time to time) of talking with each other, working with each other.
I look at Mr. Trump's ever scowling red face. . . ..
. . .I study the glacial physiognomy of Mr. McConnell--
--and I murmur, "Those days ain't NEVER comin' back."
A recession?
Well, sir--I guess we'll see.
7
The author should of struck with his original good sense about avoiding speculation about the future. That last line about situations conspiring for the later return of trumpism was a completely unnecessary downer. There won't be another "politician" like this one, this template is very unique both in its appeal and in it's buffoonery and internal hatred.
My predictions are slightly different.
Trump loses re-election but gets his hotel in Moscow for bringing down the west and China. Putin’s thank you.
3
And now for the good news.............
Oh wait.
So when trump trashes the economy as he has trashed everything else, we get a democratic government with no money, a wreck of a country, and millions of angry people, leaving an opening for Donald trump Jr. to lie his way into the hearts of those who cheer for our demise.
I'm going back to bed.
2
Ross--In an article about what will happen in the next recession you actually neglected to state what will happen. When the economy tanks and the market falls, and housing values fall, and businesses are shuttered and homes are foreclosed, the evil vultures of capitalism--namely men like Cohn, Mnuchin, and Ross, all Trumpers--will swoop in in search of bargains. They will purchase and gut distressed businesses and consumers, enriching themselves as they feed on the misery of the aspiring middle class. Our next recession is Their opportunity, and that is what will destroy this Republic.
8
Nice way of driving your point home Ross with the poetic Uber/Door Dash note. At end of article you're essentially saying the U.S. will enter a future of back & forth left/right governing that characterize Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Spain, Italy and other countries we've wagged our finger at over the past decade. With the extraordinary luxury of the dollar's dominance and control over the world's banking system, the U.S. had been able to tiptoe around that fate. But yes, the enormity of our unaddressed problems will bring a reckoning.
To be honest, although I expect a collapse of Trump's stupid overheated economy, based on debt and welfare for millionaires and billionaires, along with a whole lot of juice for hatred and victim blaming, I am fearful we will not survive.
There is no Obama in the wings. Though Elizabeth Warren could take a shot at fixing things, she wouldn't have the support O received from Bush and McCain, and she would get sniping from the left if she chose to be practical.
She's our only hope for the economy; all else is bluster and my way or the highway.
Meanwhile, climate change/global warming is making things worse everywhere, and we are not taking it seriously. That in itself is likely to trim the human population by billions, especially as people choose to blame and exclude rather than to work together.
We're too addicted to waste, passive entertainment and valueless goods, This morning I used a sponge instead of a paper towel to clean things up. When was the last time anyone heeded reduce, reuse, recycle instead of the latest marketing promo of miracle toxic cleaning products, etc. etc.?
We humans are not wise, and we've stopped cultivated wisdom and understanding. Bad dangerous stuff!
228
If Donald Trump had any brains or knew political history, he would have quietly urged the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates immediately after he was inaugurated. Then he could have blamed Barack Obama for the ensuing bear market and recession. Instead, he foolishly tied himself to a long-in-the-tooth (and rapidly fading) bull market. Logically, there's no way he can take credit for rising stock prices in 2017 and 2018 and not now take the blame when stock prices finally head back to reality. Of course, he will try to push blame onto the Federal Reserve but how does he spin that tale when he appointed the current head of the Fed? The first half of his administration was also his best window of opportunity to successfully pick a trade fight with China. Question: when does Xi Jinping face his next election; answer: no time soon! So Trump is in the position of not being able to play chicken with China because both he and they know a slumping stock market and a U.S. recession spell a one-term presidency for him (and his ego can’t take that). My prediction is he caves to the Chinese on the trade front and turns a blind eye to a brutal repression of Hong Kong. A recession and falling stock market are probably already baked into the cake, so unless the Democrats nominate a far-left candidate, Donald Trump can probably count on becoming a private citizen again very soon.
93
American conservatism is based on two contradictory sets of beliefs. It is William F Buckley Jr who most exemplifies that free market (liberal) economics and societal authoritarianism cannot co-exist. The extreme liberalism of small impotent government and low taxes and the authoritarianism of social conservatism has proved a toxic combination to the once upon a time great nation born of the very liberal enlightenment.
The Spanish Inquisition and neoliberalism are like gasoline and water don't mix and the surface is very explosive.
5
I’m tired of being toyed with by China. Xi thinks they can out last the American people demanding safeguards from theft and fair trade then I have news for him...expect more tariffs as long as it takes!
2
Uber has become a verb, much as “xerox” was in the 60s. They may need to raise rates and improve driver benefits, but they are not going anywhere. Unlike the hotel industry vs Airbnb, there is no effective lobbying to crimp Uber.
Who gains by a con man, who wrecked and drained every business venture he ever entered into for personal profit, by becoming president of the USA? Those who have enough money, power, and political motives to destabilize the USA. Those who carefully wooed and groomed said confidence man for decades while they gathered enough strength and wealth, power and influence to, by hook or by crook, to put him into office. Yes, I know our great national, damnable pride won’t allow us to admit that an election can’t be bought or sold, wheeled or sealed, but it can. Anything can be had for enough gold or gain, and we all know it. Just admit it. We lost one war that was motivated out of pure capitalistic gain. Vietnam. ‘Beware the military-industrial complex’, Ike told America via television as he bade us all farewell. Let’s admit that the one war we once feared so much that many of us practiced cowering under our grade school desks, is well within the hands of our cold, cold, long-time enemy. They just changed political and economic systems when their old system crumbled. They have beat us at our own corrupt, extremely brutal capitalistic game.
4
We’ve got three global problems that Trump cannot understand, and no-one can fix. The first is global warming that threatens humanity’s survival. The second is the claim of the world’s billions of people to share its wealth. The third is the greed of the world’s billionaires who refuse to address the first two problems, proferring squalor instead of progress.
7
I don't know if a recession is inevitable, but if it does come it had betIter start while Trump is in office so that at least the blame lands in the right place.
2
When/if the Dem’s also take over the majority in the Senate all they need to remember is “What would Mitch do?”
2
This is a rather self centered article from a policy wonk that ignores the most important effects of a recession. First of all, the Federal deficit will soar and the true chaos of a Trump presidency will be revealed. We will once again be left fighting over the scraps of government and the things most needed to help the growing numbers of unemployed and the poor will be slashed. but of course the rich will find away to sock away the booty they have collected in fat times. And unlike other recessions inflation will grow as Chinese tariffs on their cheapest goods keep prices high. The Fed will be unable to buffer the decline as interest rates are already low. But alot of this depends upon who controls the White House and Senate and with Republicans in power the free fall will be devastating as once again the 99 percent takes iton the chin.
3
It’s amazing how many ways Conservatives can denigrate Trump but still concoct arguments to support him.
Douthat has simply found an intellectual way to say what Trump said at his latest rally: “Love me or hate me, you have to vote for me because if I don’t win, it’ll be bad for every-one—I promise.”
In Conservative logic: A Trump defeat will bring on Armageddon, but a Trump win will slow it down a bit.
4
I can usually read what I want to in both the Times and the Washington Post, but I subscribe because I really do think journalism is important and I've noticed in the Times some really fine long-form and well-researched articles.
I don't think of these giant entities as charities, exactly, but never has research, facts, and accuracy been more important than it is right now.
6
Your tendencies collectively may be far more conservative than mine, but I agree with the thrust of your thoughts here.
The GOP will either double down on Trump's brand of (what is it a brand of, exactly, other than Trump himself?) something or it will go another way. The problem, actually, is what direction it would choose.
Republicans haven't subscribed in reality to fiscal or any kind of conservatism. They have pieced together a kind of heist on the treasury by the wealthy (individuals and companies), promoting theocratic rule by evangelicals, cutting everything that benefits ordinary people, and engaging in military swagger that (witness Afghanistan, Iraq) brings nothing but death, deficits and defense contractor profits.
This is a far cry from fiscal prudence, speaking softly and carrying a big stick, and keeping the government off our backs and out of our pockets and bedrooms. It is a far cry from evenhandedness and "morning in America".
Even before Trump, the GOP was a mockery of its proclaimed principles and a disgrace to our republic. With Trump, it has become something monstrous and hateful, dripping venom and meanness, inhumanity and hypocrisy, and always uncaring and impervious to the needs of ordinary people.
The GOP is not likely to be more than this antithesis of its so-called ideals until the entire generation of Trumpistas has exited. Maybe they need 40 years in the wilderness?
7
What Nick Caraway said of the rich in "The Great Gatsby" holds true for the likes of Trump: "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together and let other people clean up the mess they had made."
Having smashed up everything from foreign relations to foreign trade to environmental protections, Trump and his enablers will retreat back into their money and their vast carelessness, letting the rest of us clean up the mess. Nothing changes.
414
The constant refrain that moderates will move and defeat the left is so dumb. There is no left, no socialists. Improving the health insurance system in the country is just plain good governance. Going full speed into renewable non polluting energy certainly makes sense; 1st lessoning climate change, 2nd providing for a new dynamic for the economy. Taxing people and corporations who have massively evaded taxes is not class warfare but ending unfair system of taxation that was fast turning the US into a tightly knit plutocracy. On that one can be infrastructure repair. These types of things can raise incomes of the lower and middle class.
268
I can almost hear it, a very faint echo of a scintilla of an apology.
Sad.
4
Praying for a recession to hurt working-class Trump supporters and screaming "racist" is an unattractive strategy. I do hope for your sakes you are not putting your faith in Biden, Warren, O'Rourke, Sanders, Harris or Booker. The only candidate that has a chance of battling Trump is Tulsi Gabbard. Gabbard is patriotic, a person of color, a woman, a veteran, and a brutal debater. She never seems to lose her composure, and she can 'strip the bark' off journalists who are disrespectful to her - they only try it once.
If you choose amongst the others, I think you should also pray ardently for divine intervention because it is your only hope!
Are we doomed? Possibly, the argument is logical and seems reasonable. But, the universe does not operate on logic when humans are present. Economists and behavioral psychologists know that human are not rational. Why do we eat and smoke ourselves to death? Therefore, this scenario is not very likely. It may be better than expected because people pull together in hard time or worse. Fighting usualy hastens the decline and there is not limit to stupidity.
2
Trump will not voluntarily leave the White House, while he lives. No matter what. Unless they take away his Twitter account. Then it would be too boring for him to remain as President for Life (anti-abortion).
2
Trump will lose blaming Obama, Hillary, even his clown car of economic advisers; everyone but the "stable genius with a very large brain" whose business acumen was illustrated by a string of bankruptcies, failed ventures stretching from Trump Steaks to Trump University, and an inability to make money even with an Atlantic City casino.
3
The people with money can ride out another recession, the people without money can't. The rich will get richer, the poor will get poorer. And America will suffer.
8
"Having guaranteed Trump’s removal from office, in other words, the recession would also set the stage for Trumpism’s eventual return."
WHAT THE HECK IS TRUMPISM??? I am still trying to figure out what he stands for, other than bashing the press, attacking enemies for the base of his party, ruining the enviornment, and tax cuts for billionaires.
WHAT THE HECK IS TRUMP'S ECONOMIC POPULISM? Is it addressing the ravaged towns and cities? No. Is it the revitalization of coal and oil industries? No. Is it putting a stranglehold on the controlling party by having the base evict moderates from primaries? Yes. Deficits? YES.
THEY VOTED FOR A CON MAN AND NOW THEY ARE PUTTING SPIN TO CLAIM ALL THE GREAT THINGS HE'S DONE. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS TRUMPISM!
3
Regardless of whether there will or won't be a recession (even slower growth would be a 'fake news' victory for our prevaricator-in-chief), the Democrats will once again manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by failing to unite for the sake of our future, allowing themselves to be defined, divided and conquered by their opposition as fascists. socialists, etc. by their truly un-American Republicans who encourage capitulation to and compilicity with our most formidable sworn enemies.
Vote.
A contrarian view: a mild recession keeps Trump in office as the democrats nominate some version of Eugene Debs and the middle class is scared to death they will tax and spend them into the ground. College-grads Steve and Mary, though socially liberal and distasteful of Trump, see little option but to re-elect the tweeter-in-chief. They also fear the language emanating from the progressives is so toxic towards whites that they can't see what future their daughter and son have in the democrat version of a woke utopia.
3
"Having guaranteed Trump’s removal from office, in other words, the recession would also set the stage for Trumpism’s eventual return."
That's the problem with stupid governance that takes a wrecking ball to our institutions and puts the country in an economic situation, through gross hypocrisy, where it has few options to mitigate a recession. This is why I gave up on the Republican party of McConnell years ago, and nothing has changed my mind since - it's party over country, personal greed over people, aggrandizement over service.
5
Trump is going to lose in 2020! And, he's going to lose "BIGLY" but even "BIGLIER" if there is a recession!
Too many Americas realize what an incompetent, immoral, and dangerous person he is, and what a huge embarrassment for America on the world stage. He's destroying American democracy, world democracy and the national and global economies all at once.
He's created the largest trade deficit, budget deficit and national debt in world history. Trump's tariff games with China and other countries have accelerated the downturn and practically guaranteed a BIG recession is coming. He's pressured the Fed to lower interest rates too soon, leaving no options for the Fed once the big recession starts (and I think the US is well on the way, following Europe and China.)
His treason in Helsinki sticks in everyone's mind. Permanently, as it should.
His racism is manifest -- many of his base love that; many decent Americans will not stand for it in 2020. African American turnout will be ENORMOUS!
He's a kleptocrat. He's appointed a band of thugs, thieves and wife-beaters in his administration and in the cabinet. He's the worst enemy possible for those of us who want to protect the climate and the environment. He supports the corporatocracy as the Republican tax cut shows. He supports White Supremacists as he constantly shows. He's in the pocket of the NRA as we'll see him once again renege on his promise to pass universal gun checks, etc.
Trump will lose BIGLY!
4
Nothing that a civil war can't fix.
2
The Republican Party has been bought and paid for by Plutocrats who are pro-pollution and anti-regulation. It will never recover completely. The owners of the GOP don't really care about abortion or LGBTQ issues: You, Ross, have been swindled. All your party bosses care about is money. Those issues you cherish are just electioneering lies.
You, personally, are simply going to have to enter the 21st century. Birth control works. Women want it. Sensible men want it. Sex is wonderful. We are going to have lots of it with sensible birth control. The economic engines have changed: brawn is no longer needed. The superior dexterity, adaptability and intelligence of women is needed. Women had to adapt to being ruled by men (often brutally and stupidly) for millennia. That adaptation works in the new economic culture.
So The Roman Catholic church will adapt or dwindle. You will adapt or be perennially unhappy.
Come join us in valuing every person just the way Christ would have. Come join us in recognizing that coercion doesn't work forever: (see Hong Kong,)
6
I know people scoff when some say Trump may announce he isn't seeking re-election, but think about it.
What would hurt his brand more than a crushing re-election defeat in the middle of a recession for which he will be blamed?
The man is crazy and a coward.
Now, does it seem so implausible for a man who probably doesn't know the meaning of the word implausible who somehow became our forty-fifth President?
3
This is just part 2 of 2008 but I am sure that the big wigs will still get their yearly bonus that’s what happen in the “major” bank I worked for at the time in the UK. As for “companies” like WeWork it does not like very bright one the hipster fad has gone like so many other fads over the ages they will be out of business, it’s just a money pit. We need to wake up from the dream of turning air into money and castles in the sky. I am not looking forward to part 3!
Mr. Douthat was in grade school when Gore and Bush debated on national television; and each candidate spent much time talking about his plans for the surplus. Yes, surplus revenues.
Before you know it, Bush blew at least a trillion on a senseless war - a senseless knee-jerk reaction to 9/11 terrorism built on a big lie, the ‘WMDs.’ Right-wing deregulation enabled the rapid growth of risky, complex, wholly artificial securities built on corrupt lending — et voila! Massive deficits and a worldwide economic meltdown.
Enter a ‘left-wing radical Democrat’ to put Humpty Dumpty together again, pull us out of the mess despite right-wing obstructionism aimed at blocking his every turn, and we’ve had a decade of steady, unprecedented economic stability.
But now Trumpublicans have managed to blow it all up again, with ludicrous, destabilizing trade wars and a massive, wholly inappropriate tax cut in the midst of an expansion — predicated on the other grand ‘conservative’ big lie - ‘the tax cuts will pay for themselves.’ Of course they won’t, and while the deficit explodes, the wealthy pocket the tax savings and spend it on wretched excess — while investment and manufacturing output sputter.
What we apparently need is a ‘left-wing radical Democrat’ majority in Congress and a competent, thoughtful Democrat in the White House to restore order again, and perhaps focus our efforts on improving life for 99% of us, rather than picking our pockets to further enrich the filthy rich.
3
Seems a little optimistic.
Since what goes up must come down, it will be 1000 times better to have the inevitable recession in 2020 than 2021. Either way, Trumpism will be discredited because his blaming everyone but himself won't work and he knows it. He's already saying we must vote for him to protect our 401k balances from those awful Democrats.
1
Still a better love story than Twilight.
Rescind the rich man tax cut, tighten tax laws to prevent capital flight and non-payment of taxes, return the money to people in the middle and lower middle-class. But don't expect Congress to do any of it. As in the case of climate change, they will do nothing until the water is up to their necks.
2
what happens in a recession is that greed replaces god, Ross.
1
75 days prior to the 2020 election Trump will attempt to manufacture an end of the trade war with China.
China will sabotage Trump’s attempts, yielding no ground.
Trump will loose the election having failed to win the trade war.
The Chinese will happily negotiate with the new president.
1
Just what we needed, a pessimistic Ross.
@Paul
How can you tell ?????
Seriously.
1
I don't share Douthat's optimism that Trump will lose should we be plunged into a recession.
So here is my prediction. As the economy continues to tank between now and November 2020, Trump will become more unhinged. He will tell his base that others are at fault - none of this is his - or their - fault.
So who will he blame? Any dark skinned people within our borders (citizen or otherwise). Jews. Democrats. Liberals. And his base, still near 45% of our voters, will gladly swallow his lies.
Now, Trump's re-election is the least of our concerns should this economy tank. As his white voters continue to suffer, continue to lose jobs, continue to lose health insurance, they will target the rest of us. One by one. Perhaps first Hispanic people. The first chapter has been El Paso. Then most likely people of Middle Eastern ancestry will be next. And don't forget that Trump's voters have screamed "Jews will not replace us" for the past three years.
And he will urge them on, because his relationship with his voters is synergistic. He needs to feed them hate, so that they continue to support him. Now, no doubt he is a bigot himself. But his continued race-baiting is calculated to win him re-election. And his base expects him to continue to tell them that their hatred of minorities is justified.
The closing chapter after next year? Expansion of Trump's internment camps, or waves of ethnic cleansing the likes of which this country has never seen - or both. Bet the rent on it.
4
Next big recession, say bye bye to luxury delivery services like grub-hub. Less uber, more public transit. Less tourism. Less stupid spending at Target and Walmart. Less buying nonsense through Amazon. Wear-out your shoes till there are holes. More planning cheap meals, more cooking at home. Clip you cable. Stop Netflix. Just make mortgage or rent - hopefully - and hold on reading books from the library for entertainment.
Wrong - Trump would still win. Sorry to burst your bubble.
1
Fiscally Responsible Conservatives dump the US in a recession, and flagrantly irresponsible socialist Democrats have to pull the US out.
Then the GOP says they can do better, Red States (debtor states that have no idea how to manage a budget) put them in power, and we get another recessions that the Dems have to pull the US out again.
3
I think the majority of Americans are sick and tired of the "chaos" this President thrives on. Whether we head toward another recession is dependent on if reasonable people that understand the basics of economics can get to this guy or can influence the damage he is bent on bringing. The American economy (and global) depends on the majority of people (not just governments and corps) spending money. People have to feel confident and be employed to promote consumer spending. The President will continue to blame the media (or anyone and anything) for downward trending economic numbers. Chaos, blaming, shaming, obstructing, welcoming foreign meddling in our elections, dividing, lying, will bring this President down in the end. In his desperation to be re-elected (he doesn't like losers) these characteristics will be magnified. The majority of America is sick of the con. We are not stupid people.
2
You know what's horrifying about all this talk of an imminent recession. There are some people mostly progressives praying it will happen. Because they know in their heart of hearts this is their only chance to seize power. They simply don't care about the pain and trauma it will cause the working class. They are expendable. As long as they achieve their goals and agenda the far left is happy to throw them under the bus. Mind you these are the people whose will on earth the progressives purport to represent. Sick. Really sick.
1
Nice to see you recognise the hypocrisy that Republicans (George H W Bush excepted) send the deficit skyrocketing then whine like crazy when Democrats try to do anything.
8
And the pattern repeats- Republicans in we get deficits & dead marines. The Dems come in & clean up the mess but are eventually deemed too socially liberal & back come the supposedly conservative Republicans. Rinse & repeat...
8
The first thing that happens is Trump blames Obama.
9
Perhaps we might better focus instead on what traditionally has brought on crashes in the economy, panic selling and withholding of planned purchases in fear of losing income. It usually has been caused by excessive borrowing beyond reasonable expectation to repay those loans based on practically predictable earnings. Speculative craze, pipedream borrowing in expectation of unrealistic gain is what brings on recessions and depressions. Too much of that is going on right now. Student loans for studies unrelated to growing areas of highly paid employment may need closer examination. They are beginning to feel like the borrowings to participate in the dot.com boom and the real estate flipping boom that triggered our two most recent recessions.
