The *Constitution* should be *the* issue of 2026. Whenever I hear the word "affordability," I hear a politician who can't see the forest for the trees, just as most of my countrymen can't. The pols are trying to follow the most blind citizens. America needs leadership to bring the citizenry back to the Constitution. Affordability v. constitutional rights. Anyone who puts the former over the latter is not someone whom I respect.
I know you’re right. But for the, ‘silent majority’ of Americans, the issue of affordability, prices, cost-of-living, whatever you wish to call it, will always be their primary concern come election time. Fortunately, this time, so will the, ‘throw the bums out’ mentality that at least for this upcoming election cycle, will favor the Dems. Back to your point that the constitution should be the driving issue, you are undoubtedly correct. But unfortunately, the majority of the populace in our selfish, ignorant country can barely pronounce, “constitution”, cannot spell, “constitution”, have zero idea what is in the constitution, and have no interest in learning how the foundational document (s) of the birth our country might apply to them, who they vote for or how such decisions might affect them.
I know that your description of Americans is correct Tim. It’s how many that is the question today, and with the heroic people of Minneapolis, I’d say, much lower. A lot of people have taken our form of government for granted, maybe because they never thought it could go away, how actually fragile a democracy is. Now they are awake. Judging by the elections I am hearing about that Democrats win, and out heroic judicial system-yeah, we could leave out the Supreme Court for now-that is holding this administration accountable to the law and Constitution, the people are speaking, and the Republicans are scared. This administration was counting on the majority of the population being as you wrote. They were wrong.
Unfortunately, if it is too big to go on a bumper sticker ( especially concerning economics) you lose too many Americans. Perhaps here is a good one for the bumper: Trump tariffs are taxes on you. I agree with you and Kevin. The poll Catherine mentions, foreign policy is dead last. When you consider there is a war in Ukraine, we'll probably go to war with Iran, we are totally alienating our allies to look to China for trade, here is another area that we Americans are selfish and ignorant.
Being nobly correct but losing is exactly what will cause the most suffering amongst those the nobility of Constitutional provisions are intended to protect. I share your desire 100% for candidates who, when elected, will honor the Constitution. Once IN a position of leadership, they can use that power of the bully pulpit. But in the campaign? They should not lie, of course, but if they spend more time on issues of salient interest, that only improves the odds that they will be able to address what we find most important.
I saw a Documentary about Barbara Jordan. She had clarity and would even school her congressional colleagues about the Constitution. We need more like her.
Please devote a newsletter to the fact that good GDP numbers and a booming stock market do not translate into better incomes or benefits for the vast majority of people. We don't have a productivity problem; we have a fairness and distribution problem. The rich get richer, and everyone else suffers.
Unless The Dearest Donald collapsed and died during his SOTU, I couldn’t care less about it. Anything he said that wasn’t purely self-glorifying or purely cruel or purely mocking or purely ridiculous was some combination of the four.
Was anyone surprised—or even informed—by anything he said?
Then why waste time to give him the audience he craves?
Among his infinite bad characteristics, The Dearest Donald is an attention whore. In that regard big key to personal happiness is knowing what and whom to ignore. Obviously, we can’t ignore The Dearest Donald completely all the time, but we can ignore his television appearances. And who knows? If his “ratings”sink, he might be motivated to behave like a semi-normal human being.
None of this matters. The rubes love their führer, his approval rating has been above 41% for months (natesilver.net aggregate of polls). That’s higher than Biden, higher than trump’s first term. Schumer and Jeffries haven’t and can’t budge this. Time for a change.
This is why you should be reading Catherine Rampell on The Bullwark:
Also in the speech, Trump said Vice President J.D. Vance would be in charge of a new “war on fraud.” Psst: The call is coming from inside the White House.
He claimed that “affordability” problems were either created or imagined by Democrats, and naturally, that they have all been solved since he took office
Trump promised that his tariff revenue would be used to defray other American expenses—specifically, that it would “substantially replace” income taxes. This is a mathematical impossibility.
He said he “lifted 2.4 million Americans, a record, off of food stamps.” These people weren’t lifted up so much as kicked off
As far as I'm concerned, DJT should keep saying what he keeps saying: the economy is great. Nothing like telling people believe me than how you are really doing. That dog will bite Trump.
I am very worried about Dems pushing affordability without a plan to address it so I look forward to your ideas. I think #1 has to be some kind of tax incentive to help people get out of the rent cycle. I had an idea, I don't know how feasible it is but it would be a 1 per lifetime federal income tax holiday where you get your entire federal income tax back with the idea to help people buy homes, get out of debt, or pay for college. It would be difficult to implement and could cause problems if too many people do it in 1 year so probably need a limit and or to means test it. I would be curious what you think.
It has the same problem a lot of these give money to homebuyers plans have: if you increase the amount of money set aside for people to buy homes and do nothing else, the price of homes spike as everyone bids over the same stock with more assets to do so.
