Will 2026 finally be the year when a critical mass of Americans wakes up and realizes that Republicans always screw up the economy?

Donald Trump inherited an economy from Joe Biden that was perhaps not firing on all cylinders but was in pretty good shape all the same.

For the third straight time, a Democratic president handed a Republican president an economy that was at the least pretty good, and at most (Bill Clinton) really humming along very nicely. And, for the third straight time, the Republican has made things worse. Which also means that Democratic presidents have to clean up messes left by their GOP predecessors.

  • aceshigh@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    The economy secondary to controlling the “undesirables”. Not to mention their economy is calculated by short term returns, like quarterly earnings.

  • lemming741@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    I think Republicans define “the economy” as the stock market, even the temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

  • drunkpostdisaster@lemmy.world
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    21 hours ago

    We’ve known. But liberal purity politics got us trump anyway. But at least some first world brat can pat themselves on the back and say they didn’t support a genocide by voting for a candidate that would not have declare war on Iran. Real good guys, I’ll be sure to say thanks as we are all hauled off to a death camp

  • Furbag@pawb.social
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    1 day ago

    I’ve been waiting 20+ years for Republicans to wake up. They will never wake up. So many uncrossable lines have been crossed and yet they still maintain their momentum and people fall over themselves to vote for them in elections.

    The problem is twofold:

    1. Most people are chronically unaware or ignorant of who represents them. Even terminally online political junkies often don’t do any research into the candidates they vote for, and they don’t follow up on whether or not their campaign promises were fulfilled. They lock in and vote R all the way down the ballot. To be completely fair™ and balanced™ - Democrats are also guilty of this and will happily vote for the D all the way down the ballot which is how we end up with progressive candidates running 3rd party in primaries losing to DINO incumbents.

    2. There is too much disconnect between which parties in government are responsible for which policies. Many people believe the president has far more power than they actually do. In reality, outside of executive orders and appointing SCOTUS judges, the largest political impact a president has is to be a veto on legs. Congress are the ones who truly hold the power, but because you are represented by one U.S. house representative for your district and two senators for your state, it’s easy for people to think that their vote for those seats, win or lose, has little impact in shaping national policy. But even when their party has a majority (albeit slim), Republicans rarely draft any kind of legislation that is aimed to help their constituents or fulfill their campaign promises. People never check their reps voting records to see that they barely show up for their jobs, and that when they do, it’s usually to cast a deciding vote against something that would help their constituents tremendously if passed. It all circles back around to people not bothering to do research or follow up with their votes in any way.

    Voting to a lot of people is a team sport, and if their team is winning then all is right with the world. The bad things are happening because the others caused it, or are preventing it from being fixed. It can never be because they made a bad decision and voted in someone terrible into office. It’s always someone else’s fault. If good things are happening, it’s because they made the right decision all along and they are succeeding in spite of opposition - no need to even bother checking if the guy who represents you voted in favor of the good thing or not!

  • Thebeardedsinglemalt@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Not saying it was all Clinton, but Bush inherited a great economy, which he nuked by deregulating Wall Street.

    Obama inherited that, did all the best to right the ship.

    The orange kid-fucker tried taking credit for the state of the economy within months, and got laughed at. his shitty policies and robbing the nation let the economy slip but his complete bumblefuck of COVID lead to another crash

    Biden inherited that, did whatever he could but the reds lead by that ancient fuck mitch outright said they would block any and all meaningful legislation just to make him look bad.

    orange rapist somehow sleezed his way back in and is now on a blatant power grab, openly embezzling money, and the economy is 1 bad day away from a total collapse…which I am almost expecting.

    Why don’t right leaning people see this? Because anyone over 40 joyously watches focks nooz, oann and all those other blatant propaganda outlets while the rest listen to blowrogan and other right-winger propaganda podcasts (usually dark-funded by Russia, Israel, etc).

    • Pacattack57@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Bush had a lot of other major issues that affected the economy. Mainly being a puppet for his father and the other cronies obsessed with oil in the Middle East. As usual Americas obsession with the Middle East is both hindering and actively destroying us.

      • Thebeardedsinglemalt@lemmy.world
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        24 hours ago

        Yeah I left out the whole part of Dick using the war for his companies to get no-big contracts. But the biggest one is Wall Street. Because much like COVID, it was at the tail end of his term and left as a mess for the next person to clean up…and ultimately get blamed for

  • Azal@pawb.social
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    2 days ago

    “Will 2026 finally be the year when a critical mass of Americans wakes up and realizes that Republicans always screw up the economy?”

    I live in a red state.

    LOL. LMAO even.

    They WILL vote against their interests as long as the R is next to the name.

    • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 day ago

      Leftists are just too ethical to trick them like Sinema or Fettermam (even though progressive policy is extremely popular when you don’t say it’s progressive).

      I imagine the GOP would actually do something about it though, unlike the Democrats

      • Azal@pawb.social
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        1 day ago

        I imagine the GOP would actually do something about it though

        My state has a supermajority Republicans for the last ten or so years. The cities police are under control over the state instead of the cities themselves. Crime has risen… but they still parrot that “liberal cities are crime infested” (feature not a bug), we can vote on bills through a petition process, they’re trying to kneecap that, while the past few bills pass overwhelmingly progressive parts but the Republican supermajority either reintroduces the bill with confusing language to overturn it, overturns it directly while saying “People didn’t know what they were voting for”, or just outright ignores it (We put into our constitution for medicaid expansion. They’ve not implemented it in over five years, just ignoring it). We’re now a flyover state that is about to get rid of income tax and increase sales tax, despite the two major population centers are right on the border for other states.

        Yet our idiots that live here keep voting for these assholes.

  • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Conservatism heavily relies on lifestyle marketing. You’re not voting for promises, but for a lifestyle.