Borrowing is risky business and such risks need careful evaluation. Those encouraged to borrow often lack the skill to make that evaluation before taking out ill advised loans. How many teenagers, lured into taking out student loans, really have carefully evaluated the future earning capacity that must be used to repay those loans? Too few, I fear. Are they being encouraged to borrow for their own future benefit or to create current income for academics. One wonders.
2
I must be missing something. Ross, are you saying that a recession that was, at least in part, due to Trumpism will lead to his defeat. The end result will be a return to Trumpism because of the recession? What am I missing?
If you want to get the price of rents and homes down the government has to get involved in the building industry and form partnerships with first home buyers and work with them to build new homes. That's what our government is doing as it is not in the interests of developers to lower house prices and have an oversupply on homes around as it lowers prices and rents. It is all to do with supply and demand.
It's got to be good to lower rents and house prices as it puts more money into the pockets of spenders and has a domino effect on businesses. I think the only ones with money to spend are the wealthy who own property as they collect rents, whereas the renters have to put all their money into rents and have nothing left to spend locally.
1
Thanks for cheering us up on a Sunday morning.....
1
"in a recession the Democrats can nominate any of their candidates and expect to evict the president with ease."
Well there is the evidence that if a lefty reads Douthat long enough he will finally write something he can agree with.
"And academia, journalism’s comrade in “careers that made more sense in 1960,” could face its own reckoning, with midsize and small colleges closing and consolidating, like midsize and small newspapers."
The only thing that academia and journalism have in common is the fact that some universities offer degrees in journalism and some journalists or want to be journalists take advantage of the opportunity to pursue such degrees.
Universities of all sizes teach based on research, checking one's facts, writing and re-writing. Theory bolstered by facts, research, experiment. Journalism is the art of facile and superficial writing churning out material without dealing with subtleties.
Will midsize or small colleges in the wake of Trump defeat and the ensuing Douthat-claimed recession?
Time will tell. Maybe.
1
The more the times are troubled, the more people try to help one another, i.e. more socialism. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as the human race has advanced due to socialism. I am not talking about fascism (either right/fascism or left/forme fruste communism) with Trumpian "divide and conquer" demagogues in charge. I am talking about democratic socialism (Bernian or Elizabethian) which will guide us, again, out of self inflicted recession, both mental recessions and financial.
You had me at ‘trump loses’. Nothing else matters.
5
If a recession does occur before Election Day 2020, we can all count on Trump doing one of the following: deny it's happening (i.e., labeling it fake news), blame it on the Fed, blame it on China, blame it on the Democrats (most notably The Squad), blame it on Obama, blame it on Hillary, blame it on the press, all of the above. Facing inevitable defeat at the polls, he will thereupon move to his newly established private kingdom (formerly known as "Greenland") where he will build a wall to stave off invasion from millions of white male Americans wearing MAGA hats.
Comment submitted on 8/17 at 5:38 PM
1
And what makes you think Trump will leave?
2
Two thoughts...1. Not Donny’s economic boom, yes he claims it to be but he has done nothing to cause/further it and done everything to kill it. 2. And horror of horrors...what if Don runs again in 2024!
Tesla would also go bankrupt
Even your most dire predictions are more palatable than what is happening now.
From your keyboard to God's ears...
2
We should consider the possibility that Trump would win in a recession. The same factors that caused his base to vote for him including economic anxiety, lack of hope, anger and fear will only become worse and deepen their resolve. See the work of economist Danny Blanchard and Carol Graham’s book - a lot of data there. In a recession many swing voters may stay home and the turnout could be depressed. Democrats must have a compelling economic plan to motivate citizens to vote for them. They should not take this for granted. The narrative that Democrats wanted a recession can be used against them effectively by Republicans. The Republicans are much better at the storytelling that captures the imagination of key voters in swing states.
What happens in a recession is that the rich get richer as the government bails them out with corporate welfare and government debt goes up. It's a dog eat dog society as the rich usually buy up all the businesses and homes of people who have had their houses confiscated by the banks.
It usually doesn't affect the poor because they were poor when they went into the recession and are still poor when the recession is over. Poor during the recession and poor during boom or bust.
During the 1930's depression years my mother told me that the depression didn't affect them as they were poor when they went into the depression and poor when they came out of the depression. My grandfather got sacked from his job as a mill manager for siding with the workers and saying that he believed in unions and my mother said they never went hungry even though there was 8 children in the family as they would find sacks of food on the porch in the morning and said they were the only ones with a sack of sugar in the area.
3
Your 'circular' political analysis is somewhat practical, humorous, but conservative-driven misleading thinking.
The first is correct.
Trump will lose the 2020 presidential election, but the difference is much worse than your prediction. Trump will got to jail, he may take suicide in jail , just like Nazi fascist leader of Germany: Adolf Hitler who took his own life after defeat in 1945 second World War.
The second is complete off track, because you predicted wrongly that Trump will be OK after he lost his presidential election in 2020! Instead, With Trump is in jail, Trump's Republican party will go dark and be lower to a minority status in U.S. Congress, his allies gone or be in jail thereafter.
Trump's supportive and Republican-controlled U.S. Supreme
Court, Trump's Republican, conservative allies will be hit hard too as the Democrat leaders, U.S. Democratic president already realized it was politicized for too long! that it was politically favored and hacked the laws for Republican party and abandon the American people.
3
A return to trumpism, not likely, another revolt quite possibly since the recession will not hurt the Masters of the Universe on Wall Street or the top 5%. If the recession is as severe as 2007-2008 this time the revolution will be fought in the streets so the rich will need to barricade their gated communities.
5
One claim by Douthat is completely out of proportion, and if it comes to pass, will mean our economy has been shaken to its core. He says:
"And academia, journalism’s comrade in 'careers that made more sense in 1960,' could face its own reckoning, with midsize and small colleges closing and consolidating, like midsize and small newspapers."
Small colleges are closing, and programs at others are being slashed, but a 4 year degree remains as a key stepping stone to a good career. Education services jobs were remarkably resilient in the last recession. Journalism and news media has been disrupted by the technology of the internet, which brought down cost barriers for wide distribution. So far, technology has not shown itself to be disruptive to the business of higher ed. So, if mid-sized colleges start closing in any kind of numbers, the disruption will be some kind of socio-political-economic one. It will indicate that our society has decided education for its own sake is not important after all, and that all most of us are is drones for the winner-take-all economy.
1
You seem to be discounting the possibility that the left, once in power, will take bold action and succeed, winning back the working class that turned Republican in the 1980s and sending conservatives into political exile for a generation. Remember that this scenario is what happened in the 1930s, and anything that's happened before is not impossible in the future.
7
@Iris The GOP holds the ‘white’ working class with racism. They have never had the support of non white working class - since that is the target of their racism.
3
Recession or not, Trump will win. He connects to the American people in a way that the elites STILL have not grasped.
2
@Douglas
The elites? Most working class, middle class people are disgusted with Trump.
3
@Douglas He connects to racists with racism. He has no appeal to any non racists in the country. He never did.
7
A thread in Mr. Douthat's argument is one that he frequently takes up. It is that we have a social -- indeed a spiritual -- crisis in the US that is manifest in falling marriage rates, birth rates, and affiliations with religion, along with rising rates of opioid addiction, suicide and mortality at all ages. There is, in other words, something seriously wrong with our "culture."
I believe the next link in the argument is that this malaise has its roots in something cultural conservatives call our "liberal culture." I believe I agree that our culture is suffering from one or more illnesses, though I would qualify any statement like that in numerous ways, e.g., 1) I'm not sure what I mean by "culture"; and 2) illness here is a metaphor, and I'm not sure how the metaphor operates.
So, yes, if something is rotten in Denmark, does that owe to "liberal culture?" Could the cultural conservatives please define "liberal culture?" Is that something that arose from the swamp in 1960 when the Pill first appeared? Or does it start with Descartes and trace itself right back to the Enlightenment writ large?
Either way, I haven't the slightest idea what a cultural conservative would argue be done about it. Surely social ills are beyond the reach of government? Isn't that what Burke said? Isn't all you can really do about the state of a society to serve as an example yourself, to act as a witness, in the Christian sense?
What's the point of political argument to a cult. conserv.?
1
But, with respect, isn't it different this time? The world wants to park its money in the United States. Inverted yield curves are less significant as a forerunner of recession if the money keeps pouring in for investment here in the United States. And when I hear interviews with farmers of soy beans who still agree with Donald Trump that China has to be stood up to, because they consistently cheated and threatened our industries and intellectual propertiesj. And personally I'm too unhappy to vote for Elizabeth Warren because I like her and, so what, she'd never get her ideas through Congress; there are too many serious problems for me to go along with that thinking. So can we have more articles like this, with more factors discussed?
1
I wouldn’t give up on Warren yet. There’s still time to walk back or soften her Medicare for All craziness, and she has the chops to take on not only the Dems, but Trump as well.
3
Mr Douthant, please define what the center-right is by listing policies that try to solve important American ills, such as gun violence, poverty, access to education and access to health care.
The reality is that, as of today, center-right means basically nothing, just empty words. Less regulation? What regulations? Be specific because we are getting rid of regulations that are necessary to protect consumer, environment and hurt working Americans.
Of course, you can find some regulations that are just dumb but the trend is quite obvious. Our future requires more regulations, not less, because the world is becoming more complex. Many regulations are implemented because people in power abuse existing laws. This is increasingly the case in our divided reality where conservatives do not consider practical and realistic reasons to remove regulations, they become ideologically so one-sided that their governing principles are just pure madness.
We are on the verge of another progressive breakthrough. It is inevitable, just as global warming is inevitable, just as universal health care is inevitable. The transition may be peaceful now or violent 10 years from now. Conservatism, in its frantic effort to stop the progress, seem dead set to defeat liberalism and bring the whole country down. For the good of future generations they have to be removed from power ASAP.
6
I liked the first sentence; it went downhill from there. Sheer under informed speculation has no place in sensible conversation, whether about recessions or anything else.
1
An interesting thought piece. A nit (and one that ties into the lowering birthrate commentary on Mr. Douthat's blog) -- the academic crisis is coming soon, recession or not. The birth rate dipped substantially in the last recession and those students will be entering college in a few years. There are have been various scare reports, but for a well-grounded look at the data (with insights about which universities and regions will be most challenged), see Nathan Grawe, "Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education."
Why worry what will happen if a Democrat wins in '20? The country will be saved from falling into despotism and fascism. Remember the dreadful state of the nation in '32 when Roosevelt took over. Many of the Republicans and conservative, reactionary Democrats were made to recognize where neglecting the working and middle classes had brought the nation and a change had to be made. It was -- and something Mr. Douthat does not dwell on -- it will be made again if we choose a Democratic candidate similarly dedicated as we had in '32.
1
Oh, I don't know. The expansion was mighty weak throughout the Obama and Trump years. Unless there is some financial implosion, the recession will be mighty mild too. Trump's base believes everything that he says and seems to revel even when they are insulted by him--that's a cult-of-personality, not a political party. When he blames the recession on everyone-but-Trump, his base will eat it up.
4
Recession or not. Trump does NOT lose.
The electoral college has already been bought and paid for.
Trump lost the popular vote the last time and will again, but like last time, that simply doesn’t matter.
@SW - the only way Trump loses is through increased voter turnout. And it has to increase by enough to overcome the electoral college system. Republicans know this - it's why they are working so frantically to suppress black votes in states with large black populations. (Racism is part of the problem, surely, but wanting to hold onto power by any means possible is a strong component too.)
5
GOP in general and trump in particular, claim “trump boom” ever since the beginning of his regime (it indeed is a “regime” unlike “administrations” for other presidents/presidencies) is laughable. Firstly, trump did not have a single solid economic policy that positively improved average Americans’ lives. Secondly, if there’re booms, they are booms constantly and consistently back from President Obama’s administration.
One thing is for sure: FOX will convince its viewers this is an Obama recession, just like they successfully renamed the Great Recession under Bush.
5
Well, I was feeling pretty good today, good day so far.
Then I read this column-really a downer, a very bleak view.
1
A true contemporary conservative viewpoint: We're doomed!
Even though I'm a true liberal, I share Douthat's general pessimism / cynicism that our elected officials won't be able to make a silk purse out of sow's ear if the economy goes south. We all hoped that would happen under Obama during the Great Recession, and while we did get the ACA (no small thing) and some gov't investment in "shovel-ready" public projects, there was no New Deal or other transformative change.
Why? Because corporate interests still control our politicians and thus our policies. Even if Warren or Sanders makes it to the White House, s/he will have to deal with a Congress that serves corporate masters. So nothing will seriously change for the better.
Campaign finance reform (including overturning Citizens United) and the end of gerrymandering. These are the only steps that will lead to real, lasting change in our country. Until both of those happen, we are indeed doomed.
356
The only addition I would add to the commenter’s gloomy and probable outlook is, finally, the unavoidable reckoning and enormously expensive response to the effects of climate change in the U.S. The long-put-off reckoning coming amidst a recession and the ginormous federal budget deficits rendered by the Trump tax cuts.
If Americans think we have an immigration crisis now, just wait until environmental upheaval increases the desire of millions more people wanting to get into the U.S.
78
@Nelle Engoron Well stated. The other point to be made falls in what Mr. Douthat might call "applied augury." The fact is that the traditional arsenal that government has used in the past to reenergize a lagging economy---fiscal stimulus or monetary easing---is already strained.
At 2.250% there is hardly any leverage to be used at the discount window to encourage borrowing, thereby hampering any monetary response. With the 2019 deficit estimated over $1 trillion, there may not be much stimulus to be culled through fiscal policy either without recanting DC's recent tax breaks.
More ominously, the next economic fall, if precipitous, is going to test political will across the spectrum. Another cycle of disenfranchised rust-belt working class may not be the only political concern. We may also witness more young generations from Silicon Valley to Wall St question the entire post WWII economic model with another round of extreme whipsawing between growth and contraction. The return of populism that Mr. Douthat predicts may not resemble anything we have seen to date.
21
@Bruce Stern Canada might reasonably be having similar thoughts about its neighbor to the south.
19
And not a word about the impact of the greatest speeding train barreling down the tracks toward us. Not a word about the impact of droughts and fires and floods and hurricanes and year after year of the "hottest year on record". I'm fairly sure that will eventually cost of way more than we will lose in a recession. And we do nothing....
7
No one should be wishing for a recession, many people have serious problems as it is in a good economy. But I am afraid this can become a self-fulfilling prophesy, enough people believing that a recession is coming so they create it.
Trump is easy to beat no matter what.
1
Take a hike. I did. Turn off social media. Cut cable. Spend less by walking more. Took a neurological scientist buddy for a walk last week. Her life's work contributed to saving thousands of lives. We are total opposites which is at the core of our friendship. We talked about recessions we've survived. Turns out we did. My take is every seven years or about's the US economy takes a dive. So, eat less, read more, pray less, and walk more. My neurological scientist buddy love the way I think.
2
"His boom?" No, Trump inherited an expanding economy, then juiced it with unnecessary tax cuts and irresponsible deficit spending. His "boom" was merely a sugar high which cannot be sustained. Mr. Douthat correctly points out that an economic contraction will surely lead to Trump's defeat in 2020. But Douthat naively assumes that Trump and his supporters will accept the results of an election defeat. Trump himself has stated that he'll accept the results of the 2020 election - if he wins. It is entirely possible that Trump will stop at nothing, including inciting his followers to violence, to retain power. A peaceful transition is by no means assured.
443
@KMJ -- I don't think he juiced the expanding economy.
I think he siphoned off some for his wealthy friends, giving them tax cuts paid for with deficits.
The economy then continued much as it had, until now starting a slowdown.
The tax cuts cannot be given credit for anything good, just a bit more robbery of the many by the few.
82
@Mark Thomason
Agree: there was no boom. If anything, the tax cuts sustained the status quo growth.
I’ve long felt many of his economic decisions were purely intended to stave off a recession until he was re-elected—-juice it enough to make it appear things are “good.” It might still work. But his ability to shoot himself in the foot, ie tariffs, might upend his “plans.”
46
@KMJ It's one to send out tweets decrying a rigged elections, as Trump did in 2012. No legal consequences. But actually trying to annul an election? Kind of thing that can land one in prison for a long time. I seriously doubt Trump has the courage.
If he did try and the other Republican politicians backed him it would get very messy indeed. But again, those politicians would be risking their necks.
30
on the same "print edition" page as Douthat's very interesting column is "let's say goodbye to growth" which links growth or lack thereof to population growth or shrinkage.
it is worth pondering how immigration policy directly influences growth. and if Trump's anti-immigrant policy is in fact an important cause of an economic slowdown and hence is politically self-defeating to Trump himself.
3
Well now, I would expect a Democratic Progressive Caesar or Caesarina to govern much like the two past presidents; with an Ipad, and Iphone and a nod every once in a while to the lowing herd in Congress. We are in the midst of a very uncivil war...Recession or no, it will only continue to worsen.
1
@Kingston Cole False equivalence red alert!
1
Even Ross shares and perpetuates the myth of the Trump “boom”. It appears to validate the view that telling a lie often enough leads to validation or belief. Trump has trumpeted the “greatest economy in American history” for over two years. It is a massive lie. GDP growth under Trump has averaged less than 2.5% a year. The average for last 50 years is 3.47%. The Trumpian boom doesn’t even approach the average! The annual budget deficit under Trump is exploding and will reach a trillion dollars this year. That, and the ever expanding trade deficit, are the only booms you will hear. You cannot talk about a boom and the need for significant interest rate cuts in the same breath. The vast majority of Americans continue to struggle financially. The only boom you hear is the sonic one as the wealthy rocket away.
8
@John David James
So true.
Is that why Trump wants to buy Greenland so he'll have his own country to hide in?
Wait, does he want the USA to buy Greenlend or does he want it for himself?
Maybe he expects Putin to annex it for him.
3
Although governments try to avoid recessions, economists have seen them as economically healthy in that they clear out inefficient and poorly competitive companies and set up the next boom.
Maybe a recession now would be politically healthy as well, clearing out politicians who don't have a rational basis for their economic policies.
7
I agree with much of what Douthat has to say, but I would look at our social crisis another way, as an opportunity. An opportunity to say we went too far, we trafficked in fear and separation, now is the time for Compassion and Cooperation. Help your community, feed the hungry (there will be lots in a recession), house the homeless (there are already lots, in a recession there will be more), support local businesses. Let the big guys fed for themselves, federal policy will be geared towards the big organizations, it is the local businesses that need our support.
If you are looking for a way for you personally to make a difference, manners would be a good place to start. Be nice, say 'thank you,' use your turn signal, yield, open a door for someone, forget that your middle finger exists as something separate from your hand. Also remember the wisdom of Bapu, "Be the change you wish to see in the world."
5
So the choice is four more years of incompetent leadership or "...a recessionary America (that) would find the center-left enjoying some kind of power but probably struggling to govern, a right tearing itself apart in civil war, our downscale social crisis worsening, Silicon Valley delivering substantially less than promised, and the institutions that are supposed to inform and educate struggling or in decline."
I'll take the recession. After all, Mitch McConnell will still ensure that the Senate allows no bill to be passed into law, so we'll still be governed by executive orders that are fleeting and eminently reversible. Why not have a qualified commander-in-chief making those decisions, Mr. Douthat?
3
Mr. Douthat is just amplifying the president's new campaign line - "You may hate me, but your 401(k) loves me!".
The reality is that since 1980, the US economy has done much better under Democrats, the deficits have been narrowed under Democrats (while Obama started with a huge deficit due to the financial crisis, by his last year it was almost halved), and the stock market has done much better under Democrats.
The Republican's fear mongering of "socialism" if the Democrats come back into power is exactly that: fear mongering. Republicans are fine corporate socialism; they are fine with paying farmers who can't sell their crops or are paid not to grow (which sounds like Marx's "From each according to their ability to each according to their need"); and for wealth redistribution from wealthy Blue states to poorer Red states.
Or as Bill Clinton once said, "If you want to live like a Republican, vote like a Democrat".
15
This piece didn't mention how "health care" will cannibalize our economy. The population will continue to become fatter, lazier and unhealthier, and demand more and more medical care and technology it can't afford and doesn't want to pay for. Employers will finally realize that getting tax breaks for offering health insurance isn't worth it anymore, and Obamacare will fragment further as layoffs become rampant and wages remain stagnant or actually decline. Health care companies and large local hospitals and groups who now control most professional medical services will need to raise prices above levels already tightly controlled. And the media will relish is having endless anecdotal victim stories to report. Congress will remain locked and incompetent, and will do nothing. It will be ugly.
5
The R's last two presidents were a complete disaster and their legislators were beholden to special interests and did nothing for the working class. D's need to keep reminding the voters of this.
President Obama wanted to play nice and minimized calling out the R's- to his detriment. Whoever D is president next needs to understand the office is political first and foremost. Leave the technocracy to his staff and cabinet. Unfortunately, all I see in the D field are a bunch of technocrats.
3
Ross says: “Meanwhile, the right will have to decide whether it wants to be an opposition or an alternative”
Ross, the right, if that refers to the GOP, long ago decided it was the servant of its billionaire backers, who control almost 1/2 of voters with an unprecedented brainwashing apparatus that makes Goebbel’s look antiquated.
Unfortunately these billionaires are driving chaos to kill democracy. They hope that the resulting crackdown to restore order will install them as Oligarchs, free to impose their own objectives.