The only real way out is to either build more houses (in places where people want to live) faster or convince people to ‘consume’ less housing, namely by getting people to live in larger family groupings.
Government can’t do much about the second one, but the easiest thing they can do to help homebuyers is to invest in construction and amend regulations to make the building of condo style living spaces on relatively small geographic footprints.
1 thing I wish someone would address is abandoned properties. Where I live in Delaware it seems like there are 1000s of abandoned properties that are just rotting away when they could be repaired or demolished to increase supply while improving property values for everyone else in the area. I see alot of new home and condos going up but prices aren't any better.
What I can't understand is why governments can't build using manufactured homes. They're tens of thousands $$$ less to build, and can be built within weeks anywhere in the world. Check out websites like Ellis Modular, and others that can do build employee housing in downright remote areas as well as cities etc.
As far as his Billionaires build their own energy source, When I heard that last night, my thought more than a few public utility companies would have a word or two to say about that. Those companies that are publicly traded care only about their bottom line, not their customers and I'm pretty sure they see those sites a win/win revenue stream.
In tRump's SOTU, mentioning affordability - that 'made-up' word - was a mere speed bump. His focus was on his ideas to destroy the country, which gets him a payoff & makes life more difficult for most Americans.
Also, in SOTU tRump seems to revel in his ability to start wars to create more veterans who he works hard to under serve.
The graph adds up to about 60 - 70 minutes of total time. I'm curious what the other 40 - 50 were? Did people really sit through close to an hour of hemming hawing and bloody gore? Eep!
A lot of time gets used in endless displays of Congresspeople getting to their feet and clapping. I would like to see a president get up there and say, "Please, no clapping until the end, we want to help our poor audience get to sleep on time." Then speak breifly and pithily.
1) Here is just one more example of the asymmetry in today’s politics. Remember how Biden was roasted when he said that the economy wasn’t that bad? Now Trump is saying basically the same thing, and the blowback is much more muted. But at least it appears to be affecting voting patterns.
2) I know it’s old news, but isn’t it truly amazing that Trump would (again) cite gas prices that he claims are much lower than they really are. Since it’s not hard to find out the truth, it just shows (once again) that so many people just want to be misled (or they don’t care about the truth which is really about the same thing).
3) A few comments on the Guerrero interview:
a) Construction execs didn’t expect immigration enforcement to go “quite this far, especially in South Texas”. That seems like a clear admission that they believe that Trump is primarily interested in punishing his perceived enemies. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for the claim that Trump is working for all the American people.
b) Guerrero seems like a really decent guy, but his defense of Trump’s construction history is a little short-sighted. Apparently, he’s forgotten about all those bankruptcies (also, it seems like a pretty insignificant reason to vote for someone). But perhaps it’s that Trump can get stuff built, he just can’t run them profitably.
4) CR – Here’s a question for you: Has Trump ever published some “success criteria” for his tariffs? For example, I believe he has said that his tariffs will bring back manufacturing jobs; but has he actually put a number on that? Same with the revenue? Has he ever put a number on what he expects the U.S. to collect? Same with the unemployment rate? Or the trade deficit?
The reason I’m asking is because it seems to me that it’s a principle of Business 101 that you have to try to quantify what the impact of some business plan is. You can’t just say “things will be better”. Without that quantification, no one has any idea if a given plan is a success or not (I realize that Trump will claim it’s a success regardless of any numbers, but I was wondering if there were some predictions that we could use to evaluate his tariff plans).
I can’t remember any specific claim that Trump has made (even the ridiculous claim that the tariff revenue would allow us to get rid of the income tax), but maybe he has.
One quibble about institutional investors owning housing: the number you site (1%) is correct but only for Single-Family-Homes. It *is* much, much higher for other forms of housing.
Catherine, Loved the joke at the beginning, a true classic. Excellent review and commentary on the Dunceman Donny's harangue. How'd this idiot get through high school? His understanding of math is baffling. The really funny part though is Republicans were standing, cheering and applauding every impossible number he threw out. The sad part is, there are too many Americans who aren't very good at math either. They're not very good at reading either. They're not very good at spelling either. And logic, reasoning and judgement are in the same boat. What we seem to excel at is being gullible. Maybe we should get serious about education, instead of constantly increasing our military capabilities, building ballrooms and chasing gold medals. If we want to solve any of our myriad of problems, we're going to have to find a lot smarter leaders than we have now.
The *Constitution* should be *the* issue of 2026. Whenever I hear the word "affordability," I hear a politician who can't see the forest for the trees, just as most of my countrymen can't. The pols are trying to follow the most blind citizens. America needs leadership to bring the citizenry back to the Constitution. Affordability v. constitutional rights. Anyone who puts the former over the latter is not someone whom I respect.
