On Monday, I tweeted the following:
Basically, my tweet was a boiled-down version of this Op/Ed I posted last May:
An economic timebomb is ticking. And it is set to go off on the Democrats watch.
Yes, the 2018 Mid-term election was indeed “the most important election of our lifetimes”, but it pales in significance to 2020.
NOT because Trump will likely be running for re-election (in fact, the importance of 2020 has almost nothing to do with him) but because 2020 will be a CENSUS year in which district maps will be redrawn.
Republicans made sure they controlled BOTH Houses of Congress on 2001 & 2011 in order to redraw the voting district maps across the country to favor Republicans. The result? TWO DECADES of Republicans winning elections they otherwise would have lost.
For those trying to claim there was no “#BlueWave” Tuesday because we didn’t retake the Senate, we were never expected to retake the Senate. There were just too few Republican seats up for grabs and too many Democratic seats to defend. In fact, I started writing this Op/Ed on Monday before the election. That’s how sure I was the Senate would remain in Republican hands. But the only way retaking the House was possible (thanks to Gerrymandering) was if there was indeed a “Blue Wave”.
On Monday, The Rachel Maddow Show reported on The Brennan Center for Justice findings of how Popular Vote totals now need to be absolute landslides just to achieve margins of victory historically achieved by much smaller margins:
As I wrote in that Op/Ed last May, there’s an economic downturn coming late next year or early 2020 that will make The Great Recession of 2008 look like a hiccup. When the economy slows (as it always does under a Republican administration), there are basically four ways the government can goose an economy to counter it. The greater the decline, the more options they’ll implement:
1) Tax Cuts. “Middle-Class” tax cuts particularly will leave more money in the hands of consumers, promoting spending. Tax cuts for the super rich don’t help as much because if you already have tons of money, giving them more won’t incentivize them to spend it. Trump’s MASSIVE tax cut for the super-rich (and smaller cut for the Middle Class) boosted spending because it was so huge, but the same result could have been achieved with much smaller targeted tax cuts that didn’t blow a hole in the Deficit. As tax revenue goes down, if spending does not go down just as fast, you must make up that loss somewhere. To attract investors in “Treasuries (T-Bills)”, the Fed increases interest rates… which sucks money out of the economy as people put their money in the bank, slowing the economy still further. So Tax Cuts are only a short-term fix.
2) Low interest rates. With less incentive to put your money in the bank or invest in Treasuries, more money stays in the economy. The Federal Reserve is already desperate to inch up interest rates despite concern of slowing the economy because they realize they are dangerously low. If the economy goes South, there’s no place for them to go. You can only go so low before you hit bottom (as they did under Bush in 2008.) Cut them too low, and you can’t attract foreign investment to fund the government.
3) Government investment/spending. The government commissions large projects… typically “infrastructure”… pouring more money into the economy, resulting in jobs & spending. This is what FDR did during The Great Depression.
4) Government hiring. This is what Ronald Reagan did in 1983 after unemployment climbed to 10.8% his second year in office. His huge government projects (particular his military buildup against the Soviet Union) created hundreds of thousands of government jobs and rapidly brought unemployment down (while exploding the National Debt/Deficit.)
(There’s a 5th option in some circumstances: Enacting new government REGULATIONS. Republicans have convinced millions of Conservative Luddites that “Job killing regulations” are a thing. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. “Regulations” can force a company to buy new equipment and hire specialists to maintain compliance. The only “losers” are the super wealthy owners of those corporations who must now spend more money to buy & hire. So you can see why they’ve worked so hard to convince people Regulations “kill jobs”. Total lie. But this is an option that requires a reasonably healthy economy to begin with, so it’s not a “Go-To” solution in the midst of an economic crisis.)
Republicans are quick to employ 1 & 2 (as Trump already did), but are loath to try 3 & 4 (or their extreme ideology has convinced them 3 & 4 would actually make things worse.) Trump has already done the first two, and will never try 3 or 4. Interest rates are already creeping up out of necessity, and gas prices are 33% higher now ($2.73/gal) than when Obama left office ($1.83/gal.) I’ve pointed out repeatedly… to much argument… that the REAL cause of the 2008 Recession was gas/oil prices exploding from $25/barrel before the invasion of Iraq to a peak of $147/barrel & $4/gal gas just before the crash, sucking Trillions more out of the economy (resulting in not just people having less money to spend, but production & shipping costs also soared, causing prices to rise, so even people of means were purchasing fewer items with the same amount of money, depressing demand and production still further.) The economic slowdown resulted in soaring unemployment… resulting in people defaulting on all those “interest-only home loans”, causing the banks to collapse.
So Democrats will now be in control of the House and all the trappings that go with it: Control of every investigatory committee, the ability to open NEW investigations, and most importantly: subpoena power. So all of Trump’s scandals that Republicans were able to sweep under the rug and shield from public view to help them retain the Senate and boost Trump’s poll numbers, will now be exposed. We will finally see Trump’s tax returns and force him to explain where his money came from (or if he was indeed as rich as he claimed during the campaign.) Robert Mueller’s job is likely safe now, and when he does finally report his findings to Congress, those too will be investigated. There are a lot of former Trump campaign officials & insiders who probably didn’t sleep very well last night.
Had Democrats of retaken both the House & Senate, when this economic timebomb goes off next year as I predict (and I have a 60% success rate), Trump and the GOP will (of course) blame Democrats, but that argument will carry far less weight with Republican still in control of 2/3rds of the government. Even if Democrats had retaken the Senate, they STILL would not have had enough seats to enact any legislation or remove Trump from office following Impeachment. Republicans would have filibustered every single thing Democrats wanted to do (just as they did in 2009-2010.) So the effect of losing the Senate is minimal.
But when it comes to winning the all-important 2020 election, Democrat’s chances of retaking Congress in a Census Year have just greatly improved.
And THAT is why I’m relieved Democrats didn’t also retake the Senate yesterday.