10
YOU CONVENIENTLY LEFT OUT ANY REAL PREDICTIONS ABOUT THE POOR. Is that because you do believe that we must always have them with us and there's no use spending good time and effort on dealing with them?
2
Wellsir, if dire predictions are all you got, then perhaps journalism deserves a shellacking.
An alternative view is that the far right recedes into oblivion and the country moves ahead with greater economic fairness.
8
Once Trump is gone (and, I sincerely hope, in prison), Elizabeth Warren will find a way to start cleaning up the mess. But god only knows whether we'll ever get back to where we were under Obama.
3
@Cassandra All Lizzie is going to do is create more debt and a bigger government - after she takes all of my money.
Well, that's a cheery column.
I'm fervently hoping that Trumpism--or at least its strains of ignorance, of xenophobia, of race baiting, of childish narcissism and of unparalleled mendacity--are sui generis.
To the comment that "this is not who we are as a country," the historian Jon Meacham observed that no, this is exactly who we are. He should have added that this is not who we aspire to be.
If Trump's eviction from the White House requires a brutal recession, so be it. But he has got to go.
8
Trump is desperate to be re-elected. He'll be indicted if he's not. I'm afraid he'll pull out all (short-term) stops to pump up the economy. Here comes inflation!!
5
“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, shame on both of us.”Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
The last three Republican Administrations including the current Trump Administration have demonstrated a total lack of even the simplest understanding of basic economic fundamentals. Their basic premise of the laughable "Laffer Curve" has proven to be a total disaster and yet the electorate seems to have bought the lie hook line and sinker.
There is likely to be a recession sometime in 2020-2021. Given the end of a long term economic growth cycle a recession is to be expected. If the administration and Congress had focused their energy on things like infrastructure, health care, education, etc. the effects of a recession would be minimal.
Unfortunately they have not. Massive tax cuts, defense build ups and wrong headed trade wars are not the way forward.
Thankfully the American Electorate warts an all won't be fooled for a third time. Trumpism may survive but the current occupant of the Oval Office will not.
3
No mention of the fate of the current 1%. Why?
1
Nah, it's simpler than that.
Democrat win presidency.
Democrats in the face of Republican obstruction manage to right the ship. Of course there is no money for the "safety net" ; that'll have to wait.
Republicans take credit for ship being righted; it's a lagging result of their brilliant policies kicking in.
Regular "jes' folks" continue to hate Democrats because they won't stop using big words.
A Republican gets elected in 2024 or 2028. Proposes big tax cut for trillionaires. It passes.
Stir. Repeat.
14
The media and all of the Dem candidates are certainly hoping for a recession.
3
This scenario makes me glad, no, really, really glad I’m old.
4
Trumpism requires a Trump to sell it. An entertaining Svengali who will have to overcome the many failures of the Trump administration as well as the reality of our situation.
So, will it be, "fool me twice shame on me," or "you can fool most of the people most of the time?" A lot depends upon our educational system. To the extent that private schools and home schooling replace a progressive and centrally controlled educational system will say a lot toward whether or not a new Trump clone can be found.
1
"...evaporization of HIS economic boom"?
Trump inherited a steadily improving economy from Obama. He has been setting it up for failure since taking office.
Ross, please don't repeat his bloviating lies about having done great things for the U.S. econmy.
14
@Seattle Oh, please - we all remember the myth of shovel ready projects
"...evaporization of HIS economic boom"?
Trump inherited a steadily improving economy from Obama. He has been setting it up for failure since taking office.
Ross, please don't repeat his bloviating lies about having done great things for the U.S. econmy.
2
Does this not play into the pitch for the Green New Deal? Stimulate the economy by creating millions of jobs while saving the planet, hopefully with a new face in the White House.
2
First, recognize that if the Democrats win at least 1/3 of the Americans will believe that the election was stolen and will not accept the result. We will see a surge of white nationalism in the Red States, possibly with significant violence.
The Democrats will need to go full nuclear, abolish the filibuster, and possibly pack the courts to get anything done. And it is likely that there will be major international crises as well.
So it’s going to be a bumpy ride!
Recession=Donald Trump loses re-election.
Well here's one old-timer hoping for one then. Couldn't get past that sentence. I surely don't want any worker bees hurt by a recession, but if it takes that to get rid of that despot, so be it. In the long run this country will be much better off.
But just in case, don't forget to vote.
8
"His boom"? It's neither his nor a boom.
8
Assuming Trump will be knocked out of office by a recession is an awfully big assumption.
As best I can tell, a huge proportion of Americans would stand in soup lines for this man so long as they’re convinced he’s preventing the browning of America and preserving their white privilege. That crowd will be egged on by Russian trolls—while the now-more-experienced Russian hackers do everything in their power to swing Trump’s reelection and the GOP weights the scales in his favor with voter suppression and election manipulation efforts like those wielded against Stacey Abrams here in Georgia.
But even assuming Trump loses, where does that leave us? Unless the earth stops spinning the GOP will still hold the Senate, and anybody who thinks Mitch McConnell will offer an “alternative” rather than “opposition”—regardless some centrist coalition—hasn’t been paying attention these last ten years. So long as he is Senate Majority Leader he will prevent any possibility of a Democratic “win” and thus any possibility of meaningful Democratic change.
Heaven forbid that a recession come. It can only hurt those already hurting and push more out of the middles class—while the top of the house barely skips a beat. But if recession does knock the most undemocratic president in history out of the White House, we absolutely must see to it that the most undemocratic Senate leader goes too. So support Amy McGrath’s Senate bid in Kentucky. Our country’s reconstruction my depend on it.
4
Assuming Ross' prognostication is correct, I can only hope that the purveyors of the dockless scooters, mopeds, bikes, and other mobile whatnot join Uber in Chapter 7.
3
There is a lot of optimism in these comments, and in the column, that in a recession, a majority of voters at local and national levels will become rationally aware of how toxic to everyone this "cartoon villain " and his Sgt. Schultz enablers are. I'm not so sure. Confirmation bias is one mean bulldog and he does not release his grip gently. The increasing cruelty and racial animosity of the Republican base is a defining aspect of character, I fear, and as the saying goes: "Why does the Bulldog's nose slope backwards? So he can breathe while he's hanging on."
5
It's as I've always said, the Republicans have masterminded the perfect positive feedback loop to keep themselves in power. They create misery in the lives of working class Americans with their laws and deregulation, then harness the resulting outrage with racist appeals and fear-mongering. Wash, rinse repeat.
4
Trump is nothing but the dying canary in the coal mine.
I suspect all the liberal democracies are preparing for America's economic collapse.
It has been 400 years since Reagan and the self serving government of greed and corruption. It was your government until you replaced your government with government of the "job creators". Everyday you see the "job creators" in the news and learn of their concern only of their wealth and power.
Greed and corruption defines what you define as American conservatism. Thing are not going to get any better until America decides the economy is not more important than your citizens.
"Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose." Kristofferson
8
From Real Time...the country will survive a recession but may not survive 4 more years of Trump...
8
Slumping birthrate is not a worsening.
1
There have been a few studies that prove that Trump voters are not motivated by economics but by racism. So Trumpism's eventual return has nothing to do with an economic downturn and everything to do with White Conservatives' seething hatred of non-whites.
5
Either way, Ross will wash his hands like Pilate...absolving himself of the chaos his party created, starting with the Tea Party, all the way through Trump. He'll go back to slamming whoever isn't a Republican. Pretty simple.
5
Of late, republicans get elected against the wishes of the majority and then govern according to the wishes of a distinct minority ( the 1%). Their economic, environmental, social policies tend to inflict pain on the majority and drive the economy into a ditch. The particular jerk we have in the White House now is a one man demolition derby ( as a comedian pointed out, trump is like having a horse running loose in a hospital ). If it takes a recession to get rid of him before he achieves meltdown of the economy and our national sanity, then so be it. A democrat will restore order( as Clinton and Obama had to do in the past).
5
@Lisa Murphy what are you even talking about? A Democrat will only bring big government. Obama accomplished absolute nothing except becoming a millionaire.
Actually,Ross, a Trump Recession is the least of our problems, when the Alt-Right is terrorizing Liberals and anyone who disagrees with them or their agenda of white supremacy on the internet. There’s an alarming article today in the NYT, everyone should read. And also the article about a small town in Indiana and they’re difficulty with the presence of white supremacy.
Ross, white supremacy is our most dangerous and pressing national issue, it’s insidious, it’s everywhere!
1
It's rather obvious that the platform of tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations doesn't work, but the poor and middle class are happy to vote for this. Amazon made $10 billion last year, paid zero in taxes, and people are good with this because Trump hates the same people they do ... and people wonder why we have an upcoming recession?
5
I'm assuming if Trump wins it will be worse, but since you are an eternal optimist, you didn't think it necessary to countenance that possibility. I'd venture, that even in recession, America will be always be in better shape with Trump out of the picture.
Regardless of what the future holds, it's sunny uplands without him flailing about and thinking that his random pulling of economic levers are the stuff of genius. As for the GOP and the conservative fellow travellers, who deride Trump but are secretly smitten by him - a guilty pleasure -, they'll go back to whatever they think will win them votes: hypocrisy knows no bounds, but unfortunately, that's true on the side too.
All your pious thoughts mean little to those that have a memory. Obama was no saint, but he won, twice, and he had a plan, but all we got from your side was obstruction, so spare me your sentimental musings.
The winner takes all made America great, but it might be its undoing as well; in this new century Trump has let that beast be free again, and I doubt it can be as easily tamed as it was previously, America's enemies are smarter than they used to be, the game is now attrition from the outside, but that'll take a long time, although, devouring yourselves from within will only hasten it.
122
I do not conflate Trumpism with Republicanism. The former finding its origins in fear of the “Other” and anger at change; the latter arising out of self-interest moderated by social obligation (noblese oblige, if you will…). It is a sad human failing that we cannot admit our past actions were wrong despite objective evidence.
The likely effect of a recession prior to the 2020 elections will be a firming of Trumpism across the Republican party. Hard core Trumpists will blame a recession on anyone but themselves, having voted for an economically incompetent administration once already. DJT will launch a scorched earth campaign, blaming Democrats for his policy failures – a laughable construct as he has no policies, only Twitter. Republican Senators and Representatives in red states , fearing farther-right primary challenges, will have the same lack of courage displayed since the rise of the Tea Party.
Mr. Douthat’s concern that the social order will continue to deteriorate is probably on the mark. I disagree that it would be a specific consequence of a Democratic electoral victory. It matters not which party wins the 2020 electoral trial by combat. The rending of social norms inflicted on our nation will not be healed in my lifetime nor that of my grandchildren.
1
Elect a leftist and you’ll find out soon enough. High taxes, unemployment and driving the middle class into poverty are all outcomes of a socialist democracy. And make no bones about it, they will impact the middle class. We hear from Warren about her wealth tax, but she’s very cleverly not told us how she will deliver economic justice to the poor at the expense of more or less everyone else, just that we need to reign in the wealthy.
5
@Hjb actually it was Obama's policies that lifted the country out of the recession, not Trump's massive spending.
11
@Hjb
The Trumpers back loaded us with so much debt that taxes have got to go up for them. Working stiffs will have to pay what they always have been paying. And people will finally get standard brand of health care.
4
That’s just the fear mongering talking points of a party that is defrauding Americans with its trickle down lie and brown man boogeyman.
In reality it was Bush 1 who left Clinton with a recession to fix, Bush 2 did one better by leaving Obama with a deep recession. And the GOP legacy continues with Trump.
A majority of Americans aren’t stupid and that’s why the GOP has won the popular vote just once(by one state) in over 30 years.
2
Democratic voters need to remember that the New Deal happened not because of FDR, who first campaigned on a far more conservative economic platform and initially was reluctant, but because of pressure from the grassroots American left who pushed him to it. How? Organizing organizing and more organizing. Looking ahead we can’t rely on the Schumers or Pelosis to do anything but what they’ve always done. Same goes for Douthat’s depressing glimpse of a powerless future Democrat in the White House. Even if we are so lucky as to elect Bernie or Warren the only way out of this mess isn’t a better president, it’s a mass politics of the people, for the people and by the people! One that demands better and ain’t ready to wait. Root hog or die.
3
Based upon Ross' definition of "recessionary," it would appear that America has been thus since long before 2008--including and especially during its so-called "economic recovery."
1
In the face of a recession and lower interest rates what would be necessary is a massive infrastructure program defined as broadly as possible. From roads to bridges to electricity and gas to the internet. It should be paid for with borrowed money. With McConnell still running the Senate the were be massive amounts of suffering.
Ross avoids the most important issue. If client deniers aren’t replaced there won’t be much left to govern by 2070.
2
Thank you Ross Douthat to explain what could happen to ME in a recession in terms I can understand. It surely drastically increased my anxiety levels. No offense to the wise, knowlegeable economists who are true predictors of how the economy is headed towards gloom and doom. Unfortunately, I do not understand their parlance and the economic downturns seemed a far off reality. But you brought that right to my door-step and I see the clear and present danger to my life as I know it. And what I see I don't like. I've made my decision for 2020.
1
I agree with the conclusions of this article. Basically, if Democrats aren’t able to get the Senate , the economic policies of a would be President will still get held back.
A recession would be more painful as Trump has limited the financial tools at our disposal in a time of recession. The tax cut, increased deficit and pressure on low interest rates. The best stimulative action would be to end the trade war. However, liberal democrats are just as suspicious of trade as the current “President”.
On social issues, Douthat is probably correct that a recession would amplify an already dangerously loud and distrustful social fabric. The Right Wing will increase the rhetoric that minorities and immigrants are ruining your life while the Left struggles to build more inclusivity in the society and rolls back Trump immigration policy. A very combustible outcome.
We will see how strong Americans are. We deserve this. Electing incompetent people to important leadership positions should end up hurting the people who either decided to vote for this monstrosity or came up with 1,000 reasons to justify their apathy, purity tests and ignorance to their responsibilities to vote and participate in the process.
123
@Practical Thoughts so you're saying that retirees who voted for Hillary, and are working to get trump out of office, deserve to lose their savings? It's very hard to make money when you can't find a job in your profession, don't want to stand on your feet all day (and really why should older people have to?)
I live in South Carolina so you're going to assume that I'm the enemy when in reality I'm working to help my little corner turn from redder than red to almost blue.
28
@NYexpat,
The right thing is to get 2020. I hope you can turn that old Southern State Democratic.
I said we deserve this, meaning everybody. Our political system led to the 2016 debacle. Germany elects female scientists. China, while ruthless, puts in people that can draw up a coherent plan and actually execute on it. With the exception of Great Britain and Italy, most Western countries elect competent or above board people.
We put in a full on unqualified individual and made him President based on ranting, raving and entertaining. It’s ridiculous that a guy like that could win.
Why should America go unscathed electing a guy like that with his terrible policies. So yes, we deserve the fallout from those decisions
25
I believe that Senator Warren will be able to get things done by making the wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share. She will be a strong proponent of jump-starting the green economy which will revitalize this nation and spread world-wide to save the planet! Trump and his family will end up in prison. The Republican Party dies a well-deserved death. Warren’s presidency will lead to about 20 years of Democratic women as president which will actually save this nation!
12
I think you'll see a mass exodus of "the wealthy" and their money to other countries before that happens. Elizabeth Warren won't be able to stop them. She hasn't thought it through to its logical end.
2
@JCX What other countries are they going to as they also experience their recessions?
1
@Mark
Corporations don't pay taxes. Workers, owners, suppliers, and customers actually pay (in varying proportions depending upon the relevant elasticities) the taxes that are nominally levied on corporations. Regarding the wealthy, they already pay a disproportionate share of federal income taxes. On the other hand, approximately 47% of Americans pay nothing, nada, zip in federal income taxes. Perhaps we should call upon them to start paying "their fair share".
2
A recession is two successive quarters of a negative GDP. The final arbiter is the National Bureau of Economic Research.
We will see how the collapse of the GOP turns out. Texas will flip blue and Hispanics will reject the GOP. The plutocrats have to be dealt a blow - the Tax Man cometh. Elizabeth Warren is a great talent so I am rooting for her and Uncle Joe.
3
So in Douthat's view no recession means we get Trump in 2020, while a recession sets the stage for Trumpism's eventual return. Sounds pretty bleak to me. Unless we can find a way to rid our country of the blight represented by both Trump and Trumpism, we are doomed.
6
I'm puzzled by the point Ross Douthat is trying to make.
Not to put too fine a point on it: a Republican (George W) runs the economy into a ditch, a Democrat (Obama) rebuilds it despite massive Republican obstruction, another Republican inherits a strong economy and promptly runs it back into said ditch with deficit-busting handouts to the rich and trade wars - and BAD things are supposed to happen if a Democrat gets elected?!?
13
I'm glad to have a significant drop in the value of my IRA if it assures Trump's defeat.
3
"there is no way a president so widely disliked survives the evaporation of his boom."
HIS boom? I don't need to say anymore about this. I'm assuming it's unintentional.
9
"Democrats can nominate any of their candidates and expect to evict the president with ease". Oh, Mr. Douthat, be sure to tape that one up on your wall to quote the day after the election. The Democrats are so desperate to 'evict' Mr. Trump that I expect they'll now start cheerleading for recession. This won't be the first anti-American position they've taken in hopes of injuring Mr. Trump; how about, open borders are in America's interest, and China is not a trade miscreant and we only hurt ourselves by even bringing it up; now I expect they'll come out as pro-recession. What are the American people to think of a party that's all for hurting their own country to gain power?
2
@Ronald B. Duke Perhaps: that party is trying to save our country from a despot, who, along with his party, is destroying their country?
2
On second thought, even if the U.S.goes into recession next year, Trump is likely to be re-elected. Fear and hatred trump economic well-being. Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 77,000 votes in the upper mid-west. Working class white voters in that region fear, even more than before, being "replaced" by brown and black people. With their votes, Trump will cobble together an electoral victory as he did in the last presidential election.
2
Some would cheer anything to be rid of Trump.
Douthat's dream sounds like Republican ideas of centrism, centered way off on the right, but without Trump. I hope that is the least likely way the turbulence shakes out.
2
I guess this is the place where Douthat and I meet and where we both look reality square in the eye. I often wonder if what America calls its radical pre-Age of Reason philosophy conservative.
It was Samuel Johnson who was the conservative philosopher and wrote his Taxation No Tyranny letter To the American Congress in 1775. It was the Whig Parliamentarian and liberal philosopher Edmund Burke who advocated for expanded freedom.
The United States of America embraced science and empiricism. Its deity created and moved on it did not oversee and protect America it was somewhere beyond and left people in charge of destiny.
What better proof that the age of reason is over than Donald Trump is in charge? We are in an age of magic and superstition which would have been perfect if this mystic wasn't over 70.
I am surprised Ross see the same thing in his crystal ball that I see in my tea leaves.
I am surprised that someone whose faith is his rock and foundation sees what I see.
The play is coming to an end and I guess Douthat is wondering why and for me I wonder why I am watching this Bathetic Farce and falling asleep.
What's it all about Alfie?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoNtj27a6Rk
1
No point even living through the next decade. Ross has it all figured out. And, like all Republicans, he figures it will happen with absolutely no effects from climate change.
3
“Meanwhile, the right will have to decide whether it wants to be an opposition or an alternative.”
The train left the station long ago for “principled conservatives” as they became enablers of Trumpism by their silence during almost every utterance of hate and greed by this president.
Late next year, Trump will be voted out along with the likes of Susan Collins and John Cornyn in a deafening roar by an angry electorate.
3
The symptoms of your “social crisis” sure seem rooted in decades of cynical malpractice and corruption of the GOP: decades of tax cuts, erosion of strong social safety net, hypocritical refusal of the GOP to see investments in universal child care, healthcare, family leave policies, and other supports to promote healthy citizens as necessary parts of a strong country and healthy communities.
I wish for once you would be honest and write this column: “How we (the GOP) broke the country.” Calling this a social crisis and pretending this country is broken because of a millions of small personal choices rather than the fault of poor policies and GOP obstruction is really dishonest. Stop calling the horse race and start calling your party to account.
4
Sobering.
I can find no disagreement with the analysis.
2
I'm not buying the conclusion but the future isn't here yet so we'll just have to wait and see what develops.
1
When asked, Michael Wolff responded that "Trump administration will end up in tears". Trump and GOP tore America apart.
It follows that Democrats will have to pick up the pieces and rebuild it.
1
Ross, and your point is???? Trump will have diminished the rule of our republic to a level from which it will never completely recover. Our politicians hardly represented the will of the people before he came along. With an ever increasing amount of dark money available to the wealthy, the slide may slow for a bit, but only before it again accelerates.
A return to feudal-like times with gatekeepers living in guarded communities, governed by trust fund billionaires, orchestrating increasing religious righteousness strife and Stasi-like spies patrolling the internet. How far off is Henry the 8th's mandatory loyalty oath?
2
Actually, Ross, Trump’s “economic boom” was largely (like his supposed wealth) inherited from someone else — Obama — but his prospective economic bust will be all his own...
5
In looking forward to the consequences of recession and how the GOP might fall further into the Trump populism hole, the age of the demographic that supports Trumpism and Fox means that more of them will be dead and not voting. While the young know that climate science and gun induced death is real.
2
I would hope that when trump leaves office his distortions and lies leave, never to return.
I agree with the BBC that "trumpism appears to be more about the president's impulses rather than a coherent worldview."
