Hardkill

Yeah ChadT is right about Peter Schiff being a constant doomer on the US economy, particularly when the country is lead during a Democratic presidency. However, I fear that you’re right, Leo. The broad consensus amongst top economists and financial experts now is that Trump’s tariff policies are absolutely beyond stupid and more than likely to cause the US economy to crash for no good real reason. Even Zandi and his team of economists and Krugman, all of whom rightly predicted the 2008 financial crisis and rightly predicted that the economy during Biden’s president would achieve a soft or softish landing, have been saying for a while now that Trump’s policies are not only going to be inflationary, but also could likely cause a recession if Trump doesn’t back off with his tariff policies. Not to mention that Trump’s moronic tariff regime is seriously jeopardizing millions of Americans retirement funds and ruining the stock market. This completely outdated and extreme tariff policy is not how our country will be able to address the unfair practices that have occurred for decades.

Fortunately, Musk failed to buy the crucial Wisconsin Supreme Court race that happened tonight: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/01/us/politics/wisconsin-supreme-court-crawford-schimel.html

Oh, God! That is very tragic. My thoughts and prayers go out to all of the victims and their closed ones.

You know, I've encountered a lot of Brazilian women who are very forward with me sexually. For years, I've been chatting with an attractive girl who lives in Brazil through social media and not only have we connected with each other well as friends we also have gotten very sexual with each other a number of times without any pay. We actually got very sexual with each other right away the first time we met each other. Another Brazilian girl I met near where I live a while ago, was very flirty with me telling me how cute or handsome I was. We got very touchy with each other before we kissed. Is it more of a thing with Brazilian women to be direct sexually/romantically even though men are generally expected to initiate everything?

Oh, yeah.... That definitely keeps me up at night. I hope that if that happens that widespread civil unrest, protests, and riots in Washington happen.

So, then how much was the idea of Trump and his party taking away your freedoms and opportunities overhyped? In retrospect, I realize that even people in authoritarian countries like China or Russia have a lot of the freedoms that we have.

I generally agree with the OP. However, at the same time, many older people tend to be more stubborn with old world views that are outdated and need to be replaced by new modern-day views.

But aren't millions of innocent people going to suffer and die under Trump if his administration and the Republicans in Congress cuts funding for essential government services like Medicaid, public education, vaccines, and medical research and guts important regulations protecting the environment, the economy, and human rights in our country this time?

Correction: 6 million more people who voted for Biden in 2020 than Harris in 2024. Also, I thought she ran a better campaign than Hillary Clinton did in 2016 and better than Trump's campaign in 2016, 2020, 2024. In fact, Trump's 2024 campaign was the worst ever. He just had a more clever media strategy than she did. Plus, the unprecedented misinformation, the right-wing propaganda machine, the rise of social media/internet, the rest of the anti-mainstream media in this day and age had brainwashed too many voters into believing that Biden/Harris and the Democrats didn't govern the country well. Moreover, racism, misogyny, and xenophobia our country is still experiencing has made it extremely difficult if not impossible for women of color like Harris to win the presidency. The US is still going through a conservative social backlash. Not to mention the historic levels of income inequality and unjust levels of affordability in country. All of those factors combined caused this anti-incumbent party sentiment in our country, especially amongst the less politically engaged and less informed voters out there in the country.

I know..... It's very sad. However, notice how much less neoliberal the Democratic party has gotten in policy. Remember, Biden shockingly turned out to be the most left-wing president in economic policy since LBJ in the 1960s and the most pro-union president since FDR or Truman. I honestly think that Democrats should stay about civil rights and anything else pertaining to social justice, except for climate change, while focus on bread-and-butter economics like FDR did. They may actually have to be racist in a subtle manner, but economically progressive like Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt were until the racism and xenophobia in our country cools down one day in order to win back the working class, especially the white working class.

Many including myself are disappointed that a number of Democrats in the Senate including Schumer did not fight hard on the House passed GOP for keeping the government open that have a bunch of terrible provisions for the people including Medicaid cuts, giving Trump more power to unilaterally impose more tariffs billion dollars in cuts to domestic programs like public education funding and community health centers, etc.: Also, why was Gavin Newsom chumming up with Charlie Kirk:

I wonder how much the courts and the entire law enforcement want America to be governed by a true authoritarian regime like in Russia.

That's another worry. If the election gets rigged by 2028, then wouldn't he be able to escape responsibility for ruining the country including the entire economy by then? Then again, our country went through both the American Revolution and the Civil War and the victors of those wars ultimately defeated those forms of tyranny in America.

Yeah, that's what I thought too—that's basically how Biden and the Democrats defeated Trump and his party in 2020. I also remember you mentioned this earlier in one of my threads about propaganda used in the Soviet Union. However, year after year after year, we continue to underestimate just how conservative and frankly how stupid most Americans really are combined with how stuck numerous people are in so many of these brain-rotting echo chambers/epistemic bubbles in this day age. 2 to 4 years ago, we didn't think that Trump had any real chance of winning the presidency after he lost in 2020 and his party suffered a humiliating loss in the 2022 midterms overall. I mean even if his presidency ends with having failed to govern the country well including having an economic disaster, widespread civil unrest, very unpopular and bad policy changes made, and scandals like in 2020 under Trump, how we know that the majority of the people won't just be like "Yet, I know Trump is horrible, but the Democrats are still worse because they are too far to the left for me culturally and come off more phoney. So, I'd rather him or another Republican party him again running the country?"