I know you’re right. But for the, ‘silent majority’ of Americans, the issue of affordability, prices, cost-of-living, whatever you wish to call it, will always be their primary concern come election time. Fortunately, this time, so will the, ‘throw the bums out’ mentality that at least for this upcoming election cycle, will favor the Dems. Back to your point that the constitution should be the driving issue, you are undoubtedly correct. But unfortunately, the majority of the populace in our selfish, ignorant country can barely pronounce, “constitution”, cannot spell, “constitution”, have zero idea what is in the constitution, and have no interest in learning how the foundational document (s) of the birth our country might apply to them, who they vote for or how such decisions might affect them.
I know that your description of Americans is correct Tim. It’s how many that is the question today, and with the heroic people of Minneapolis, I’d say, much lower. A lot of people have taken our form of government for granted, maybe because they never thought it could go away, how actually fragile a democracy is. Now they are awake. Judging by the elections I am hearing about that Democrats win, and out heroic judicial system-yeah, we could leave out the Supreme Court for now-that is holding this administration accountable to the law and Constitution, the people are speaking, and the Republicans are scared. This administration was counting on the majority of the population being as you wrote. They were wrong.
From your keyboard to….the American people. I respect your perspective. I hope it’s correct. I’ll send you a mea culpa around Thanksgiving!
Okay. Then we will either toast to the future or cry in our beer.😵💫🥂🍻
or move to another country
I often quote Joni Mitchell to make points: "You don't know what you got til its gone".
Unfortunately, if it is too big to go on a bumper sticker ( especially concerning economics) you lose too many Americans. Perhaps here is a good one for the bumper: Trump tariffs are taxes on you. I agree with you and Kevin. The poll Catherine mentions, foreign policy is dead last. When you consider there is a war in Ukraine, we'll probably go to war with Iran, we are totally alienating our allies to look to China for trade, here is another area that we Americans are selfish and ignorant.
Being nobly correct but losing is exactly what will cause the most suffering amongst those the nobility of Constitutional provisions are intended to protect. I share your desire 100% for candidates who, when elected, will honor the Constitution. Once IN a position of leadership, they can use that power of the bully pulpit. But in the campaign? They should not lie, of course, but if they spend more time on issues of salient interest, that only improves the odds that they will be able to address what we find most important.
I saw a Documentary about Barbara Jordan. She had clarity and would even school her congressional colleagues about the Constitution. We need more like her.
Please devote a newsletter to the fact that good GDP numbers and a booming stock market do not translate into better incomes or benefits for the vast majority of people. We don't have a productivity problem; we have a fairness and distribution problem. The rich get richer, and everyone else suffers.
Agreed!!! Thank you for putting this into words so succinctly.
Unless The Dearest Donald collapsed and died during his SOTU, I couldn’t care less about it. Anything he said that wasn’t purely self-glorifying or purely cruel or purely mocking or purely ridiculous was some combination of the four.
Was anyone surprised—or even informed—by anything he said?
Then why waste time to give him the audience he craves?
Among his infinite bad characteristics, The Dearest Donald is an attention whore. In that regard big key to personal happiness is knowing what and whom to ignore. Obviously, we can’t ignore The Dearest Donald completely all the time, but we can ignore his television appearances. And who knows? If his “ratings”sink, he might be motivated to behave like a semi-normal human being.
Ugh. It’s a mess. I just hope that we can hold on for the next couple of years.
None of this matters. The rubes love their führer, his approval rating has been above 41% for months (natesilver.net aggregate of polls). That’s higher than Biden, higher than trump’s first term. Schumer and Jeffries haven’t and can’t budge this. Time for a change.
But the top polls have DJT at 35- 39%
This is why you should be reading Catherine Rampell on The Bullwark:
Also in the speech, Trump said Vice President J.D. Vance would be in charge of a new “war on fraud.” Psst: The call is coming from inside the White House.
He claimed that “affordability” problems were either created or imagined by Democrats, and naturally, that they have all been solved since he took office
Trump promised that his tariff revenue would be used to defray other American expenses—specifically, that it would “substantially replace” income taxes. This is a mathematical impossibility.
He said he “lifted 2.4 million Americans, a record, off of food stamps.” These people weren’t lifted up so much as kicked off
As far as I'm concerned, DJT should keep saying what he keeps saying: the economy is great. Nothing like telling people believe me than how you are really doing. That dog will bite Trump.
How much time did he spend talking about himself? Just wondering…
Actually, we could replace the income tax with tariffs. All we’d have to do is reduce government spending by 600, 700, or even 1500%.
I am very worried about Dems pushing affordability without a plan to address it so I look forward to your ideas. I think #1 has to be some kind of tax incentive to help people get out of the rent cycle. I had an idea, I don't know how feasible it is but it would be a 1 per lifetime federal income tax holiday where you get your entire federal income tax back with the idea to help people buy homes, get out of debt, or pay for college. It would be difficult to implement and could cause problems if too many people do it in 1 year so probably need a limit and or to means test it. I would be curious what you think.