6
A significant stock market correction would bring a sudden influx of cash. People and companies have been sitting on a lot of cash for a long time, knowing the stock market has been over-priced. Releasing that hoarded money would be a good thing. The problem with a recession is what it does to the working people. I don't care if Trump supporters are decimated, but I definitely do care if good, decent people are. There are good, decent working people who don't support a racist fake president but have modest incomes in fragile jobs. It is that working class demographic for which I have the greatest concern if we hit a recession.
4
Is it really going to take a recession for Trump to lose? What a sad commentary on what America’s become.
6
I wondered how many absurdities we would find in this example of prophecy. First we see without quotation a reference to Trump's boom. It helps that we have no data here for what we have seen is a boom in deficit spending and nothing else. Then we end with a conclusion that is utterly unsupported by the rest of the essay. Just how Trump's failure sets the foundation for the long term rule of what Douthat calls Trumpism is never eplained. In fact it raises the question of just what he means by "Trumpism". Could it actually be the case that he is just about the last columnist to recognize the ineliminable racist aspect in Trump's rule? Or is it that he simply doesn't care? Just what does Ross mean by "populism" anymore? The rest of the world has come to see this word as essentially involving scapegoating of others. Can he possible think that this term is simply about family leave policies? More and more Ross speaks in a language only he can understand.
2
What happens in a recession? Thousands loose their private health insurance because of being laid off. Many more will have difficulty paying off their high interest loans. It is debt fulling this recovery not higher wages. Only then will many see the folly of Trumps policies.
3
"Having guaranteed Trump’s removal from office, in other words, the recession would also set the stage for Trumpism’s eventual return."
That observation seems rather prescient. It wouldn't be another Trump though. He was a lunatic-fringe aberration. It would be a Romney: a steady, sober - in an extreme neo-puritan way - family man in a big way, vulture capitalist in a Bain capital way - the bane of our existence - and last but not least, a "businessman," like Senor Mr. Bankruptcy Trump.
Romney would never go bankrupt himself. He has too much probity and rectitude. He would just bankrupt others (on the vulture capitalist side) and make money on leveraging them out, taking his nice big cut, and then outsourcing their burial to a third-party provider.
And for all the ordinary people who would elect this knight in neo-puritan armor? More of less...
3
When I look around my part of the world I have to wonder what changes a recession would make, if any. The price of housing, both buying and renting, is so extreme I wonder how any person starting up can exist. The place seems much more crowded and dirty than in the past. Mass transit is pricing itself out of reach while it is becoming more and more dirty and unreliable. Empty store front's are all around. Road, bridge and tunnel tolls are out of control. Although I keep reading how inflation is dead my shopping cart is almost empty when my wallet is empty. I am afraid to go to the mall, I might get shot. If these are the great times bring on a recession and a DEM, please!!!
2
Do you really think Trump’s base cares about his policies? Other than some of the rational soybean farmers clobbered by his tariffs, most of his base could give a hoot about his policies. He’s an actor on a stage, a preacher at the pulpit, a WWWF anti-hero obliterating the establishment good guys. It was said during the 2016 campaign by someone wiser than me that Trump’s supporters “did not take him literally, but did take him seriously” and Trump’s opponents “took him literally, but not seriously. His supporters want a villain and Trump’s delivering the villainy on a global scale. They believe that if the economy goes south, so be it. Many of them are already one financial banana peel away from oblivion, completely broke and are afraid of non-white hordes taking over the U.S. Many have been defeated by the “free market” or so cowed by Fox fear or incited by Limbaugh bombast that they are willing to have Trump or Boris destroy everything in fulfillment of their vengeful fantasy of payback for their misfortune. Basically, they would rather starve or become homeless rather than have some non-white get some government bennies, or, god forbid, best them in economic status.
2
So to sum up: once again, Democrats do all the hard work of fixing the GOP caused recession, and take the blame for the unpopular but necessary fixes, like raising taxes, so that a decade down the road, another incompetent greedy Republican can waltz in and claim "only he can fix the (now booming) economy."
We're tired of cleaning up after Republicans.
5
There will be a recession. Soon. And it will be hard.
And the nominee/next President will be Biden.
1
Speaking of journalism’s decline, why can’t some philanthropist set up a big endowment for local news coverage in the US?? Much better than spending it on a useless run for president.
1
God help me, but if a recession is what it will take to bring down that monster Trump, then so be it.
3
Sorry, but I'm not buying this scenario. American-style capitalism has shown itself to be uniquely resistant to depressions, stock market crashes, and Wall Street scandals. The Trump administration is just the latest, greatest threat to all we hold dear, and it, too, shall pass. The sooner, the better.
We will certainly experience a period of huge adjustments, reconfigurations, and philosophical musings about everything that went wrong and where were the guardrails. But IMHO the markets and the world's economy are simply experiencing a giant burp to a bad meal called Trump.
2
I was wish you, Ross, until the concluding line. Please explain. There are definitely other possible next developments.
Many Americans are unaware of the advancements countries like China and other Asian nations have made during the last 25 years. Brand new cities, new transportation networks of high speed rail, new modern airports. New dams, new nuclear power reactors, new universities.
Instead we spent trillions on Iraq and Afghanistan. Few in Congress stood up and went against the consensus to invade.
Now almost two decades later what do we have to show for it.
Likewise here we are all witnessing the destructive policy of irrational government by tweet from our president and again few in Congress willing to speak our against him.
For now, its mainly farmers, and some businesses, suffering directly from his misguided, crazy, irrational thinking, but all of us will be affected, probably for years to come because apparently no one in Congress, and no one in his administration has the courage to stand up to this nut.
2
Douthat simply confirming the pattern of the last 25 years where Dems build up a failing economy only to have Repubs come in and ruin it.
1
The ginormous and unwarranted tax cuts for wealthy Republicans will be reversed, sending yacht makers and private jet manufacturers scurrying for business in Russia with Putin and his band of oligarchs.
2
I think that the majority of the risk is Trump and his Followers (mainly the senate) crazy ideas. Get him out, the world comes back to some since of order, countries cooperate, plans are made, reasonable policies are started, and we get a functional government. He's the problem.
1
re: "there is no way a president so widely disliked survives the evaporation of his boom."
There was never a Trump boom. Just lies and wishful thinking, same as was the case when W. Bush was President. Trump inherited Obama's responsible economic expansion, and turned it into Trump Casino fueled by rapidly expanding debt. He was always gong to fail. The underlying pathos of GOP conservatism is itself an abysmal failure.
3
Come on Ross. We are better than this and must never allow Trump and his ilk to return. I'm not saying it's easy but we have seen evil reincarnate itself time and again. Get involved and push back.
1
You had me at "Donald Trump loses re-election". We can survive a recession, I don't see us surviving four more years of Trump.
1
It takes a peculiar and ultimately rather immature mindset to prefer a general economic collapse over any one officeholder in a country of 330 million. So everyone should be poorer to vindicate one's political convictions? We really have gone around the bend.
3
“...there is no way a president so widely disliked survives the evaporation of his boom.” Sorry, but it was not Trump’s boom but rather President Obama’s boom that Trump inherited and destroyed with his tax cuts for the rich, his trades wars and his exploding the deficit among many other ignorant actions. And there are no “incentives for Trump’s would-be successors to flesh out his populism rather than abandoning it” because Trump and the GOP are not populists. Trump and the GOP are only out for themselves and their fellow rich friends.
2
The Republicans always drive the car into the ditch and the Democrats come along and pull it out. See the last hundred years of US history.
2
OK, a slick analysis here, so let's hear what you predict will happen if Trump gets re-elected. Will it be the same dismal outcome or sunshine and roses?
1
But the actual Trump gone? It will be worth it!
1
The Depression did lead to fascism is Europe, but the US swung left with the New Deal. I think that pattern is more likely to return, especially with Sanders or Warren at the helm.
If the recession is strong enough and happens early enough for conservatives to directly experience the pain and directly witness the flailing incompetence of Trump's response and directly witness McConnell's lily-livered cowardly inaction, they could deliver the Senate to democrats. Then we could see the return of the new New Deal, the return of the 90 percent tax rate, wealth taxes up the wahzoo.
1
Yeah but it would eliminate Trump. So overall, a net win.
Recession or not; Trump loses or not, the Republican Party is finished, gone, extinct. Their policies have been rendered fraudlent, their leaders exposed as incorrigible hypocrites, their "intellectual" legitimacy nonexistent. They may change or keep the name, but it will be a shoe with new laces, soles, heels, insoles, liners, and uppers. It will start by labeling itself conservative, then evolve into whatever functions adequately to balance a Democratic Party ascendent, including the exclusion of white supremacy, economic snake oil, and give-war-a-chance as core values.
In a recession, Ross, you need to drive your point home for those still believing in Santa Trump. China will have moved on to buy soybeans from South America. There will be even fewer coal miners and, for the evangelical leaders, fewer dollars in the church plates.
And, by the way, there will be more angry, young, unskilled, unemployed white men out there.....with their guns.
1
Let's make it less complicated. "It's the economy, stupid" is sound political reality.
And let's make future prognostications simpler too. What Ross Douthat is skirting around and not saying is that the global shift of work - manufacturing shifting to low cost foreign labor; labor arbitrage driving even highly skilled work into global locations; and technology replacing both blue collar and white collar jobs - is driving huge uncertainty and low economic security, which in turn drives political uncertainty.
The last time we had disruption even closely resembling the current state, we had the rise of worker movements, communism, and the reaction of fascism, which resulted in global war and the scapegoating and death of millions of people, 6 million of them Jewish.
We are not looking at the return of Trumpism. We are looking at the return of a secure society and a functioning set of global governments, or the devolution into chaos similar to the 30s and 40s.
143
@Cathy
The more automated production becomes and the less impoverished the "developing" world becomes, the less labor costs will matter and the more logistics and environmental costs will. There is an equilibrium many industries will reach that will result in a large share of North American production.
Routine work that can be done online will indeed generally go to the lowest bidder internationally, but this is also among the easiest type of task to automate.
The "Yang Gang" and other doomsday prophets seem to fail to acknowledge that there are many federal agencies and other location-dependent professions with serious labor shortages. These jobs require training and a high level of responsibility, and we need to make sure we are preparing young people to do them.
20
What actually happens in a recession is a collapse in credit. This can happen simultaneously in government, corporate and consumer credit. Collateral that secured loans is transferred to lenders. Jobs vaporize. The top 2% invests "elsewhere" while loaning out more money at higher rates to people with the best secured assets. The bottom 1/3 of the economy shrinks back and families consolidate housing. Fundamental family relationships falter and fail. The number of homeless grows. Gated communities get better gates. The unemployed examine socialism. Minorities lose jobs and ANY access to credit. Populations shift around the country. People live in cars and "encampments." The government then borrows trillions of dollars from foreigners (Instead of raising taxes.) for infrastructure, job creating, projects. Leftist legislatures find a way to lure capital being held overseas back to the country into "economic recovery zones." The middle class is almost totally destroyed. The wealthy then seek to consolidate their power politically and economically so their advantage is perpetuated. Democratic safeguards, long under attack and diluted, slowly erode. TRUE LEADERSHIP THEN EMERGES. "Prudenter eligere."
Ah, we have survived every republican recession/depression up till now, and we will survive this one.
Nobody does recessions like the GOP. In fact nobody does recessions but the republicans. Remember The GOP gave us Hoover, an authentic Great Depression. Nixon, a genuine crook who helped ruin the economy with stagflation; the Saint, who gave us his own recession, and GHW Bush, who gave us a little war plus recession.
Then W and the GOP spent a trillion or so in wars, and gave us not just a typical, not merely good, but a Great Recession.
And a Frump recession would almost be worth it to get rid of him and the GOP for a long time, say forever.
Maybe Frump's base will sober up and realize that they voted entirely against their own self interest. Maybe not. Then again, the base may dwindle to nothing and go away.
Sounds better and better.
8
Douthat provides some rational perspective on the consequences of the coming recession here at home, yet he doesn't take in to account the biggest factor - the downturns impact on the global economy, particularly China and India.
Both China and India are on the precipice of political and social turmoil. China due to growing intolerance with their repression of basic freedom and rights; India due to a more strident Hindu nationalism just itching to confront its Muslim minority.
Add an economic downturn and this powder keg will blow.
Asia will be thrown in to a massive regional conflicts. India and Pakistan will escalate their differences and go to war. China will devolve in to civil war, which may mean lashing out at Taiwan, Korea and Japan as it may try to hold the Communist hegemony together. It will fail.
Europe will not be left out of this. A recession will lead to a renewed onslaught of immigrants seeking entry. This will lead to stringent border controls and harsh repression as there will be a rise of more fervent and dangerous nationalism.
If we here in the US have any sense, we'll use our oceanic barriers to allow us to survive, along with Canada (maybe Mexico) in splendid isolation. That is, until as back in WW II, at the most desperate hour, we step in and, God willing, restore order to the world.
Is there someone taking bets on how the GOP will behave in event of a Trump loss? If so point me to them because it would be the easiest money of my life. I would sum it up as entrenched and belligerent opposition with never ending investigations from the GOP senate plus GOP attorney generals challenging regulations right and left.
A service economy is the future. The rich want services and everything else is done in a cheaper country.
1
@Robert McKee, It's already now Robert. The service economy has been happening with greater momentum for almost thirty years.
1
@Robert McKee
1- Any country can provide services. Many now can be automated.
2- Somebody has to make things. A country that does not make things is extremely vulnerable on many levels.
@ds I mean even more so. You're right, it has been happening,
but happening is different than happened.
A recession is inevitable, and the only question is when. The warning signs seem to indicate that it will happen within a year. That is, before the next election. Trump is toast.
But the idea that a left leaning government will be unable to govern and sustain a long term hold on American politics is not correct. Demographics indicate a long run for the Democratic party's dominance. And the US is likely to trend socialistic for the longer term.
8
@Barrington
When? If history serves as any guide, when the GOP runs things.
And, IMO, this country was way better off in the years from Truman to Nixon, when the Dems had Congress.
@Barrington
When? If history serves as any guide, when the GOP runs things.
Trumpism is largely about entitlement that people felt from being white and American before there was much competition in most spheres thanks to the cost of logistics, fewer advanced economies around the world and unionized labor here. The people who grew up in or made a career in this world are simply aging out of the workforce and the voter rolls.
Trumpism may return, but holding it off for even eight years might mean only a few people show up to meet it when it does.
4
While you’re at it, try imagining the return of the Glass Steagall Act, and some new iteration of the Fairness Doctrine and the Equal Time Rule.
27
Perhaps the Ds will surprise us and do their jobs as the center left party looking out for working people.
For example, it seems to me that the interests of American workers must be at the heart of rewriting and enforcing our immigration laws. If we allow employers to hire guest workers but only as needed and only on the books in an open and above board way, we’d have better odds of ensuring that hiring immigrants did not have the effect of bidding down wages.
There are humanitarian reasons to oppose the current situation. Undocumented workers are easy to exploit because they’re constantly worried about deportation.
But also, looking at this strictly from the viewpoint of the domestic labor force, there are economic reasons and fairness reasons to rationalize the process and have everything on the up and up.
We should think seriously about the idea that undocumented workers don’t disadvantage Americans who want a decent job simply because they’re here competing for jobs. We should consider whether they disadvantage American workers because they’re too easy to exploit and it’s that which, in turn, bids down wages.
Require employers to offer a living wage and decent working conditions and show they still can’t staff up before allowing them to hire guest workers. We should help train Americans for jobs in industries like construction. No more “promise the voters anything but give them neoliberal economics and culture wars.”
15
"What comes next? In Washington, the centrists get a surprising opportunity."
The Centrists will again get another unsurprising opportunity to show that they are not really moderate. Just halfway between the liberal democratic tradition, and horribly extreme right wing policies of Trump's new Republican party.
Corporations will continue to exert their influence on tax policy.
Gun control will still be put on the back burner, with those 'red-state Democrats' (Republican-lite).
Same thing with women's rights, LBGT rights, and climate change.
"Meanwhile, the right will have to decide whether it wants to be an opposition or an alternative. "
Why shouldn't the Centrists (moderates, Repub-lite, corporatists, red-state Dems, etc), have to decide whether they are progressives, or right wing conservatives??
1
If a Recession becomes apparent sooner than later, might not some brave Republican run against Trump, like Ted Kennedy did against Jimmy Carter, or Reagan against Ford? Trump would prevail, of course, but it would seriously complicate his campaign strategy and deplete funds from the war chest.
The failure of one prominent Republican to challenge Trump could well seal the deal and redefine the GOP decades to come. A challenger risks being tarred and feathered as a Party traitor - but isn't that what bravery is all about?
Of course, a pseudo-challenger might only help Trump with extra publicity and serve as a foil. The opposition would need to be real.
4
@Jeff C. Remind me: did Ted run successfully against Carter?
To whom, exactly, are Republican businessmen expecting to sell their trinkets and widgets to, if all the easy money is at the top —- where the rich who have it have no need to spend it, or do anything productive with it. Isn’t that the seed from which grows a recession ?
7
@Frank
That's next quarter's worry.
I know people will shrug when you say colleges will consolidate, but in actuality they won't just consolidate, they will close. They already are. The right will say that is great that another liberal institution folded and the left will not notice since they have been fevered by issues of identity while ignoring the economic insecurity and injustice in place at the schools. Colleges are often the financial anchor of small rural and suburban communities. Like manufacturing plants in the past were the only source of employment, many colleges are the only source of employment in many towns. Colleges are already treating their employees just like many manufacturers did just before they closed down. Most faculty are now teaching part time without benefits never knowing if they will have work in the coming months. It may not be called a recession yet, but those people that work for colleges are already feeling the downturn because they never recovered from the last downturn. In the next few years watch as colleges fold one by one and the communities suffer financially. It has already happened and is happening now.
12
All decisions are economic Mr. Douthat. That's what economics means: The study of human decision making. We can dress it up in all kinds of fancy mathematics. We can apply it to every conceivable field of human endeavor at any scale. At the end of the day though, economists are simply trying to figure out why you as an individual chose an apple instead of an orange this morning for breakfast. That's it. You can only have one breakfast. Why did you choose the one you did?
@Andy
all decisions are not economic. There are decisions based on other things like aspiration, morality, etc.
6
I never understood what center-left or center-eight is without actually proposing specific policies. What if the next government enacts broad infrastructure program paid by higher taxes, enact transition to universal health care with private insurance still available as in many countries in EU, and gun control that goes deep into removing assault weapons from the circulation? Is it center-left or just left? Certainly, it is not far left, is it? I bet most Americans would just call it common sense reforms.
Mr. Douthat, you haven’t mentioned that consequences of recession lead to reforms that have liberal bias. By definition, any recession will only strengthen the need for economic reforms that target middle class and poor. The deeper the recession, the stronger reforms will be proposed.
With democrat in White House in 2021, and assuming that we are in recession by then, at least a massive infrastructure program, oriented toward green energy and tied to higher taxes for top tax brackets, will be enacted if Senate is in democratic hands. Another likely scenario is expansion of health care to all Americans. Who care if it is left or center-left?
I hope you realize, Mr Douthat that there is no conservative alternative that would make any economic and social sense, be it to fight recession or not, none. There is no center-right, just empty words. And how about right? God have mercy.....
17
Right now without a recession, though consumer confidence is falling, in recent poll Trump does not get more than 39% of the vote no matter which of the five leading Democratic candidates he is matched against.
What makes Douthat sweat is that this upcoming election is going to be the secularists vs the believers. And the secularists are going to win.
His natalist dreams will turn into nightmares as women vote in large numbers for a woman Democratic president, contraception becomes over the counter as do pills to end a pregnancy. Judges are installed who recognize that women have as much right to control their bodies as men.
The great unwashed have not been helped by Trump economically but they still love him for he speaks to their racism, misogyny and xenophobia. After a Democratic victory they will of course remain seething with resentment waiting once more for another Trump to emerge
And one will. But this time what remains of the country club Republicans will recognize the threat and not allow him to sit at their diminishing table.
4
I harbor the idea that economics function in four possible domains, inflation (growth), stasis, recession and deflation. If the wheels fall off, will recession be the result or will deflation be the result? If deflation is the result, what might the outcomes look like then?
I wouldn't be so confident that a recession will result in Trump's defeat. It won't dissuade his base. And I doubt that the doom-and-gloom language of the Dems will really persuade the independents. Another scenario is that the voters will decide not to change horses mid-stream. Like everything else about the 2020 race, no one really knows.
@Ulysses
You forget that Trump's base does not represent the majority of the American electorate who didn't vote for him last time either.
The problem then -- and now is the Electoral College, the Republican Senate, Russian interference, Citizen's United, Facebook & other social media, and FOX news.
7
@N. Smith That darn Constitution! And why isn't everyone required to watch CNN and MSNBC, so that they will be told the truth?
1
Or ... a center dominated Congress continues to expand health care coverage to all Americans, reverses on-going conservative efforts to make a good education the provenance of the wealthy alone, and grows the economy by turning the US into the world leader in clean energy. Meanwhile the conservative populists muck about in their own dreck.
5
The author referred to Trump's boom. Actually, Trump is still riding the boom Obama started. If anything, Trump's actions are countering the Obama boom.
22
I see this as an astute analysis. With an added fear, by no means no own invention: the increased rise of a truly angry, violent right, armed and dangerous, who, fueled by a defeated 45, fight back against whatever Democratic/liberal persons or changes appear in 2020 and after. Not a civil war, but a one-sided battle that could virtually consume the remains of our social culture.
