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Listening to Obama reminded me that the candidate quality has diminished since the 2012 campaign.

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Aug 21Liked by Chris J. Karr

While i know lots of folks don't like the Obama's, both he and Michele's ability at the mic are exceptional. Their cadence, tone, inflection and content are second to none.

On the other hand is trump telling us about Hannibel Lector, sharks and windmills. Honestly Jay, i'm not sure the phrase "candidate quality" belongs in the same sentence as trump. My bad, apologies around the board.

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Aug 21Liked by Chris J. Karr

My take: Michelle was the better speaker and gave a better speech than Barack did.

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author

100%.

She brought the rhetorical equivalent of an A-10 Warthog to bear on Donald Trump.

"Who's going to tell him that the job he's currently seeking might be one of those 'Black Jobs'?"

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"In the Biden years, many Americans suffered from inflation and job stagnation (plenty of jobs, but not for everyone, and moving is not financially viable for many). The very promises Obama held out for the middle class are problems the middle class found worse during the four years where a Democrats—a rather moderate one—was in the White House."

I just did a search for the terms "COVID" and "pandemic" in this article and came up empty. I don't have any issues about folks complaining about the economy, but to do so as if the surrounding context doesn't matter is counterproductive.

Feel free to complain, but if there's another peer nation doing better on these fronts than the US has done under Biden, that would be useful context to include if you want to make the case that the Democrats are doing poorly with the economy. Unfortunately (for that line of argumentation), the US (under Biden) is outpacing its peers and recovering stronger after the pandemic.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68203820

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My point was that you can’t simultaneously claim you’re going to fix something and that

It’s already fixed. Democrats are doing exactly that.

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Politicians do that ALL THE TIME depending on the audiences they're speaking to. To the folks that are doing well, Harris will want to take credit for the economic recovery. To folks who aren't doing well, she'll send a message that more help is on the way (implicitly signalling that the economy isn't fully recovered).

Trump's doing a very similar thing when it comes to abortion. To the pro-life crowd, he goes out of his way to claim credit for appointing the judges that struck down that ruling. To a less-pro-life crowd, he argues that it should be left up to the states. When pressed about concrete things like how he'll vote on Florida's upcoming state abortion referendum, he goes out of his way to avoid answering the question.

No candidate is going to have a 100% consistent message to all the voters they're appealing to. I guess I thought that everyone was aware of this, and it was already integrated into our respective candidate evaluation processes.

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Aug 21Liked by Chris J. Karr

Fixed: COVID-related inflation

Needs to be fixed: housing costs due to lack of supply, potential price-gouging, etc...

Don't see how that's in conflict

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Price gouging is not a thing in most markets. For drugs it is, for eggs, definitely not

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Funny you brought up eggs considering it was found that there was in fact price fixing on eggs during 2004-2008. Have there been other instances since that time?

And price gouging/fixing in drugs is a good thing to focus on.

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Explain how anything can't be price gouged please.

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Competition. I suppose if price fixing and collusion happened anything can be gouged, but that's the exception not the rule.

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And you acknowledge that there is the least amount of competition around in probably forever and that its likely there is more fixing going on as well then? One of the major things you republicans like to complain about is the killing of mom and pop stores. Now add in large firms gobbling up land like crazy it seems extremely plausible these things have led to the inflated prices. While I agree the 25k first home giveaway won't work I do think price controls would work in this instance. Or limit what corps can buy.

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No one on the Democratic side of the aisle has claimed we have reached perfection Steve. In fact, just the opposite, as we have been told we need to address the inflation that has been challenging to so many. I saw an interesting meme the other day regarding corporation consolidation. It certainly hasn't benefited the public.

Joe did a lot of heavy lifting, and the work needs to continue. A great starting point will be allowing the tax breaks for the billionaires to sunset next year like they are supposed to. As interest rates come down (without intervention from whomever is president), and building starts increase, the pieces will all come together.

The reality is the economy has historically done better under democrats than republicans. On the other hand, the billionaires have always done better under the republicans. I guess that whole trickle down nonsense was just that eh?

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Aug 21Liked by Chris J. Karr

Well said Chris and the reality of trump's economy over the 4 years was abysmal. Job creation, unemployment, the stock market all performed better under Biden than trump. The fact of the matter is trump's 4th year in office was, his stats were all destroyed by the pandemic. Although in his 3rd year, less than 2 million jobs were created. By then the Obama fueled growth was slowing.

Anyway, the pretense the economy was so good under trump, when considering his 4 years was average at best (other than the billionaires got massive tax breaks). The other fallacy, if we are to be realistic is Biden's recovery was fueled by coming out of the pandemic and the country being opened up.

As you pointed out, the only true measure of how Biden did is to compare it to other countries. The supply chain shortages and the continuing price gouging by corporations was and still is real. But that's been the case around the world.

Rewriting history is easy if we don't use data and facts; trump wouldn't know either if it hit him in the face.

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The USA economy is supposed to be the best in the world and has consistently been that for a century or more. It's a matter of to what degree and what the expectations are.

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"Supposed to be" implies that the US doesn't have to do anything to maintain or improve anything in order to maintain that position, which is a sure-fire way to lose that standing - 'cause it's not guaranteed by any means

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I suppose we need an expert grammarian to accept or reject what you say is implied by "supposed to be". Here are the four usages I found. (1) What is believed. (2) What is expected. (3) What was to happen but did not. (4) As "not supposed to" it means prohibited.

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