It has the same problem a lot of these give money to homebuyers plans have: if you increase the amount of money set aside for people to buy homes and do nothing else, the price of homes spike as everyone bids over the same stock with more assets to do so.
The only real way out is to either build more houses (in places where people want to live) faster or convince people to ‘consume’ less housing, namely by getting people to live in larger family groupings.
Government can’t do much about the second one, but the easiest thing they can do to help homebuyers is to invest in construction and amend regulations to make the building of condo style living spaces on relatively small geographic footprints.
1 thing I wish someone would address is abandoned properties. Where I live in Delaware it seems like there are 1000s of abandoned properties that are just rotting away when they could be repaired or demolished to increase supply while improving property values for everyone else in the area. I see alot of new home and condos going up but prices aren't any better.
What I can't understand is why governments can't build using manufactured homes. They're tens of thousands $$$ less to build, and can be built within weeks anywhere in the world. Check out websites like Ellis Modular, and others that can do build employee housing in downright remote areas as well as cities etc.
As far as his Billionaires build their own energy source, When I heard that last night, my thought more than a few public utility companies would have a word or two to say about that. Those companies that are publicly traded care only about their bottom line, not their customers and I'm pretty sure they see those sites a win/win revenue stream.
In tRump's SOTU, mentioning affordability - that 'made-up' word - was a mere speed bump. His focus was on his ideas to destroy the country, which gets him a payoff & makes life more difficult for most Americans.
Also, in SOTU tRump seems to revel in his ability to start wars to create more veterans who he works hard to under serve.
Wanted to say “all of the above” for voters defecting.
The graph adds up to about 60 - 70 minutes of total time. I'm curious what the other 40 - 50 were? Did people really sit through close to an hour of hemming hawing and bloody gore? Eep!
A lot of time gets used in endless displays of Congresspeople getting to their feet and clapping. I would like to see a president get up there and say, "Please, no clapping until the end, we want to help our poor audience get to sleep on time." Then speak breifly and pithily.
A few comments...
1) Here is just one more example of the asymmetry in today’s politics. Remember how Biden was roasted when he said that the economy wasn’t that bad? Now Trump is saying basically the same thing, and the blowback is much more muted. But at least it appears to be affecting voting patterns.
2) I know it’s old news, but isn’t it truly amazing that Trump would (again) cite gas prices that he claims are much lower than they really are. Since it’s not hard to find out the truth, it just shows (once again) that so many people just want to be misled (or they don’t care about the truth which is really about the same thing).
3) A few comments on the Guerrero interview:
a) Construction execs didn’t expect immigration enforcement to go “quite this far, especially in South Texas”. That seems like a clear admission that they believe that Trump is primarily interested in punishing his perceived enemies. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for the claim that Trump is working for all the American people.
b) Guerrero seems like a really decent guy, but his defense of Trump’s construction history is a little short-sighted. Apparently, he’s forgotten about all those bankruptcies (also, it seems like a pretty insignificant reason to vote for someone). But perhaps it’s that Trump can get stuff built, he just can’t run them profitably.
4) CR – Here’s a question for you: Has Trump ever published some “success criteria” for his tariffs? For example, I believe he has said that his tariffs will bring back manufacturing jobs; but has he actually put a number on that? Same with the revenue? Has he ever put a number on what he expects the U.S. to collect? Same with the unemployment rate? Or the trade deficit?
The reason I’m asking is because it seems to me that it’s a principle of Business 101 that you have to try to quantify what the impact of some business plan is. You can’t just say “things will be better”. Without that quantification, no one has any idea if a given plan is a success or not (I realize that Trump will claim it’s a success regardless of any numbers, but I was wondering if there were some predictions that we could use to evaluate his tariff plans).
I can’t remember any specific claim that Trump has made (even the ridiculous claim that the tariff revenue would allow us to get rid of the income tax), but maybe he has.
One quibble about institutional investors owning housing: the number you site (1%) is correct but only for Single-Family-Homes. It *is* much, much higher for other forms of housing.
Catherine, Loved the joke at the beginning, a true classic. Excellent review and commentary on the Dunceman Donny's harangue. How'd this idiot get through high school? His understanding of math is baffling. The really funny part though is Republicans were standing, cheering and applauding every impossible number he threw out. The sad part is, there are too many Americans who aren't very good at math either. They're not very good at reading either. They're not very good at spelling either. And logic, reasoning and judgement are in the same boat. What we seem to excel at is being gullible. Maybe we should get serious about education, instead of constantly increasing our military capabilities, building ballrooms and chasing gold medals. If we want to solve any of our myriad of problems, we're going to have to find a lot smarter leaders than we have now.