This is not just 45's scare tactic of "if you don't re-elect" me, but a concerted effort on behalf of, perhaps, 15% of the population to radically undermine America, in whatever ways required.
10
@SGK or, it’s also entirely possible that Trump wins again. Politics is nuts, y’know. If that were to happen, I could also see riots in the the streets of deep blue places which have never accepted the 2016 results. Either way, the possibility of civil unrest is high.
A dour set of doom & gloom predictions that largely will not come to pass. The yield curve is inverted in-part due the Fed’s QE programs that vacuumed-up supply and pushed intermediate and long rates lower. It’s an artificially flat curve augmented by elevated demand from people & institutions seeking anything better than sub-zero yields.
Money losing start-ups have always come & gone. The dot.com bubble taught us that before. Some of today’s hot IPO’s will make it, some won’t. That’s a market-based reality.
I’m not sure what saves journalism. Part of the reason local broadsheets are failing is that so many of them simply repackaged AP & UPI stories under their banner. The web is far more efficient at content distribution than is the afternoon paper. Maybe if more journalists were original & unbiased, people would have a greater interest.
Central control & central bankers will be the bane of free societies everywhere. Continued reliance on big government will only ensure continuing mediocrity. The Democrats solutions will only make matters worse although the GOP has done little to solve these problems.
3
@Once From Rome Centralized capitalism -- a huge proportion of money in the hands of a tiny pool of people -- is no better than centralized control via government. At the moment, we have more to fear of that than of so-called socialism.
9
@Sarah D.Who'd a thunk it? Corporations morph into a defacto government, with more control over our daily lives than the nominal 'government' that we elect? It could happen.
4
The world is at a critical point in history, as it has been before.
What trump has done is brought out the worst of humanity across the world. Nationalism, white supremacism, religious extremism have been endorsed and given free license to run wild.
What happened in our 2016 election was not just a U.S. disaster, it impacted the whole world. In effect, 60 million people have taken hostage 7.4 billion and put them all at risk.
We have the most critical election in our countries history coming up. Trump is burning down the world and he needs to loose and loose badly.
With a devastating repudiation of everything trump represents in 2020, we can recover and so can the world.
May we never forget what is happening and never let it happen again.
14
@Phil
Please don't ignore Russia's finger on the scale, Putin is happy and trump as more than fulfilled his every dream.
The once-great American democracy is floundering followed by England's all too stupid Brexit, which does impact the European Union. The Middle East is its usual quagmire with too many selfish thumbs on the scales. Asian is uncertain as is Latin America. What could possibly go wrong?
We had a Centrist in Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Merrick Garland. According to current Republican dogma, they were all somehow too radical to govern or judge.
How is it that you, a Republican Conservative, now apparently applaud post-Trump centrism?
That said, I hope the rest of the party gets whatever memo changed your mind.
22
Despite that fact that I am of the impression that the mass media has something against Tulsi Gabbard, I believe that she may be the moderate progressive that Mr. Douthat imagines. However, I believe that a candidate like Ms. Gabbard may not galvanize anew, the GOP obstructionists, but rather give them pause, and another chance to show they can be reasonable, not just the party of "no".
I say this because I was rather shocked the other day as I was speaking to some GOP acquaintances, with one of them disparaging Joe Biden. I moved from V.P. Biden, and mentioned Tulsi Gabbard. To my incredible surprise, the most right-leaning of the two said, "I like Tulsi Gabbard. But the press hates her." Take that for what it is worth, press.
It got me thinking that Tulsi just might be able to unify the country. Maybe it was just lip service my GOP guy was giving, and that he would ultimately vote for orange-headed architect of the "snowflake economy". I can't know. What I do know is that his saying he liked my candidate of choice so far, gave me a glimmer of hope that I haven't felt in a while.
So if the press really hates Tulsi Gabbard, consider that she may be just the unifying force the country needs. If something she said, and/or a stand she took in the past disturbs you, consider that she is, and acknowledges, that she is a work in progress. Any infractions are small potatoes when compared to her positive potential for advancing progressive causes, IMHO.
1
"Meanwhile, the right will have to decide whether it wants to be an opposition or an alternative." Sorry Ross. You can't "decide" to be an alternative. You have to make proposals that could plausibly work as an alternative. Slashing taxes, dismantling regulation, and all but eliminating the role of government...well, they tried that in Kansas. It didn't work out very well. If the right truly wants to offer an alternative that is not in the realm of fantasy, it will have to reinvent itself, to become something to which it currently bears very little resemblance.
16
We can all speculate about what might follow from a recession and Trump’s defeat in 2020. But no need to engage in guesswork if he is re-elected. It will be an extinction level event. And I am not speaking metaphorically.
15
@Victor James: It will end the last chance to avoid an extinction-level event that was already in progress, but that some of us (yourself included) would like to have stopped years ago.
But that's just me imposing a fine-tuning on your analysis. If he wins again, the odds of us turning it around go to somewhere between slim and zero.
@Victor James True, you are not speaking metaphorically, but are speaking hyperbolically. A challenge in trying to change course is so many who wish to get rid of Trump speak of such exaggerated horrors and forecasted disasters that moderates at best don't believe them, and at worst laugh at them. Moderation and voting will stem the tide, not predictions of gloom.
"In Washington, the centrists get a surprising opportunity."
Unlike the Great Recession of the Bush-Obama years, there is no one coming to rescue the economy this time. It will quickly become a crisis and anyone who has read 'Shock Doctrine' knows that crises are opportunities to make big changes. Centrists, by definition, support the status quo. Obama was a centrists, so he saved the capitalist system for the capitalist. We ain't doing that again.
6
Trump will lose.
Don't be so sure. I suspect those 2016 Trump voters who "have seen the light" and may abandon him have already done so. His overall popularity ratings is the same as it was 18 months ago.
Will economics trump [sic] a cult of personality? I don't think we know.
2
The looming environment crisis can be the impetus to reverse a recession. Raise taxes on the very wealthy, encourage environmental innovation, fund overdue infrastructure, a lot of these jobs firmly anchored in the U.S. , and technology that can be exported across the globe. But all the potential depends on a Democratic majority to dislodge an obsolete republican belief in trickle down economy. A belief that's only consistency is its failure.
Or we can keep looking backward and continue our slide into a second or third tier country while dictatorships thrive and democracy dies.
22
@Maureen Steffek
If one looks at the European democracies, raising taxes on the rich is simply not enough. Our total taxes as a percent of GDP are in the bottom decile of OECD countries. Corporate tax receipts are at a modern low.
We need a consumption tax to broaden the tax base on bring receipts up from 19% or so currently, to 25-26% of GDP. Before you bring up the issue of the regressive nature of VAT taxes, there are counter measures to both protect the bottom quartile of the income distribution.
The increased revenue would be used in ways to really help the economy such as fixing our seriously broken infrastructure, improving and reducing the cost of education, and addressing our seriously broken health care system.
But, wait. I'm sorry. I thought the role of government was to improve the lives of all its citizens. But no, we measure our success by the stock market not people's well being and happiness. That is just un-American!
4
All the more reason for the Democrats to have a strategy which addresses the very basic needs of all. Most important is to frame these in simple terms and repeat them. Create slogans ... easy to remember and inspiring. Then, fulfill the promises.
That should do the trick ....
4
This article hints at the end of professional journalism. It is regrettable but not surprising. Their role as guardians of democracy is nearly gone.
The days of effective investigative journalism are dead. The role of dark money and special interests has been institutionalized. There are endless examples of case where legislative action ( or inaction ) blatantly defies the public will. ( Gun control, drug pricing, monopoly growth, Citizens United, etc. )
It appears that Washington truly is a swamp; filled with self dealing, corrupt power seekers. The public is helpless to root them out.
The media reports these events, but their response should match the public outrage. It should be shrill and relentless.
6
@Bongo: You may be right in general about the decline of journalism as a viable profession. But you're ignoring the very fine investigative work that some of our major (and smaller) news outlets have done in the age of Trump - notably in the New York Times, the Washington Post and The New Yorker.
2
@Bongo,
Investigative journalism isn't dead. In fact, we're currently seeing a prime example of it's well being in the form of one Julie Brown of the Miami Herald, who, earlier this year, took on the case of Jeffrey Epstein's sweetheart deal with his prosecutors a decade ago. Considering the consequences of her revelations, I should think she'd be worthy of a Pulitzer, but if not that, she has to have inspired young journalists to take on corruption and injustice, no matter how powerful the people involved. I think we can trust them; this new generation coming into focus are fierce and formidable; we need to support them, and yes, perhaps guide them a little. They may be capable of doing things we only dreamed of... if our cynicism doesn't get to them first.
1
This is a good article and very fair forecast, terrifying as it may be. The silver lining of ridding ourselves of trump may be way too thin. One area I disagree slightly, while an actual immigration crisis may subside a bit, the populist right will never hear that as they will be inundated with propaganda from Fox News et al blaming immigrants and Dems immigration policy for their worsening economic fate. And, unfortunately, this will be effective, as we’ve seen for years now. More anti immigration furor will be stoked and as predicted in this column, trump 2.0 will seize the opportunity.
5
Worthwhile set of speculations to consider. Interesting thought experiment of sorts. Some corrections:
- This boom dates back to 2014/2015. It is not the current administration's boom (not messing up the boom outright in a year doesn't make it theirs)
- There is not much populism with the alleged populism, just demagoguery and identity politics - should spell check and see where populism crops up as a word and check whether demagoguery is the appropriate term ...
7
With an all-but-certain recession on the horizon, the smart thing to do is prepare for it now; much like many Britons are now doing with the pending Brexit, because things are sure to get rocky here.
Maybe not exactly along the lines as Mr. Douthat has noted, but certainly close.
And while it will take a toll on every American -- and ultimately, the world, the one who will suffer first and foremost from all this will be Donald Trump, who has made having a U.S. vibrant economy the raison d'etre of his presidency -- that, and creating a civil war.
At the moment there are so many crisis situations facing this country, that it's hard to know where to begin when recounting them.
But one thing is certain, we need a changing of the guard in our government before "our great experiment in Democracy" fails.
And we fail along with it.
7
@ N.Smith
Well said
A recession will mean the end of Trump. Nothing matters as much as that.
24
Recession will lead to Warren or Bernie winning. Then we can build up our safety net and work for the people and our country.
26
@Observer
Correction... a recession will all but guarantee a Biden victory, as he is literally the only one running who can claim to have been part of the administration that fixed the last republican recession. Experience counts.
1
@Observer
Now all you have to do is convince the MAJORITY of moderate Democrats to vote for either of them.
Good Luck with that.
@Observer
Again. All you have to do first is get the MAJORITY of moderate Democrats (and the African-American community) to vote for either of them.
Good Luck with that!
In some ways, Republicans out of power will be even worse for the country. If they can control the White House and Congress despite losing the popular vote by a wide margin and still scream nonsense about the game being rigged and "real" Americans under attack, I can barely imagine what they'll feel entitled to yell from the sidelines under Democrat government. My prediction: no matter which Democrat becomes president in 2021, every Republican will stand shoulder to shoulder to repeat endlessly that that person is a socialist and should be impeached. Maybe just go ahead and call for an armed rebellion. What do they care? Their mission is to burn the house down and blame Democrats for it and at this point it's pretty clear that little things like the law, honesty or civility would get in the way of that. I don't know what to expect exactly, but it will get much, much worse before it gets better, if it ever does.
41
@Mr. Chuck True. Remember, we've only bee this polarized as a country exactly once before: The run-up to the Civil Way. The fuse is already lit for a second one. And sooner or later, make no mistake, it will happen.
6
@Mr. Chuck
Yup. It's obvious that the two parties are the Democratic party and the anti--small-d-democratic party. That is: one side believes in basic governance by the people, and the other size believes in nothing.
1
@RLS
Yup. At least the Germans had the intelligence and moral fortitude to face what they did squarely and admit their guilt. The south... not so much. And that form of entitled "pride" (that is: feeling entitled to an easy life and job because your skin is white) has unfortunately spread to many rural corners of the USA.
No wonder they venerate the king of the lazy, Donald Trump. Never did a lick of work in his life and they love it and want that for themselves. Gross.
4
Such pessimism. Should a recession help rid the country of our current dysfunctional commander-in-chief, at least half the country and more will be dancing in the streets. I believe there is much about America that is positive that we can harness. It will require new thinking and putting the brakes on our escalating slide into plutocracy.
We can rebuild and expand the middle class by revaluing labor and spreading the wealth allowing us to absorb millions of immigrants who would become productive citizens. Freedom and liberty are not just for the few who want to accumulate all they can. Freedom and liberty should be measured by the health and wealth of the whole.
38
This op-ed is pure fantasy, the worst mix of what one wants to happen and what one fears will happen. It assumes that we are in a strong economy at the moment, though to some it still feels like we are recovering from 2008. The whole idea that Trump will lose and that centrists will rein supreme is clear wish fulfillment. More than likely in a recession people will retreat to extremes, blaming the lack of their preferred policies for causing the recession and making it worse than it needs to be (and likely rightfully so).
If we will go into a recession, the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer. Just as is happening right now, just more so. And the recession is most likely the start the day after Trump gets reelected, because stranger things have happened.
10
@James
I agree. There are many risks such as a third party candidate on the left siphoning off votes like Nader and Stein did, particularly if a centrist gets nominated. You never know.
And nothing, nothing will change unless a veto-proof majority in the Senate emerges. The Republicans will again become the party of "no" and they will do everything in their power to weaken the executive branch just like they did with Obama. It is all a zero sum game.
One almost wants the economy to fail so badly we get another Roosevelt but that requires a takeover of congress but given the essential nature of our "unrepresentative" democracy where states with low populations and Republican rule driven by corporate money have veto rights over everyone else, well you get my point.
3
@James
The strangest thing of all would be for Trump to get reelected.
1
Ross shouldn't be so certain of Trump's political demise. We have never had a president who had Norman Vincent Peale as his pastor. Trump won't just be a passive witness to a recession. He use all the tools for persuasion to keep consumer 'animal spirits' alive and well irregardless of the global economic situation.
3
Trump is nothing but a con man. Surely, everyone who is not an Evangelical will see that the Emperor is not wearing any clothes sooner or later.
1
@Jack
Yup. This whole article is based on the idea that Trump got elected because of economic populism.
No. Wrong.
Trump got elected out of pure racial, misogynistic, and xenophobic spite. Literally: "we hate you and want to hurt you."
The economy only matters because it is one means to hurt the already vulnerable, but take that away and the Trumpsters will use guns, sticks, and fists.
2
@K. Anderson
Are you kidding me, he's not conning anyone. The trump voters are not stupid and have not been tricked. They are getting exactly what they wanted when they voted for Trump: a means of expressing their hatred and fear of minorities, women, foreigners, and liberals.
The Trump vote is literally: "I hate you and want to hurt you, but I am too lazy, cowardly, or incompetent to do it myself, so I'll get this guy to do it for me."
2
Tax cuts as stimuli wear thinner with time, deficit accumulation is perpetual. The tax cuts goosed the GDP a bit but tax revenues suffered and much of the benefit to corporation along with the reduced repatriation provision went towards stock buybacks which also push up the stock marked indexes for a while. Most focus goes on the consumer upon whom US economy relies to keep up the statistics. The consumer relies on cheap Chinese goods so he can keep spending in volume on junk. Technology is excellent but it is peripheral to the substance of life excepting the wealth it has generated for its founders and earliest investors. The US has a broad array of assets in natural resources, innovativation, capital, good governance underpinnings and human talent. It will come through this. But the real matters above economics are global stability in immigration and climate change terms. If that is also mismanaged the way the internal policies are now poorly administered by Trump, we are all in for a rough ride in next 30 years.
13
What happens in a recession is that the country votes in Dems to clean up the fiscally Conservative mess.
114
As Adrienne Rich informed us, "Weather abroad /
And weather in the heart alike come on / Regardless of prediction." While it may be fun or interesting or frightening to speculate on consequences of the coming recession--and of course it is coming--the entire enterprise of conjecture is little more than a parlor game and ultimately brings us, through fear or delusion, farther away from that perfect union to which we all strive.
11
Let’s be realistic. Republicans always avoid making difficult or politically costly decisions. That’s what Mitch McConnell is for.
Republicans already have a post-Trump succession plan in place to further destroy America: Ivanka, Jared, Baron. No need to worry about gaming the electoral college.
12
This country is already in a recession, lest Wall Street. But, every negative pointed out, in this column, is already occurring. Even Trump realizes that what he has done has sent this country on a trajectory to an economic recession. He made that clear, the other day; elect him or watch the economy crash.
The problem, come 2021, with GOP created deficits, and much less revenue, the new administration will have less to work with than President Obama did. The "recovery" from the Great Recession was uneven and never made it to a number of Americans. The next recession, may even have worse results. Whatever the case, this country could be ripped apart by nationalism, anti-immigration, white supremacy, economic hardship and political polarization.
24
@Nick Metrowsky Yes. The point of Republican tax giveaways to rich people/corporations is not just to reward their donors. It's also to hamstring future administrations. Stacking the courts so that debtors have no recourse and voter suppression so that citizens have no recourse go hand in hand with stripping government of resources with which to help people. Wonderful to have such forward-thinking cons in our midst.
31
Mr. Douthat, at least with this piece, you have temporarily redeemed yourself. With regard to the three Silicon Valley firms you mentioned, they are not real technology firms, but “old line” service companies merely using technology to goose “profits” through scale. And as for academia, the consolidation, or even loss of some small colleges would be an opportunity to reduce the number of unneeded college graduates and enable the remaining colleges to achieve economies of scale.
10
@Biggs,
Silicon Valley isn’t going anywhere. The reason why they became popular was because of the lousy service and lack of innovation from the incumbents. They refused to modernize. Taxi companies restricted the number of drivers creating an artificial shortage, they had lousy service, untrustworthy billing and refusal to pick up types of passengers.
Uber may fail, but the dispatch system and expanded driver base/automated car is here to stay by some successor who will tweak the model.
As for food and grocery delivery, that too will stay but be the purview of the well-off who are the only ones who can truly afford the “real” cost of those services.
7
It's unlikely that our Congress, most of whom are bought and paid for by special interests, will get much accomplished no matter what party is in charge. Most of the people who are or become politicians are quickly co-opted by powerful and/or moneyed interests who don't care about the majority of the American people. Our situation is not hopeless but revolution rather than evolution may be in our future.
11
Want a real answer to what happens in a recession, ask the few left who were in the Depression: Unfettered greed and a wild, hot weather that blew our crops to dust.
It took a World War to get us out of this purgatorio, along with a return to our knees to pray for betterment. It worked.
Not much has worked since and much has been lost once again: the worrisome weather is back, and we have once again lost our faith and prayers.
We need no more wars. We do need more praying and doing good unto others instead of hate.
4
Indeed. Back to basics people. Success is guaranteed when love of ALL others guides us.
Wouldn’t we be a smarter and better country if we got rid of Trump and the GOP as we know it now independent (italics) of the economy?
Wouldn’t we be a smarter and better country if we elect progressives into the White House and (italics) the congress who would get us universal healthcare, free public education from Pre-K through graduate school, a living wage for all who work, gender equality and a 21st Century infrastructure?
Wouldn’t we be a smarter and better country if fake named entities like Citizens United are gone for good; NRA becoming National Hunters (italics) Club; unionization rates in the private sector going from 6.5 percent to 65 percent (and higher)?
The answer my friends should not (italics) be “blowing in the wind.”
12
Forecasting the stock market or a recession is futile. This is what is wrong with media today. No one can forecast what is going to happen. One can wish or hope but forecasting the future is a waste of time. The media ought to spend more time telling exactly what is happening in our world, not what might happen in certain scenarios.
6
If only we could be sure that a recession would defeat Trump, I would even endure your most direr (even if not totally accurate) prophecies.
Unless the Democrats get their act together and put forth a short and sweet alternative agenda, we are doomed to four more years of the worst President since Herbert Hoover.
It is way past the time to admit that Trump's election was a fluke caused by the perfect storm of a weak candidate, poor turnout and Russian interference via social media. Not a movement call Trumpism.
Only then will we "bind up the nations wounds" and begin to address the real challenges of the 21st century like climate change, the widening gap between the wealthy and the poor just to name two.
7
@Shirley Eis -- Poor turnout was not just a fluke.
It was a vote. It was a vote against both options. It was a vote against status quo, and against Trump's bombast.
Don't do it again. Don't run for the status quo ante Trump.
2
The column belongs to Douthat’s large view on the current two parties system as dominant, which would alternate one with the other in an apparently contradictory way. Each pushes forward the other in fighting back. Today (or yesterdays), culture matter lots too. To me, Mr. Trump made his days by making his trend of anti-liberal trends. Now, criticisms on open borders as policy recede themselves because of the El Paso shooting not to be overlapped. Big liberal media are on the way to proceed class action like victims to be categorical, which may be suitable to promote Dem presidential candidates. As usual, many things are happening. What is the next, according to NYT? Readers wish columnists break through the patterns, to seek and say truths for all people.
There is no Trump boom. We got a small 1 year increase in GDP in a fully employed economy. It's already evaporating.
We have increased Federal spending dramatically, cut taxes on the the super wealthy dramatically, increased taxes on low wage workers through tariffs and privatized a good deal of our government. We have given away publicly owned lands to private business interests while adding a trillion dollars to our debt on an annual basis.