But couldn't he get away with blaming it on wokeness and the radical left for cancelling SS payments just like how people will not feel or notice climate change or butchering of medicaid, given that we can't win this battle on facts?:

Democratic leadership needs a serious change:

This is what keeps me up at night. I fear that the Republicans from now on may continue to win every future big election going forward no matter how bad the next crisis under their watch will be because their media messaging machine, party brand messaging, and optics game are all superior to that of the Democrats. At this point, it looks like the combination of another Great Depression or Gilded Age Depression, an extremely violent nationwide labor strike movement, and a once-in-a-century inspirational political leader who has the spirit of a Roosevelt-style class warrior may be the only hope that Democrats have to win back the presidency and Congress. Maybe I am wrong.

Actually, Leftists like them have mentioned a number of times before that people do vote on vibes. That's why Cenk and TYT were some of the first Leftists to sound off the alarm that Biden would "lose" in 2024 because he came off as too old, too weak, and too unpopular. Then Kyle and Krystal conceded that Cenk and his crew were "right." Cenk, Ana, Kyle, and Krystal have even talked a number of times before about how Trump won in 2016 and 2024 because of his charisma and populist message and because. Cenk and TYT have said that Hillary Clinton was a bad candidate in 2016 because she came off as too pro-establishment, out of touch, untrustworthy, and unpopular. They also said that Harris came off as too much of a talking point machine and that her campaign needed to energize base and the swing voters by having her do more podcasts like the JRE and have Tim Walz out a lot more.

So, then why is Newsom trying to get along with radical right-wingers like him? Why isn't he fighting him back in the messaging war?

I get that, but see this is what I've never been fully clear on. On the one hand, people like the Pod Bros and BTC, along with, obviously, TYT, Secular Talk, and the Majority Report, are all part of the progressive movement in our country. The purpose of the movement have been to fight against MAGA extremists, corrupt neoliberals, and the corporate oligarchy, and to push the Democratic Party further to the left or back toward its New Deal roots. On the other hand, I still wonder if the progressive movement has been backfiring in the long term:

They may not be as far to the left as Sanders or Warren are, but they are still liberals. Besides, why did they have to vote for that awful bill right away instead of trying to negotiate first with other side? A lot of people are going to be hurt by this. What? I am surprised you say that. Out of all of the progressive commentators out there on the internet and social media, those guys have been the most supportive of the establishment Democrats and have given the most reasonable left-leaning takes on politics. Even you said a while back that they aren't too populist, too anti-mainstream, or too fringe like TYT or Secular Talk are. That's actually not bad. Well, the Democrats better come up with a solid message like that and make that front and center in their campaign by 2026 or 2028. I will say though that one silver lining is that it looks like the party will be doubling down on economic populism instead of "moderating" their stances according to the current consensus of Dem strategists/pundits. Let's hope that they really mean that.

Schumer is not a Blue Dog Dem like Manchin or Sinema were. He and all of the other senators who just voted for that GOP bill all come from blue-leaning to solid blue states. Fetterman ran as a progressive and is still a Bernie Bro. Also, if this wasn't a problem right now then why are Dan Pfieffer, Jon Favreau, Tommy Vietor, and Jon Lovett who are all former Obama officials and their good friend Brian Tyler Cohen saying that the Democratic leadership having been ceding the ground with regarding to the messaging war? I totally agree. A big reason why Dems lost in 2016 and in 2024 was because of how divided and weakened the party were during those years. Yes, they eventually unified under Hillary by the 2016 convention and they eventually unified under Harris by the convention 2024, but the damage was already done during each of those times. However, the Democrats can no longer run on the kind that basically says "Trumpism is bad." They need to run on a unifying message that also is forward-looking and for the people of the country like say "The Great Construction" or "New Nationalism."

It doesn't have to be all AOC or Bernie Sanders types. We need more Democrats out there who have the mindset of fighting back like hell with a powerful populist message like FDR or LBJ. Even the Pod Save America Bros are getting very concerned that too many within the Democratic party still have too much of this mindset of compromise to the point of making compromises with MAGA. That's unacceptable. Otherwise, I fear that many Democratic party base, moderates, and Independents will decide to just stay home and not vote in 2026 or in 2028 and let the Republicans win again with their right-wing "populist" messaging.

I agree that the Democrats should tone it down on social issues and civil rights, but they can't just be focusing on Republican devilry. That didn't work in 2024. They have to also talk about an economic populist vision for the country in the way that TR or FDR did that works for this day and age. Have you checked out this new thread of mine?

You don't know until you try. Even Obama has said that we need much greater regulation on misinformation more than ever before. Otherwise, I fear the Democrats may never win back the presidency or the Senate again.