We are getting a smaller public sector, less health care, less public land and public services along with a massive debt load with almost no GDP growth that's measurable on a long term basis. We gave up tools we can use to mitigate the next recession in an absolute giveaway to carbon producers and arms dealers.
We have also sowed distrust on our national security agencies, justice department and dismantled our regulatory agencies which adds a huge future liability on the public.
An explosion of band width needed to operate twitter is not an economic boom.
82
@HL -- We don't have "a fully employed economy."
There are vast numbers of people left out.
They voted, or failed to vote for, in the last election. They'll vote or at least withhold their support in the next.
They matter politically. They matter morally. They are there in the real economy.
3
@HL
Expansion funded by National Debt is not "growth".
1
Most of Douthat's prognostications sound valid, except one. A reduction in employment opportunities will not slow the flow from Central and South America. Because, simultaneous to the recession will be a worsening of the climate crisis which is already having an outsized impact on these regions. If one has to choose between a country with less jobs or a country with less food and water, it's an easy choice.
13
@thebigmancat -- They are fleeing a level of disaster that makes our worst look very good to them.
The only solution is to fix their disaster. That is possible because the US has strongly contributed to those disaster. Things would start to get better if we just stopped making them worse. Then we could actually help.
3
I'm not so sure Trump loses in the event of an economic downturn. He will sell himself as the man that can fix it, and decry the democrats who want to give everything to everyone for free. Demanding altruism in a time of hardship is not a good political strategy. The democrats will have to do better.
7
@Dinowhat about the Russians? Nobody’s talking about the Russians. Do you think they’re sitting on their hands?
Are we going to go through the torture of thinking we’re going to have a legitimate election only to have the rug yanked out from underneath us? The talking heads from all sides keep talking about the 2020 election. What about THE RUSSIANS?
1
@Dino When did the Democrats say they "want to give everything to everyone for free"?
1
Douthat is forecasting impressively this morning, but nobody's perfect.
After recession and defeat the GOP base will only be reduced to the Southern White working class. Moreover, as the Democrats will have regained the Senate, Red State obstruction may be less onerous than Ross predicts, especially if McConnell has been retired and his GOP replacement has at least a Reagan-like degree of moderation.
Importantly, less dramatic economic slowdown than full recession should suffice to result in about what this morning's precient Douthat forecastes.
5
If a recession is the most reliable way to ensure Trump's defeat in 2020, should those of us who want to preserve democracy in this country be rooting for a recession?
5
@MS -- If Trump can convince voters that Democrats think that, then he'll get re-elected because of the recession. He'd certainly try.
2
@MS
Why not ask what is better for the country?
Continuation of trumpism, sliding to fascism and inevitable decline? How long you can keep propping up the economy with trillion plus deficits?
If the recession strikes and democrats enact reforms that are good for the middle class, it is no brainer.
The Federal Deficit balloons from a starting point of a trillion Dollars a year.
Interest on the national debt becomes a huge expense in itself.
Investors start to doubt the government will ever repay, and short term Treasury Bills expire, and investors demand higher interest rates. The cycle is relaunched.
Getting worse and worse.
Ask Greece what happened.
5
@David Martin Greece did not borrow in its own currency - terrible analogy.
The one item you mentioned that scares me the most is the loss of insightful, talented writers like you who thoughtfully practice journalism. We are indeed lost without our newspapers.
8
It is depressing to think of all the positive accomplishments Hillary Clinton might have achieved at this point in her term had she won the Electoral College. Obama took us one step forward in so many areas only to now have Trump skip us at least two steps back. I am tired of Democratic Presidents having to spend much of their term and most of their political capital cleaning up the messes of their Republican predecessors. I don't envy whomever wins the election.
54
@JBC
I feel that way when I think of Al Gore as President. A champion of the environment, he would have pushed for a more sustainable path back at the beginning of this century.
There would have been no invasion of Iraq with all its death, waste and destruction and no power vacuum which allowed the rise of ISIS.
9
Periodic recessions are unavoidable but they could be mitigated. However, the Republican Party has now TWICE presided over economic policy regimes that juiced profits to the one percent at the expense of the rest of us and in the first case left the Dems to clean up the mess, all the while obstructing these efforts. It looks like that could happen again.
Dems need to avoid the trap of appearing to root for a recession as a way of ensuring Trump's downfall. Bill Maher, sitting on his bags of money, did this last week, saying that it would be worth the pain of a recession to get rid of Trump given the longer term damage that another Trump term would deliver. He may be right, but Dems can't be seen to embrace it. Trump and the Republicans have governed with such bad faith and incompetence that it ought to be possible to beat them without hoping for a bad economy. All it requires is for Dems to stop shooting themselves in the foot. A tall order, I admit.
40
An interesting op-ed. I have one quibble. The current pack of Democrats running for president have turned left but this is typical of presidential elections. A recent NYT article discussed that the Democrats have stayed left-center while the Republicans have left the center for the right (assuming the center is not relative or at least has some sort of historical weighting so that it is not just the average of left-now and right-now. Many Democrats still feel like centrists. In lumping together the Democrats who blame the center for failing, you have inadvertently promoted a false equivalence between Democrats and Republicans. One group has been driven off the historic center by ferocious gerrymandering that it is responsible for itself. One group is more than willing to govern from the minority, which does not allow for defections, thus strengthening the turn to the right. There is no longer fair and balanced behavior from the Republicans. They have throughly abandoned the center. The blame for the collapse of the center is mainly theirs.
25
You had me at Trump loses. I agree with your outlook, but think the chances of it playing out exactly the way you describe are in the minority. Yes, turmoil is inevitable in 2020, it’s just the way the man operates. 2021 will be the new administration reversing all of the Trumpian policies. Recession or not the economy will rebound because trade wars will be canceled and Obama era agreements will be re-instated. (Question the impact of a no-deal Brexit in global economy.) The greater impact on the economy will be the effects of climate change over the next decade. As far as the divide in the country with right-wing civil discontent? They have gone unchecked for 4 years. Doubt that will remain the operating plan of a new administration. But, they will be back where the like to be (the far right thinkers), in the back seat drivers seat, rather than the drivers seat.
4
Quite an avid imagination. Funny how he can't imagine that Elizabeth Warren's policies can work; that's outside of his imagination. So let's imagine: regulation over Wall Street reduces speculation and leads to a stronger long term economy; the end of subsidies to oil and coal lead to a boom in green technology with a growth in new jobs; universal healthcare leads to a healthier population and lower health care costs; affordable education leads to a more educated and more productive work force and so a stronger long term economy; the banishment of a white nationalist president leads to better racial relations. I could go on.
57
Access to universal healthcare—don’t make it mandatory, and let the market prevail. If medicare-for-All-who-want-it better than private (in whatever ways people interpret that), insurance companies will be forced to compete. End subsidies to sugar, and tax it—like cigarettes, and maybe future generations will become healthier to boot.
10
It amazes me how Trump's "base" keeps getting described in class terms that are inaccurate.
The real Republican base that is and has been reliable for Trump and any GOP presidential candidate has been white, suburban and rural.
While it's true that some within those geographic niches are working class, the majority of the conservative GOP is middle and lower middle class.
By characterizing Trump voters as blue collar it leave the false impression that they are lower educated and thereby more susceptible to his lies.
In swing states like Pennsylvania and Michigan blue collar voters for the most part stayed in the Democratic column.
While it's true that more education generally tilts voters toward liberal views, the white, middle class suburbanite remains a GOP stronghold.
They support the GOP more than Trump. It may be unsettling to thing that educated people support Trump. But unlike the Democrats, the Republicans are committed to ruling America, not governing America. And they will hold their nose and vote for a misogynistic racist to achieve those ends.
24
@Drspock
It all comes down to religion: the GOP vote based on abortion and a perceived morality.
"There is no way a president so widely disliked survives the evaporation of his boom."
Again, THERE IS NO TRUMP BOOM.
It's a myth.
The short numbers:
GDP grew 2.5% in 2-18 and is growing 2.1% this year (on an annual basis) thru June. It's no better than Obama and could turn out worse.
Stocks grew 1.8% per month from the bottom in March 2009 until the day tRump was elected. From then until now, the number is just 1.2%.
Jobs are doing no better, as the monthly average isn't appreciably different than Obama's last 2.5 years.
And all this has happened after a huge tax cut and a budget deficit that's gone from about $600B in Obama's last fiscal year to just over $1T now.
48
@Chris Manjaro I do disagree with you on one point. You say Trump's monthly jobs average isn't appreciably different from Obama's last 2.5 years. However, Trump's average is 191,000/mo and Obama's is 216,000 per month or a difference of 750,000 jobs which I think is appreciably better than Trump's.
13
@David Thanks David.
1
Trump is not going to lose the election, unless the Russians want him to.
Even then he won't go peacefully.
8
You missed the most important point of all Ross. Our most glaring social problem in this country is the wealth gap where the top 1% has seen it's wealth increase 4 fold in the last 30 years and the bottom half of our population has gone into negative wealth territory. Those in the upper range will not be affected one bit by a recession, in fact they will be buying up stocks at bargain prices. As the economy recovers the wealth gap grows. This is one of the fundamental weaknesses of the capitalist system when it is poorly regulated.
44
@Johnny
The top 20% wage earners pay 87% of the US national income tax. Our policies should be less about punitive actions against people who generate wealth and giving moe people access to better ways build income and savings.
3
@Pls -- That 20% has some 90% of the national income above a fair poverty line. Of course they pay the income tax.
7
You say that but I bet you do not support policies that would lead to that: inflation indexed min wage, public option for health care, unionization.
There are many of us with a lot to lose financially in a recession who would STILL put that on the line to defeat Trump. We are the people who love our country the most and are so sad to see his destructive results on the environment, our allies, the ruination of our government (even the dept of Agriculture), the gross mismanagement of other agencies by ex lobbyists, and the harnessing of hatreds for political gain. We just cannot have another 4 years of Trump.
23
Recession. A price too high for ousting Trump. Democrats should do their homework and make Trump a one-term president in a good economy. Hard but doable. A few months ago I thought it was impossible to beat Trump in 2020.
Now, as tensions with China and Iran increase; the immigration policies more cruel with each new regulation and, in general, an administration that governs for the product and service providers, not for the consumers, I see a chance for Democrats.
But I hope we avoid a recession. Too much suffering for the people who have the least.
10
@Aurace Rengifo Democrats don't have any real tools to fight Trump wrecking the economy. His trade war with China is based on executive action, and the Republican controlled senate will never pass anything they propose, because they are terrified of him even if they disagree on tariffs and fear for their own re-election.
6
@Aurace Rengifo
I share your concerns about a recession, but I think we both should keep in mind that presidents have limited ability to affect the economy. If a recession is coming, it will be because of complex causes and not just Trump's misguided and bullying tactics.
Democrats can, and should, make people aware of how they plan to address the damage that will be done to people when, not if, the next recession hits. I'm pretty sure Elizabeth Warren will have a plan for that, but implementing any plan will depend on getting enough political influence to break the gridlock.
1
This column sees the cup half empty, in my view. The election of Senator Sanders would give hope to a vast swath of America- people who have little reason to feel it now. His actions would work to provide dignity to many who are now disparaged, ignored, forgotten. We’ve seen how the powerful soapbox that is the presidency can be used for ill ( Trump). Imagine it being used for good ( Sanders). Granted, there are and will continue to be powerful, negative forces ( money in politics perhaps being the worst). But with a non- corporately bought president such as Bernie, at least the forces for good will have a chance.
6
@Ellen
I think it's a romantic fantasy to think Bernie Sanders can be elected president. Let's take the best of his ideas and shape the future of a United States where compassion and good will direct our government's policies.
6
@Ellen---The verbally incontinent Bernie Sanders has been on his soapbox for 40 years. He's a ranting revolutionary who has no chance of winning the Democratic nomination. He's being eclipsed as the progressive icon by Liz Warren, a woman who is much more organized and light years more intelligent. If she had entered the race in 2016, the disheveled socialist would have stayed home in Vermont. He was an opportunist who jumped into the Democratic nomination race even though he was, and still is, an Independent. If the progressives don't find a way to destroy him, Joe Biden is the best bet to oust Trump from the White House.
3
@Betsy S
Senator Sanders as president a “ romantic fantasy”? Why so.
1
Or, we might elect a Lincoln---a figure whose values and policies restore decency and intelligence to the Oval Office--someone who makes America work again. With a recession, we will have a right in disarray, a left who, with a Lincoln style president, understands compromise, and what is left of Mitch McConnell's coalition of know-nothings, could make a long overdue adjustment to what is destroying our democracy--wealth inequality. I would add, that Biden is no Lincoln, but someone like Mayor Pete, although young, has those qualities that you read about in young Lincoln...
23
And yet despite Lincoln’s willingness to do the dirty work of negotiation, even to compromise on slavery, ten states seceded from the union upon his election — many before his inauguration. There was a whole war about it.
"Having guaranteed Trump’s removal from office, in other words, the recession would also set the stage for Trumpism’s eventual return."
Ross, your optimism knows no bound.
15
The 20+ TRILLION dollar American economy could care less who possesses the power in the White House or Congress.
There are no behind-the-curtain Wizards of Washington (D.C), emanating from the left, center or right, who control the national economic output, technological innovation, industrial productivity, global demand, etc. It's the American entrepreneur, the captains of large industry, the small business owner, the entirety of the national workforce, and the hundreds of millions of consumers who's ability to spend ebbs and flows with their incomes.
Recessions are a natural economic phenomena, which the Federal Reserve might delay through the finagling of interest rates, but they're still inevitable.
9
@Stone
They might be inevitable given the structure of the current system, but Washington can make them worse. The tax cuts and interest rate cuts will reduce the tools available to address the impacts. Deregulation; tariffs..these are all the president’s doing, and are all about siphoning wealth to the few.
Washington may not control the economy, but they can direct it to be more fair. Currently, the GOP isn’t interested in that. At all.
@John When doesn't Washington exacerbate a situation, like economic recession, or the national debt, or forever wars, or unilateral foreign policy decision making, or imprudent monetary policy...regardless of which political party is in power?
And yes, if the government floods the banking system with cheap money, combined with artificially low interest rates, then we'll have a booming stock market, be it under Obama or Trump.
1
I don’t think so Ross. The column presents a thinking inside the box view of a contraction. I’m not saying it’s wrong, but rather it is describing a system as if it had the flu, when in fact it has Ebola.
Too many people are hanging by a thread, too many countries are making bad investments and decisions. Down is up and up is down....
Whatever is coming is going to be big.
17
Another argument could be made that post Elizabeth Warren & Pete Buttigieg election, there will a massive rejection of all GOP Senators that refused to pass any legislation other than tax cuts for the 1% and Corporations. Republican working class, high school graduates will no longer be conditioned to channel their anger & hate towards vulnerable minority groups & instead realize that the Corporate overlords are the ones to loathe. With over 40% - 50% of all Americans earning $15.00/per hour or less, the conditions for a massive civil upheaval of the corrupt political class in Washington D.C. is ripe.
With a Democratic majority in Congress and Warren's competent plans for real progress in Washington, the red state voters will realize (similar to their change of heart about "Obamacare" even knowing little about the details) that Democratic policies help them economically including Medicare for all, free college (or retraining from obsolete jobs), tax Corporations that pay zero taxes, stop the fossil fuel industry (especially Koch Bros) & the NRA from controlling Republican politicians. When renewable energy starts to blossom there will be plenty of well paying jobs for those with just a high school education along the lines of retrofitting wind turbines, installing solar panels, etc. The poor working class won't be subjected to environmental degradation causing illness & cerebral disabilities. In other words, there will be a one party system in the USA: Democrats.
11
And what happens if Trump squeaks through in 2020 because the recession that must eventually come doesn’t happen until afterward?
A thought that might frighten not just Republicans: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez turns 35 in October 2024.
3
The recession is here. I am a small business owner.
38
@Henrysor So you won't be voting to re-elect Trump next year, correct? He promised to repair the economy for you, and make everything wonderful again - Make American Great Again,right? Didn't happen, did it?
1
"Having guaranteed Trump’s removal from office, in other words, the recession would also set the stage for Trumpism’s eventual return."
Leave it to Ross to declare that people can't learn from mistakes. His version of "original sin."
8
We collectively don’t learn from our mistakes though. That’s why Trump is president.
1
@David Henry If the hoi palloi could learn from previous mistakes, there would be no war and Our Dear Leader would never have been elected.
Answer: the wealthy experience nothing in particular. Everyone else must suffer "austerity" measures imposed upon them by the wealthy. Same old story.
31
What if a Democrat is elected president; the Democrats retain their majority in the House; and, the Republicans and Mitch McConnell remain the majority in the Senate?
@Bruce Stern Easy to see. It will mean complete gridlock from a legislative perspective. Nothing of major substance will take place. Executive orders will be president's only way to advance an agenda. These will be challenged by GOP in a friendly Supreme Court.
7
@HPower
The election for Senate is more important than for president. A solid left congress could work despite a Trump. Not perfectly, but safely for the nation.
Bring back Glass/Steagall, finally impeach the
Soulless flop.
1
Sounds like Democrat wishful thinking, Ross. But its doubtful there will be a recession with the Fed ever ready to increase the moral hazards of near zero interest rates.
But if there is a recession lets make sure the right Democrat gets a shot. As a Trump supporter my favorites are Bernie and Beth. Maybe they could team up and show America what they got. I think we would all learn something from the experience.
1
First you need a recession. There is not much indication a recession is about to occur.
Yet should that happen why does Trump lose?
Democrat candidates are generally promising much higher taxation, regulation and government social spending.
The spending would cushion the blow of a recession but the taxing would likely extend & deepen any recession.
There may be many millions of Americans who want to see the end of Trump but I imagine there's millions more who don't want to see the beginning of a Warren or a Sanders et al. And I believe the line between winning and losing is just one electoral vote.
3
I see the logic behind most of Douthat's predictions except for this bit of wishful thinking: "Centrists get a surprising opportunity." Why not "Having won the House and Senate, Democrats lead the country out of the economic crisis with a bold vision and political restructuring that sets the country back on track toward majority rule"?
Dems eliminate the filibuster, protect their flanks with stronger Voting rights legislation, restore some balance to the Supreme Court by adding Justices, and pass an entire progressive package with minimal concessions to the "center": universal health care, gun control, financial and tax reform that aids the middle class and below. They use this opportunity to realign the economy, infrastructure, and public education toward a Green future. Stay aggressive - that's the only way to make significant and lasting progress. Otherwise the "center" will find a way to help swing the political pendulum back to the right.
51
@Yojimbo Lots of big talk. How about focusing on winning the Senate first?
1
@Yojimbo, sounds good to me!
2
Unfortunately, I agree with Mr. Douthat that if Trump would be defeated in a recession, the danger of the rise of another far right demagogue remains substantial, especially in the context of economic inequality and scarcity. There are many reasons for this global rise of far right tribalism but it may be inevitable as a reaction to globalism when many races and cultures are interacting in the modern world. While I do not believe that this rise of far right tribalism will wane in the short term, its influences can be minimized by realizing that it is a form of grievance politics and partly fueled by economic inequality.
9
@Peter In theory. Unfortunately the GOP is good at convincing working class whites that economic inequality benefits them - by keeping non whites even further down on the economic totem. It’s really pernicious.
1
Well that was depressing. I agree that the entire focus on Trump losing an election really leaves a vacuum of what comes next. I also agree that a leftist candidate like Sanders or Warren, won't be able to achieve much. I also agree that the social tearing will just worsen.
There are some hopeful thoughts for the centrists among us:
1. The democratic party becomes the democratic party again and casts out the far left (who forms some other party), and center-left and center Democratic labelled party( now a huge majority) engages in something meaningful that can pass legislation and find common ground.
2. The Reublican party offers up a real candidate who can collaborate and address critical social issues like public eduction, healthcare, BULLET control ( as opposed to second amendment warfare), and cost of living, yet still promote fiscal prudency and foreign policy leadership. And avoid a strong anti-abortion stance. ( immediate loss of millions of votes)
3. A third party forms that causes polarization to diminish considerably as elected officials no longer represent an extreme red-blue dichotomy and behave accordingly in ordder to maintain office.
From the memoirs of a centrist....lonely on a hill somewhere in Texas....
5
Under current circumstances, thinking beyond "Trump loses" is a waste of time. The only thoughts worth having on the topic, for now, are those dedicated to making sure he does. Among which this column is decidedly not included. The ultimate source of Ross' seeming despair that regardless the election outcome Trumpism wins is that his brand of theocracy-hankering religious conservatism has no future, only, forever, a past. Peddling his own ideological despair at critical junctures such as this is what makes Ross, at bottom, a Trump supporter, despite his denials; that and the fact that some form of authoritarianism is the only path to a retrograde theocratic imposition of particular religious values upon pluralistic America.
26
@RRI -- I disagree. The well being of Americans is what matters, not the personal fate of Trump.
It is now unlikely that Trump can produce well being. However, what matters is what he has failed at, not just him.
We could too easily be led back into old problems, with too much emphasis on Trump himself instead of policies.
In fact, that is the point for many groups who focus on Trump while hiding that they intend to return to the status quo ante.
5
@Mark Thomason
Well, I happen to agree with you on the risk of a mere return to the status quo ante. We need not name names. I just think the moment clearly calls for us all to be Scarlett O'Haras. "I'll think about that tomorrow."
5
I fear that another recession on the heels of our last one will further divide and shred our already weakened union. Those who already feel victimized will harden their beliefs that their problems are a result of liberal policies and, of course, immigrants taking their jobs (even if they don't want those jobs...think meat packing and picking produce, for instance). Our country is in the midst of a values and identity crisis...an existential crisis, in my view. Who will we be when trump is finally gone and our self-inflicted wounds are laid bare? How will we ever put ourselves back together again? If the Civil War taught us anything it's that our wounds in fact don't heal. We have to somehow find our way through this.
18
@Ann
Absolutely spot on.
Those who are "wishing for a recession", so to speak, have not thought through the outcomes beyond getting Trump out of office.
You have.
4
@Pono Wishing for a recession doesn't cause a recession. What happens will happen whether someone wishes for it or not.
15
@Pono
No one is really wishing for a recession. Those who seem to talk that way are just exasperated. They are hoping short-sighted voters wake up in time to the fact that Trump's irresponsible, long-run ineffective tax cut for the wealthy and erratic go-it-alone trade wars are hurtling our own and the global economy toward recession, and one with which his amateurish personality cult administration is ill-prepared to deal.
3
There is a potential way for Trump to win anyway. He could start a big enough war. I don't mean one of these little Dubya wars, but a real one with mobilization.
He could do it. Korea alone did it in 1951. Fighting with China would change all bets. Of course many in DC want to fight with the Russians, and that would do it.
Does Trump have what it takes to gamble that? He's a reckless gambler, in all his past dealings.
3
@Mark Thomason
I truly do not believe that starting a war equals
reelection. I think the majority of Americans would not vote for Trump no matter what he did. We cannot afford another war in terms of money but even more so human lives.
15
@Mark Thomason Americans are war weary. If Trump starts a war, he is out no matter what happens with the economy.
1
@Mark Thomason Truman and the Democrats got us into the Korean War after North Kore61a invaded the South; Eisenhower and the GOP got us out of it. So it didn't help the Democrats who were out of power until 1961.
2
Rising from the smoke and ashes of a Republican defeat and splintering in 2020 will be Paul Ryan in 2024. This has been his long plan since he walked away. It started with the requisite "more time with family", but was really a recognition that anyone involved in the coming debacle couldn't then emerge as the savior. His decision to run will be like Julius Caesar refusing the crown, only even more transparent than Shakespeare wrote it.
6
Paul Ryan’s favorability among nationwide likely voters tracks lower than Nancy Pelosi’s. So, while I agree that HE may be thinking 2024, WE certainly are not.
26
I've always seen this "economic boom" as phony because it did not improve the lives of most Americans. it was good for the investor class and no one else. We never really had full employment because so many people were working multiple jobs to try and support a family. Recessions can be an effective way to redistribute wealth so, in many respects, we've never needed one more than we do now.
17
Collectively we lost our house and rebuilt a cabin. Now we are fighting over the couch. That’s what the past 10 years feels like.
17
You lost me on the statement that recessions are god for re-distributing wealth. Obama and the Democrats had the Great Recession at their disposal, and full control of the federal government. But the wealth gap grew during the Obama years.
1
Recession plus Democrats take power plus (finally) gun controls creates a tinder box for disgruntled Trumpistas to take second amendment remedies.
Sounds dooms-day doesn’t it? I find it harder to have faith that American ingenuity will win out over the tide of failings and climate change.
The next recession will be a depression I’m afraid.
6
Ross you forget that in a recession the government spends money, lots of it. With a center-left president hopefully that spending will go to useful stuff, like infrastructure and the environment (real jobs), health care and education (more productive workforce).
Don't know about certain media, they brought us Trump they may as well go with him.
11
Let’s see. During the last Great Recession in 2008, a trillion dollars were spent by the Obama administration and the Democrats. They rescued Chrysler and GM, “invested” in green companies (not much to show for that), and so on. The claim now is that more needed to be spent to achieve the goals that they advertised (and you listed them). And the wealth gap grew bigger.
@3Rs
the economy recovered didn’t it? So much so that Trump claims credit for it.
GM survived and paid us back.
Millions got health care for the first time.
I know, the banksters never went to jail for what they did. That was Obama’s big mistake.
2
@3Rs
The spending wasn’t enough. It was a half-Keynes approach.
Greater regulations were needed to truly rebuild the economy; restructuring capitalism would have been smart. But they didn’t.
1
While I mostly agree with Mr. Douthat's conclusions, his concluding paragraph ("So a recessionary America would find...") - should it come to pass - would almost certainly be the end of the United States those of us over 30 grew up in. What kind of a United(?) States would emerge in its place is hard to predict, but there is only so much tearing at the social and economic fabric a country can take before it starts to come apart at the seams. Add the consequences of a changing climate, needless trade wars, perhaps a real war, and the re-emergence of racism as a political force, it makes me pessimistic that things will get better before they get a lot worse.
5
The right will have to choose what it wants to do. It may fracture. There will be the trumpsters, convinced that their hero was done in by intrigue and corruption and the Deep State and all the illegals who voted. There will be the anti-trumpsters, wanting to distinguish the True Republican Party from the trumpster corruption, and there will be the pragmatists who do not want to discuss or learn from the past, but rather look toward the future and consign Trump to the fate that befell dubya after Obama.
What will unify these three groups will be opposition to whatever the Democrats try to do, which is much simpler and removes any need to debate what their policies should be and thereby reopen the fissures between them. They will hope that if they can make Democratic policies unsuccessful without being too obvious about it, they will return to power and can then have their grand fight about what should be done about the country's problems.
The sooner these turkeys marginalize themselves, the better.
9
Glad you are thinking about a post-Trump US. You shared some interesting thoughts, but it is the invitation to a substantive discussion.
My take is to set the larger context. Here is the "forest":
There is a huge demographic shift going on, and I do not refer to ethnicities. What is happening is a rural to urban shift. It has been happening over centuries but it is really accelerating now. Mega metropolises are emerging, because resources and quality of life concentrate in large population aggregates, not in rural areas, which have been depopulating for a long time also. Second, there are more people crossing borders because they are refugees than ever before in human history. We are a migratory species, but 75 million people are on the move.
So, there is a huge uptick in social and political disorder. The increase of fascism (because that is what "populism" really denotes in the way it is misapplied today in the media) is
an attempt to hunker down and defend the past. The present is just too threatening and anarchic.
We are undergoing a huge transition, and it is not all bad.
If megacities are well-planned and managed, it improves human life and increases lifespans. Immigrants are usually young and increase the dynamism of a society. Incorporate them. Recessions come and go, but overall, economies have been rising, as have lifespans and standards of living.
6
When the tide goes out this time the pop in the NYC real estate bubble is going to make the last panic look like a jog in the park.
5
When enough pundits and reporters raise the possibility of a recession, it is likely to occur. That is, we can talk ourselves into a recession. People will be alarmed by all this talk, and will cut back on purchases of all kinds of things--from musical instruments, to cars, to fishing rods, to expensive vacations, etc. That will put a crimp on demand, and voila! A recession. This would be ironic, because Trump lies incessantly, puts out fake news, and tries to change the narrative, when it looks bad for him. A fitting end to the reality tv star turned "successful" politician.
3
@Diogenes ..." we can talk ourselves into a recession." If that is true, we ought to be able to "talk" ourselves into prosperity, or is recession built with talk, while prosperity is built with pick and shovel?
4
So a recessionary America would find the center-left enjoying some kind of power but probably struggling to govern, a right tearing itself apart in civil war, our downscale social crisis worsening, Silicon Valley delivering substantially less than promised, and the institutions that are supposed to inform and educate struggling or in decline.
So we can stop pretending we all should live in the same country at long last. Silver linings.
8
"Polarization will keep Trump from being defeated in a landslide."
Um, no, Trump will be obliterated if there is a recession. For God's sake, what else can he claim to have done other than maintain the Obama economy?
31
@Adam ..."What else?" Trump is in the business of supporting white supremacy, whence much of his popularity
3
@Adam. Trump believes he is singlehandedly preventing the browning of America. And apparently at least a third of our citizenry want what he wants—a nominally Christian country where whites of Northern European extraction reign supreme. They will be looking for the Great White Leader to pick up where he left off. And as best I can tell there is no shortage of them in the GOP.
2
It's not about the Republicans; it's about the people. If the Democrats gain power in 2020, they will have 2 years to prove that they can make life better for all Americans. If they spend their time redressing wrongs against women, minorities and immigrants, if they enact climate change taxes that will have no positive climate effects for 50 years, and if they embark on elaborate reform of health care which causes chaos in the short term, the American people will turn back to the Republicans in 2022. Because lacking a leader, the Republicans will likely remain the party of NO, and if the people don't like the changes ushered in by the Democrats, they'll go back to NO.
That will be the real problem to solve if the Democrats find themselves in power in January 2021.
21
@Tom Meadowcroft Women, minorities, and immigrants make up the large majority of the population. Most households include at least one of the above, and many more than one.
We do have to govern to include white men too, but white men have to realize that they don't dictate terms or determine who is included in "all."
29
@Tom Meadowcroft
Democrats can win the Presidency, Senate and House.
Ross should take out a mutual fund sales document and read the bold legend: "Past results are no guarantee of future performance".
Let's apply that key insight. Yes, the strength of the US economy has been a good predictor of an incumbent's chances. In the past.
Today may be different. Many of the leading Dem candidates are far, far left. They propose massive spending increases for a raft of new social and redistributive programs.
The average American voter can convert this to a real life projection: tax increases. Big ones.
In a recession, the average American doesn't want to see big tax increases. Even if they pay for some Green New Deal variant, a universal basic income, a single-payer healthcare revolution, free healthcare for undocumented immigrants, federalization of outstanding student loans or other Dem-favored initiatives.
So, for whom does the average American vote in an economy that's rolling over?
Come back to the bold-print legend in financial offerings.
Maybe the past is not a good predictor when the candidates running against the incumbent president would immediately want to place a larger tax burden on the middle class.
In short, a recession may favor Trump.
4
@Stuck on a mountain -- Those Democrats are not far left.
The tax cutters are far right. They've done a lot of damage. The cure is not more of what they've done. That did not work against FDR either.
12
A recession and maybe the 2 billion, read: BILLION, he is projected to raise for reelection. And that doesn’t include SUPER PAC money.
@Stuck on a mountain
Then again, the recession and any/all misery resulting will be on Mr Trump. He should own it. We know, however, it will be the fault of *someone* else, not our Stable Genius.
1
The one thing you are leaving out in your analysis, Ross, is the role that smart public policies can play in helping a nation both recover from a recession and respond to long-term, systemic shortfalls in the economy and society. You do remember the New Deal? In fact, how we respond to the recession is likely to be just as important -- if not even more important -- than the recession itself. Just one more reason that the Republican Party (and the conservative movement more generally) needs to be soundly repudiated -- sooner rather than later.
34
Mr. Douthat.
First you tell us that Trump will lose re-election in a recession. Then you ask "What comes next?"---What comes next? Partying and celebrations in most of America. Finally, we are rid of Trump. A sigh of relief, broad and widespread, will be heard from most of our population. People will go around with smiles and no longer wear the dour looks of the last two years. What comes next? The silver lining of the economic hardships-- Trump and his coterie gone ! It will be worth the economic difficulties of the recession to be rid of Trump and his clique.
85
@shimr
Your comment made my day. I am actually happy and smiling because it. Thanks.
13
Pretty nice column. I particularly like your conclusion that Trump might lose in 2020 because of a recession but then might return again.
Actually Trump might not return but we could get something worse like, say, a competent Trump. One that could actually end our phony baloney fake democracy and replace it with a nice one-branch dictatorship.
Americans are hard to please. We want to reduce income inequality enough to let the middle class return as an actual middle class but we are conservative and don't want any radical changes in our government or economy. You know, we want to pretend that a few tweaks around the edges will take care of things and all will be well if we elect a nice moderate establishment Democrat.
But of course, a nice middle of the road establishment Democrat isn't going to make fundamental changes. He or she will preside over the continuing rule of the oligarchs and the continuing demise of the middle class. He or she might make the process go slower and be less painful but Republicans and establishment Democrats are both leading us in the same direction.
Thus, resentment and economic anxiety will continue to build and eventually we will wind up with Chinese state capitalism or the dictatorship and economic hegemony of Amazon and JP Morgan Chase. Or possibly a far left socialist dictatorship.
Which do you prefer?
7
@Andrew Zuckerman Trump is a reaction to Obama. We won't get another.
If you are low income, you see economics differently.
In entire neighborhoods in my city, there is not a single shop, not one, that is not selling luxuries, a change which has taken place in the last ten years. Nothing in the windows I can even dream about. Though I live in a neighborhood which is lined with storefronts, I take a bus to shop. Everything is boutique, special, fancy and extra.
Even more dramatic is the extent to which we've become a nation of travelers: my city is chock a block with tourists. Sometimes I can barely walk through the crowds outside of my front door, taking selfies. My neighborhood depends on them, and their vacation cash. The extent of this is new too.
From the vantage point of being poor, the extent to which the landscape is full of non essentials, extras, is really clear. The trendy bars and restaurants, the small businesses. Its all about people having fun spending money.
It sure makes me worry about who will populate the streets when the money goes away. Im afraid these neighborhoods will be ghost towns in short order.
65
@Eric
That's because the world economy has been tilted toward the rich. They have all the money. So they are the customers. How can we bring more people to the table?
Unclear. How can you swing an economy back from a gilded age to a more egalitarian structure? Well the great depression and WWII did the trick for America. But, of course, Europe was destroyed so most of our competitors were too weak to compete. The l950's were our golden age but American had all the money and all the industrial capacity. There was a bit of panic when the Japanese started sending cars to the U. S. in the 60's. That's when the plutocrats started their quest to kill the unions and own the GOP: setting up the idea of privatizing (profiteering) every function: including health insurance.
How can we climb back from this? Quickly now!
6
@Eric
Similar thing happening here. Large expanses of farmland being very quickly covered by more than 5,000 luxury homes which are selling briskly. It makes me wonder where the buyers get their money, I could never afford one.
There is simply no place left for the poor to go, they can't afford to stay and aren't wanted. Their shacks are boarded up, torn down and replaced with million dollar estates.
Ours is one of the few poor neighborhoods left and there are signs that the wealthy are poised and ready to roll right through and take over. It's already starting.
Frankly I hope a recession doesn't happen. If property values tumble, my retirement is gone and I'm too old to get another chance.
6
@Eric
I’m a dreaded frequent tourist to your magnificent City, for about 15 years. I’ve noticed the changes myself, and try to be respectful and responsible. I don’t know if it’s all us Tourists, or Amazon and the hordes of Techies. Boom or Bust, Right ??? The Trump bust is near, the dust will clear. See you soon, I’ll wave.
4
In other words, Mr Douthat is predicting that we’ll follow the Weimar Republic model: after the centrists fail to address our nation’s woes, a strong leader will arise, blame scapegoats for the problems caused by the hyper-partisan atmosphere, and rise to power pledging to return us to greatness.
We’re already seeing the seeds of this approach being planted. Notice how Republicans are calling anyone they don’t like “communists” - without regard for the word’s definition? If the recession hits, and Democrats can’t implement a New Deal-style alternative, we’re looking at a dictatorship. Doesn’t much matter whether it’s a right-wing or a left-wing version, from the average citizen’s perspective, it ends up the same way.
7
Rather impressive that "his boom" as Douthat dubs the recent economic boom during the Trump presidency can also be described...in this very piece as "our post-2008 economic expansion."
Trump must be even more powerful than I realized!
6
There will be no recession. The economy will collapse because the countries capable of of restoring something resembling this economy will not work together because they now understand they can no longer be trusted.
In case nobody noticed there is no one that can be trusted and rebuilding an economy in a world of cynicism will not be possible.
The Age of Reason is over. I am sure most NYT readers know this already but what choice do they have but denial.
10
A recession is coming because business world wide (except possibly in China where there is still a remnant of the command economy) won't invest. Business hoards cash hoping for a day when it can see why and how to invest in the global economy; but, right now, the President is destabilizing the global economy. Many of the "unicorns" fail to thrive.
Excess business saving is pushing down long term interest rates globally and that trend has finally hit North America. American agriculture is being ht by retaliation against the President's actions (I will not call them "policies").
Unless some really big firms fail (e.g. Boeing as a result of the737 max debacle continuing until it is severely cash starved), the recession that comes should likely be shallow. Trump would then likely be defeated but the post recession economy in 2020 shouldn't be than bad for the new President to deal with. A lot depends on whether the new President has majorities in both house of Congress. If so, the new regime has a decent chance. If not, I expect a rearguard obstruction in Congress That could be bad - really bad.
Alas, I see no important future for the free press. And social media scares the pants off me. So, social division and increased polarization may become the future norm for whomever wins in 2020. Sad!
8
@former politician ...from Toronto? Gives the free press the boot, and is similarly pessimistic, nay cynical, about corporate life after recession. Gotta believe it’s the Russian point of view of capitalism, all over again.
Cash-hoarding corporations, more so investors,turn bottom feeders, once they have starved the engines that burn the gas of our economy. Unfortunately, like a ‘thirties movie, billionaires will continue the party, unless goosed, and hard by a taxing President, congress and Supreme court. We need investment in other than coal and gasoline, and recession will make saving the earth a goal too far. That’s serious. So the stimulus when it comes, must prioritize saving us all. Pessimism does no good.
4
@formerpolitician .... When,"investors" see the currency inflating, they will spend.
The followers post-Trump may divide themselves into "Economic Nationalists", "Economic Populists", "Populist Nationalists" or "Nationalist Populists" (maybe in the academic world there will be "Nationalist Economists" or "Populist Economists".
Mr. Douthat can write a column on that in six or so years.
2
Wow! Bold.
Well I have seen you revisit you prophecies before, both right and wrong.
And I will tell you this — if the byproduct of an inevitable recession is that it “guarantees” Trump’s defeat then I will gladly accept whatever other consequences follow.
At this point there is nothing more important globally than making sure he is a one term president.
I honestly don’t think we can survive 4 more years of this. The damage done will already take generations to repair.
73
One can hope that he will assume emergency powers and continue to MAGA. America faces existential threats foreign and domestic, it would be criminally irresponsible for President Trump to step aside in 2020.
@Mitchell Powell ~
"it would be criminally irresponsible for President Trump to step aside in 2020."
Why? Because he faces serious legal woes as soon as he leaves the Oval Office?
34
@Mitchell Powell
Is that because he is such a great president? He has no idea what he is doing either domestically or abroad. My dog could do a better job than Trump.
By the way, are you basically saying that if Trump looses the election he should stay in office anyway? Sounds that you believe in law and democracy about as much as Trump does.
35
@Mitchell Powell What you are talking about is a coup. The military will not go along with a coup. Without the military, Trump will have no choice but to step aside if he loses the election.
6
If I was asked to pick between a huge and continuing stock market collapse and impeachment as a methodology for getting rid of Trump, I would take the stock market collapse hands down.
Impeachment is slow and uncertain, but stocks fall fast and decidedly.
55
"Having guaranteed Trump’s removal from office, in other words, the recession would also set the stage for Trumpism’s eventual return."
Pretty much agree with this. Left unsaid is that Trumpism would eventually return precisely because the Democrats will choose to go with centrism.
Centrism has proven to do nothing for those who are left behind, whether it's those struggling to make ends meet in our increasingly unaffordable cities, or those who live lives of despair in rural America. Centrists' only concern is to keep suburbanites, the upper middle class and the donor class happy.
The Sanders/AOC wing of the Democratic party knows this. And Warren too. But the Democratic establishment - including its cheerleaders in the media, such as the liberal columnists of this very paper - insist that centrist incrementalism is the way to go. A centrist Dem in a recession will do little more than warm the chair for the next GOP president.
27
@Vin Nicely said!
Probably the major issue in 2016 was the issue of whether immigration should be determined democratically or without respect to general public opinion.
The democratic control of immigration augurs to be the issue that determines who is elected president in 2020.
Because of the immigration issue no one should assume that a recession in 2019 or 2020 would necessarily defeat Trump.
While the Democratic Party is generally quite critical of Trump's immigration policies, unfortunately it has not (yet) focused on a specific politically viable immigration policy which would carry the day in November 2020.
5
Don't agree - if it were the central issue, why did 2018 go the way it did? Besides "democratically" is what the democrats are doing. The majority of the US, even the vast majority, support legal immigration and support a path to illegal immigrants who've played by the rules for the most part.
12
@David Trump has been a big failure on immigration. Illegal immigration fell steadily for 8 years under Obama and then shot back up as soon as Trump entered office. Immigration is the Democrat's issue if they have the brains to take it.
"Having guaranteed Trump’s removal from office, in other words, the recession would also set the stage for Trumpism’s eventual return."
Trumpism once lost will never make a comeback because Trumpism evades definition: there is no there, there, never was. Trump has never had an original thought. How could he? He doesn't read, study, or listen.
Trumpism is a Tweeter-in-Chief parroting the collection of Republican right-wing racial, social and religious wedge issues, failed trickle-down Laffer curve tax cuts for the wealthy and Stephen Miller instigated rants on immigration.
When Trumpism finally dies, the ashes will be toxic to the Republican party. Nobody other than Trump's base camp-followers and post Confederates will cry-out for it's re-birth. Not a chance!
89
Douthat needs to stick to spiritual word salad.
There will be NO US recession until AFTER the 2020 election. corporate America will spend what ever it takes to keep the economy going. The other day, for example, Shell Oil paid over time to well paid union workers to attend a Trump rally.
The US economy, and the US economy alone, driven by consumer spending, can keep the world out of recession.
Besides, it will take at least a year for the current 3.7 unemployment rate to even approach anything like 6% and even then Trump's base will still stick with him, as failing farmers are doing right now.
Liberals must not return to the couch thinking a 2020 recession will take care of Trump, the way they thought Hillary had it in the bag.
The average person does not look at arcane metrics like bond market inversion.
The Joe Six Pack Index of Leading Indicators:
Price of gas. Check
Unemployment rate. Check
Home mortgage rate. Check
Inflation rate. Check
Trump's re-election: Check
18
@Paul Sure, and then the US will be hit even harder like 2007-2009. How'd that go for everyone?
1
@Paul
Trump will lose in 2020 with or without a recession.
Because he's a big LOSER!
Just look at the Faux Noise polls that show him losing "bigly" to 4 of the Democratic candidates, even now when the economy is roaring (Thanks to President Obama, BTW!)
1
They say one is one's own worst enemy and if or rather when we go down the road of recession ; it will prove you right . How depressing . It seems men never learn the most basic lesson , never to repeat the same mistakes again . Our world is changing rapidly , and we all need to stay on top of the game by keeping up with the machinations aimed at the voting public . I have seen the enemy and it is me . It is not enough to vote , but to inform oneself and have the ability to separate fact from fiction . We all basically want the same thing , a secure life , free from dissent , and affordable . The next recession may possibly be our downfall ; if we allow ourselves to be gulled by another snake-oil salesman , or reelect the same one .
1
In a recession, many loose part, or all, of their fortune. Recessions are probably as "certain as death and taxes".
A hoad of cold cash and, perhaps, gold may be a prudent diversification of assets, but not many outside of the hyper-rich can afford it in advance of a financial meltdown.
1
There is only one alternative I can see: a rebirth of authentic patriotism engendered by a massive voluntary national service program that combines the best of Americorps, Job Corps, and the military. It would be designed to connect Americans across class and ethnic lines who share a desire to do something positive bigger than themselves, and help them save for and pursue whatever educational or trade-related paths are best for them as individuals.
We could probably fund its launch by repealing the top-end and corporate tax cuts Trump and the GOP pushed through. It should rapidly be expanded beyond young people, since Americans of all ages would love an opportunity to do something positive for their communities and country.
All this would be easiest to accomplish if Republicans and their media apparatus could find a few micrograms of selflessness. Since that appears vanishingly unlikely, it'll probably at least require the repeal of the filibuster.
9
The underlying assumption here is: Mr. Trump won the last election. He didn't. It was a stolen election rigged by Russia.
Given that starting premise, there's no predicting what really lies ahead, now is there? Polls and pundits were wrong in 2016 because we underestimated Russia's finagling our elections.
So, if you take that perspective Mr. D. there's any number of things that could happen.
32
@Lillies What makes you so sure that Trump wouldn't have won the election even without any Russian interference? Trump won only three states (Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan) by less than a 1% margin, and for Clinton to win she would have had to carry all three of these states.
Russian interference is still clearly an issue, but to pretend that Trump's victory is solely the result of Russian interference is delusional. Instead of pretending that Trump wouldn't have won the election in some counterfactual world, we ought to understand why he did win so 2016 doesn't happen again.
8
@Joe
Russian interference is a factor, but not nearly as effective as Republican control of voting machines.
The ability to change election results in many places has been a Republican ability at least since the 2004 presidential election.
Paper ballots now.
1
There is no "Trump Boom". He was handed a good thing, juiced it up the easy way (ie the Trump way) with a massive tax cut instead of doing the hard work required to grow a real economy like passing an infrastructure bill.
He has since been working overtime to blow the whole thing up.
549
@Edmond I could not agree more. Especially about "the easy way". Trump is a reality show actor in all things.
21
@Edmond he also leaned heavily on the Fed to cut rather than raise rates while they could. Now that option won't be available. He always flies without a net, leaving the little guys to pick up the pieces. (See, Atlantic City). His whole life centers on reckless overleveraging and now he has done the same for our nation.
24
@Edmond
And when President Obama bequeathed that good thing to Trump, Donald immediately whined that he inherited a mess. The lie was giving himself cover so that when he took us to you know where in a hand basket, he could blame his predecessor.
Thanks for what you wrote.
22
So this inverted yield curve is identified by the 2-yr bond rate being above the 10-yr. Right now it is by a whisker. So why has that generated all this 'coverage?" What are people going to say when it changes by another whisker and become "non-inverted?"
9
@Jack Elzinga because every time this happens a recession follows.
1
I don't believe it's a foregone conclusion at all that Trump gets defeated in event of a Dem win, especially if a candidate pretty far from the center like Sanders or Warren gets the nomination. Plenty of Americans voters are really scared by either of them.
5
@Iconoclast1956 Not as many voters are really as scared by Sanders or Warren as they are by another four years of Trump.
33
@Iconoclast1956 I think it is a foregone conclusion that in the event that a Dem wins, Trump gets defeated. I don't think logic would allow otherwise
7
@bob I goofed, I meant to say a far enough left of center Democratic candidate might repel enough independent voters to give Trump another term.
2
After watching Democrats grow the economy for eight years, the voting public seems to think that anyone can do it—even Republicans. The pendulum swings. We elect a Republican, and they run the economy like a zero sum game where the rich take from the poor. That works for the rich at first. But then the economy stumbles, and even the rich get hurt. Was it Henry Ford who said “We have to elect a Democrat so we can start living like Republicans again”?
Republicans will never forgive FDR for leading us out of the depression, or Clinton for creating 27 million new jobs and doubling the value of the stock market, or Obama for leading us out of the greatest recession since the days of Hoover.
627
@Roger
You give them too much credit for recognizing reality; here, I'll fix it:
Republicans will never believe FDR led us out of the depression, or Clinton created 27 million new jobs and doubled the value of the stock market, or that Obama led us out of the greatest recession since the days of Hoover.
58
@Roger the problem is the rich have a temporary liquidity problem during these drastic recessions, while the rest of us need 10 years to catch up to where we were, unless we get pulled all the way under.
14
@Roger
Clinton had the extreme good fortune to be president during the birth of a vast new industry - personal computers.
5
Here's an alternative: we all finally wake up.
Maybe, in a recession, we realize that the multiplier effect will save us; so, we increase taxes on the wealthy, invest in infrastructure, training and education, This sends waves of discretionary income through the economy and slowly pulls us out of the recession.
Then, because we're finally getting smarter, we realize productive investments are better than wasteful ones; hence, we cut way back on military and "defense" expenditures and channel that money to sustainable energy, AI, nano, and the like.
While we're at it, we realize that spending 1/3 less to get better healthcare overall is smart, even if funding takes the form of taxes rather than premiums. We stop being whiners and find again, finally, the American spirit of courage to take on serious problems with resolve and intelligence.
So, NONE of this happens if Repubs remain in any degree of power or authority.
245
@AM
Individual 1 and the GOP cabal are a life killing cancer on your democracy and country. Radical surgery must be performed on Nov.3rd, 2020, otherwise the patient will not likely survive.
6
@AM. Wow. Brilliant. Hope you are right...
2
If a recession is the only surefire way to defeat Trump, I say bring it on.
Of course, I don't really mean that. But there is a part of me that does.
57
@Vermonter I was thinking the same thing and I'm not kidding.
5
" because even if it’s Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders in the White House, it’s still going to be red-state Democrats and blue-state Republicans holding the balance of power in the Senate. The left-wing revolution won’t be canceled, exactly, in those circumstances, but it will be postponed till after 2022 or 2024; "
It's not going to be postponed. Most of us know better than to expect instantaneous progress, but what you describe is *progress." The right can fight it all they want to, but just because progress isn't a straight line doesn't mean that we're going to go back. There's going to be a big (Yuge!) mess that has to be cleaned up. Elizabeth Warren has the experience and the leadership skills not just to take us forward, but to clean up the horrendous mess left behind by Republican rule.
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Just think Ross .... how much better off the vast majority of Americans would be if the fruits of America's increased productivity over recent decades hadn't flowed so overwhelmingly to a tiny fraction of households ...
As to the "evaporation of his boom" .. first, it was never 'his' boom in the first place. Second, history shows that the GOP virtually owns our economic downturns over the post WWII period since Ike. Third, and last, you can be certain that Trump and his cronies will mismanage the recession ... like everything else. Its what they do ...
Perhaps you'll find the gumption to hold the wrecking ball GOP accountable?
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No fruit unless somebody plants a tree and absorbs the expense of nurturing it, the tenacity of watering it and protecting it from predators.
You foolishly believe everything we have today would exist with central planning. Instead of worrying about your share of THE pie, make another pie.
@Robert
"Central planning" has nothing to do with it. If the American consumer is tapped out and doesn't have the means to buy the fruit and participate in the market .. in the first place .. it doesn't matter who plants, nurtures or protects the tree. You did know that consumer purchases account for over 2/3 of our economic product.
Ho much more of the growth in national income needs to be concentrated in a tiny fraction of households ... before wealth trickles down?
What happens to the game, when one player has all the chips?
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@JH
Correction, the GOP owns all the economic downturns since WWI.
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"Meanwhile, the right will have to decide whether it wants to be an opposition or an alternative." Before the right gets to this decision point, they will first need to decide (1) whether they accept the basic premise of the US ("All men (and women) are created equal", "Give me your tired, your poor," "We have nothing to fear but fear itself," etc); (2) do they believe in governance or just obstruction; and (3) do they buy into majority-rules democracy (you know, the whole constitution, voting, representative government thing). Only after the right answers these three questions does it get to decide on Ross' opposition vs. alternative dichotomy. We know what Trump's answers to the above questions are.
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@EB All men are not equal, except in the sense of moral worth, and no majority in any country ever wanted a flood of poor people, not even in the US. How can you demand assent to two things that are manifestly untrue, as a basis for shared governance?
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You write, Ross, as if the recession--assuming we have one--would be a replay of the 2008 crisis or worse. This reader does not think this will be the case, but who knows for certain. One thing we can all bet on, and you could have written about with certitude, is that Feds will be blamed for a recession, as well as a few others, and Trump will be fully exonerated of any culpability.
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@Robert Stewart
Almost every recession since its inception has been a result of Federal Reserve mismanagement or error.
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President Obama accomplished a miracle in rescuing the economy when he was first took office, with no help whatsoever from the Republicans. Politically, things are even worse now than they were then; so if Trump is voted out of office in 2020, (and I fervently pray that that will happen), and things are bad economically, I expect whoever the Democratic President is, will get the same treatment from Republicans - especially if Mitch McConnell is still in control of the Senate. If McConnell is still in control, then it won't matter if there are Republicans who might be willing to compromise to salvage a flailing economy. McConnell will nix any attempt at a compromise if 2009 is any yardstick by which to judge. We will be stuck in neutral. Conversely, if the Democrats sweep the elections and take the Presidency and both houses of Congress, then perhaps we will get a "New Deal" Part II to revitalize this country, and a rising tide of prosperity will lift all boats, and not just the yachts. It is a dream that I hope will replace the nightmare we are living in.....
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@Diana WWII made the new deal work. until then we were near collapse. All the major projects (Hoover Dam, etc) were accomplished with little environmental oversight and worker protections, keeping costs down tremendously which will never be allowed today.
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@John S
We have a lot of infrastructure which needs repaired and/or shored up. Further, the trades have jobs that are going begging for want of skilled carpenters, electricians, and painters. We need a "New Deal" to partner with businesses in apprentice programs to fill those needs. We also need to offer government sponsored scholarships to trade schools and junior colleges. I could go on and on. Which businesses (other than the armament companies) have been an impetus to spur the economy during the long years of the war in the Middle East, (which continues to drain the treasury and ruin lives)? World War II sped up the recovery of the economy, but before that, the New Deal gave starving people jobs and dignity.
Part of the New Deal was the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) which set up a lending system to channel private funds into government projects. There were also government backed insurance programs to protect those loans. Everyone benefited, and taxpayer money was spared. Part of the "New Deal" was the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) which was responsible for building a system of dams in the southeast which to this very day are providing electricity to millions. The New Deal worked - period.
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@Diana I agree with you, but I do want to make an observation. According to my understanding, at least, and as President Obama acknowledged, the outgoing Bush administration worked very closely with the incoming Obama economic team to cobble together a plan to maintain liquidity and "keep America open"; after the Lehman collapse things were so bad huge corporations such as GE were struggling to get working capital to meet payrolls, and were down to less than 30 days wiggle room.
I earnestly objected to almost every Dubya did and stand by those objections now, but I do want to give credit where it's due, and to maintain a little flame of hope that, when push comes to shove, even the misguided can come through!
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If the economy tanks, and Trump's poll numbers look bad, he'll start a war with Iran next year, and then he'll win reelection. He can't lose.
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@vculek ~
"...then he'll win reelection. He can't lose."
Yes he can and I pray he does definitively.
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Ross, assuming that the Democrats regain the Presidency and Senate in the aftermath of a recession, and are willing to jettison the procedural filibuster, a lot will still depend on whether they can quickly deliver the goods to the American middle and working classes, while reminding them every minute of every day that they are doing just that. Or, in other words, our messaging effort will be just as important as our legislative effort - and both will need to be reality, not ideology, based. That means putting the pie-in-the-sky stuff on the back burner and making the best deals we can in the here-and-now - inasmuch as neither Michael Bennett nor a newly elected John Hickenlooper will sign on to any bill eliminating the for-profit insurance industry outright.
Trump has not delivered on any of his economically populist promises. Any President can spend a trillion dollars to goose an economy - as Trump did with those tax cuts that weren't needed by the fat cats and corporations who received them. But he has done little-to-nothing to improve the lives of the ordinary voters who elevated him to the Presidency. So there's no reason for Trumpism to ever return - except for the fact that promoting the paranoia and emotional barbarism at the heart of Trumpism is extremely profitable for Fox, Infowars, Rush, and the rest of radical right media team.
Ross, what are you and a responsible conservative media prepared to do to help us quash this toxic political messaging?
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@Matthew Carnicelli
I expect the Democrats to earnestly help the victims of racism and sexism among us, pass climate change legislation that raises the cost of living but will not affect the climate for 50+ years, and initiate health care reforms that will take a decade to complete.
And then we'll see if the Republicans have changed much when the Congress swings to them in 2022.
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@Tom Meadowcroft
You make an important point.
Whatever we do in 2021 has to have immediate impact for a fairly substantial number of voters - like a healthcare proposal that will immediately allow Americans to buy into Medicare at 55 if they so choose. Legislation can have longer-term provisions, but is has to be perceived as delivering the goods for ordinary Americans soon enough that it cements their vote for us in 2022. Because if we lose the House in 2022, we've likely lost all ability to move legislation for the foreseeable future.
And we can't appear to be so far ahead of the American people that we appear to have left them far behind us, in the distance.
FDR and Truman enjoyed the support of Congressional majorities for nearly two decades. If we want to make meaningful progress, that will have to be our goal as well - a pragmatic style of politics that leads to long-term majorities, and the careful implementation of difficult (if not impossible) to reverse Democratic policies.
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@Tom Meadowcroft Is what you think happened in 2008? Give me a break.
But you should be rooting for Trump being reelected with views like that. Sometimes I want nothing more than permanent Republican rule in this country just so you guys can see what that really works out to.
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Futurists, even ones that spend all their time at the speculative non-science are notoriously inaccurate.
Not that such speculation doesn't make for an interesting column, but not nearly as interesting as watching the future unfold.
If Douthat could so much as accurately predict the beginning of the next recession, he wouldn't need worry about its affect on his current career. His investments could make him a Titan.
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Ross, Trumpism might return in or after another great recession, but not the man himself.
With any luck, if that happens--not that there's been much of that lately--he'll be in jail.
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@ChristineMcM or the alternative that we all face at the end
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@ChristineMcM
Or in a very lux memory unit.
His family will not receive the sympathy of many Americans for having survived in the family mini-gulag he created for them.
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Well, ultimately, it would probably be like what happened when George W. Bush led us into a recession. There would be painful ramifications in every quarter, a Democratic President would be elected, they would follow President Obama in stopping the free fall, life would become more comfortable, people would get complacent, and the cycle would, as Ross concludes, repeat.
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@NM: And once the Democrats rescue the economy at the cost of some pain for taxpayers the GOP will turn once again to the Trumps for leadership- thereby initiating an internecine conflict between the supporters of Don Jr. and Ivanka for the Iron Throne, each side looking to Eric the Doofus to be the ultimate deal-maker ("You'll be my general!"/ "You'll have the keys to the treasury!")
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"Meanwhile, the right will have to decide whether it wants to be an opposition or an alternative. "
How about the part where the right apologizes for going all in for their support of a white supremacist pro-authoritarian president?
Does the GOP think that post Trump they get to go back to talking about deficits, marginal tax rates, and personal responsibility? No reckoning? No purge of those who embraced hate against millions of American citizens?
Does the GOP think that all will be forgiven on January 20 2021 and we'll all treat them like a pro inclusive democracy party?
Fundamental trust has been broken. When will it be restored? I don't know. Come back in a couple of decades and we'll see how well the post Trump reconstruction is going and how far the GOP still has to go before they can be trusted as a pro democracy party for ALL Americans.
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@LT
Its apparent that Trump's base will believe anything, even if its contrary to every one of their senses. I see no problem with the GOP pretending as if nothing happened and these people eating it up. Something as easy as checking your bank balance to see that there is nothing in there as the result of the "greatest tax cut in history" is beyond their capacity.
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@LT
There are only two parties. As soon as the public grows tired of the Democrats, they will turn back to the Republicans. In fact, the public is likely to balance the election of a left-wing Democratic president with the election of a Republican Senate, so don't assume the defeat of Trump is the defeat of the Republican party. The interesting question, which Douthat points to, is what happens to the Republicans in the wake of a Trump loss. Both parties are in flux.
And no, nobody is going to apologize to you. When did either party ever apologize? Did LBJ apologize for Vietnam? Did Nixon apologize for Watergate? Did Bush apologize for Iraq? Did Wilson apologize for WW1? Did Hoover apologize for the Depression? Don't hold your breath waiting for that apology. The Republican party didn't elect Donald Trump. The American people did; all of us, including those of us who voted for Hilary. Democracy only works with collective responsibility.
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@LT
Imagine if Senator Sanders wins. He starts out with a base of millions who trust him, and a record of consistency over time. Trump campaigned as a fake Bernie. Bernie is the real deal, who will set about to work for the common good as opposed to billionaires. I’m glad - at my age ( same age as Bernie) to have someone so inspirational to support.
29
The republican party is going to be wiped out at the polls across all levels of government with a massive, massive Democratic landslide of historical proportions (recession or not)
The ONLY question is whether Democrats will then decide to implement the nuclear option in the Senate because they will not have a 60 vote super majority threshold until at least 2023. The pressure to do away with republican obstructionism will be immense, and the new republican Senate minority leader will try to follow in the steps of his predecessor that went down to defeat in the polls.
The ''center'' of the political spectrum will be pulled back to normalcy (having been pulled to the extreme and radical right for generations) This will allow people to debate with space and not be labeled by the punditry as this or that.
Taxes are going to be raised, but in a way that is done more than fairly and that money is going to be poured back into the infrastructure of the country. If there is a mini recession, then it will revert back to a boom quite quickly as Democrats put people back to work.
Demographics are only going to amplify the Progressive attitude of the country, and republicans are going to continue their destructive and corrosive ''southern strategy''. This is going to relegate them to a fringe party (at best) to never recover. We will then be discussing how Progressive we want to be as a nation for generations to come.
Next year cannot come soon enough for the world.
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@FunkyIrishman
When the Americans elect a liberal president, they tend to balance by shifting right in the Congress, because they fear dramatic change. Kennedy's election, for instance, saw the Republicans gain in both the Senate and the House. All of the other Democrats elected since Kennedy have been centrists; they all increased Democratic seats in the Congress. A Sanders or Warren victory will likely yield a Republican Senate.
Wholesale reform of health care, or dramatic new taxes to fight climate change, will likely lead to a Republican Senate in 2022 and possibly the House as well, depending on redistricting. Planning for generations of Democratic control is getting a little ahead of ourselves.
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@Tom Meadowcroft If Americans still fear radical change so much, why did 63 million vote in 2016 for a candidate who very forthrightly announced he was going to make big changes and shake up Washington and at the same time, maintain GOP control of both House of Congress (though with minor losses)? Another 13.7 million voted for Bernie in the 2016 primaries. He too is for systemic change. There is no reason to assume decades of Democratic control any more than Karl Rove was right to plan on a half century of GOP control. That's true. Ten years would be enough to swing the pendulum back towards the middle. Is that not conceivable if the Dems don't blow it in 2020 and produce accomplishments in the three years that follow?
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@FunkyIrishman From your keyboard to "God's" ears!
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Interesting and thought-provoking, until the last sentence. Then it got scary. If Trump loses, our government will have four or hopefully eight years to drain the swamp for real. And it must be done.
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@KJ
If the Democrats are lucky enough to win the Senate, and they nuke the filibuster, they will have 2 years. Don't forget 2010. Obama didn't have 8 years to make changes.
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Very thoughtful analysis, without a lot of political pollution. Thanks for this one.
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