      • Thebeardedsinglemalt@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Their mantra is FREEDOM, despite wanting to do nothing but take away everyone else’s.

        But the freedom they’re talking about is Freedom To…not Freedom From…

        As in freedom to be an unrepentant racist, homophobic , transphobic asshole.

        Meanwhile the otherside is losing their freedom from hate, torment, persecution…

  • jtrek@startrek.website
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    2 days ago

    They won’t.

    Many of them are stupid. Many are poorly informed.

    But many of them are operating with stupid axioms. They would rather suffer and die personally if it meant those people got it worse.

    If you offered free health care, guns, and hamburgers to everyone but it meant that black people got it too, a lot of Americans would say no

    The Confederacy should have been burned to the ground, its leaders and supporters hanged and their bodies left to rot in the sun.

    • falynns@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Amen. Instead they were coddled, allowed to put up statues (of their loss lmao), and left to fester.

    • Azal@pawb.social
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      2 days ago

      The Confederacy should have been burned to the ground, its leaders and supporters hanged and their bodies left to rot in the sun.

      I come from the south, I know my heritage has a confederate officer in it.

      John Brown did nothing wrong.

    • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      The Confederacy should have been burned to the ground, its leaders and supporters hanged and their bodies left to rot in the sun.

      huzzah

  • A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world
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    20 hours ago

    Republicans dont care about the economy, they care about their wallets. They will keep voting for any red tie that makes them pay one penny fewer in April and call anyone who disagrees foolish.

    I can’t stand these people and im fuckin drowning in them

    • Gigasser@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      What will likely happen is that when we finally get a Democrat in next election, all the bad shit Trump caused will just be blamed on the Democrats who just got into office.

      • GreyEyedGhost@piefed.ca
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        2 days ago

        Literally happened when Trump arranged for the military to pull out of Iraq…during the next president’s term. I don’t remember if it happened after he lost the election or not, but Biden got blamed for how the pullout with no time to prepare went, anyway…

        • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz
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          2 days ago

          That was Afghanistan, but that’s exactly what happened. If I remember correctly trump committed to the pullout after the election. Literally causing incalculable suffering just to spite his opponent

  • dantheclamman@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    The median voter will never realize. They will always forget and eventually get scammed again. I haven’t made peace with this, and feel a kind of grief about it, but it’s the truth. We are trapped in this cycle of idiocy.

    • fishy@lemmy.today
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      1 day ago

      This is why a large part of me wishes you had to pass some kind of baseline intelligence test to vote. I regularly go on nextdoor to discuss local politics and basically every argument with a conservative feels like arguing with a mentally handicapped person. They only read headlines and aren’t smart enough to question their sources of information.

      Recently they were up in arms because the conservative paper claimed the mayor’s office wasn’t being transparent. Actually reading the article it says the reporter requested an interview on the spot and halfway through it an assistant told the mayor they need to move on. Not even noteworthy but it was enough to get the trolls riled up

      • madcaesar@lemmy.world
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        8 hours ago

        The real fix would actually be REQUIRED voting from your phone. Most people hate the Republicans. They win because they cheat, when more people vote their shitty ideas and candidates get obliterated

      • dantheclamman@lemmy.world
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        17 hours ago

        I totally get what you’re saying. Nextdoor really is an unpleasant view into how unintelligent everyday people are. I’ve seen it too. I try to be a humanist but they make it hard.

        If we prioritize education they fail. That’s why they attack public education with everything they have.

        On the other hand, during Jim Crow they had poll tests that were weaponized to keep black people from voting.

        • fishy@lemmy.today
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          16 hours ago

          Yup, that’s why I said a part of me. The other part understands that ultimately it would be twisted and used as a barrier against “the undesirables.”

          Education is definitely a great weapon to combat the oligarchs manipulation but we’re not even funding it correctly currently in the US. It’ll take generations to rightsize and we’d still be dealing with a large amount of stupid people who no amount of education would help.

  • SnarkoPolo@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    A little late now. We’re heading for Great Depression 2.0, and Republicans are in charge for the foreseeable future.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    “When will Americans conservatives…”

    More than half the country has already figured this out.

    Also, it isn’t about the economy. If it were about the economy, the right would be losing their shit over the wild spending, the exploding deficit, massive spending on ICE and wasteful detention centers, stupid wars driving up energy costs and anything tangential to that, job losses, on and on and on…

    It’s not about the economy. It’s about fascism, racism, nationalism, homophobia, misogyny, fake christianity, and all of the rest of the hotbutton issues the Right have effectively captured and turned into an ideology. As long as they have those things delivered to them by the truckload, everything else gets a pass.

  • Basic Glitch@sh.itjust.works
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    15 hours ago

    I do have to say, I don’t usually buy eggs but I bought them for the first time in long time the other day and I think they were<$3

    Rent, gas, and all other cost of living, including price of all other groceries, is absolutely out of control. But gotta hand it to the Republicans (and maybe something like a rebound effect of overshooting estimated demand following massive culling due to repeated outbreaks bird flu over the last year), eggs weren’t $5.

    I guess there also might have been a sale on eggs at the grocery store when I or something. Idk, don’t really buy eggs very often anymore, so who’s to say? The important point is. This isn’t sleepy joes economy. /s ⬅️Will leave this here jic people don’t remember the same memes as me circa Fall 2024.

    • BillCheddar@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      Every goddamn time the Republicans are in charge, they break the economy, and the best you can cite is some made-up anecdote about how you just happened to buy cheaper eggs today?

      Who do you imagine you fool with stuff like this?

      • Basic Glitch@sh.itjust.works
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        15 hours ago

        I was a joke/reference to $5 eggs people kept complaining about in “Biden’s economy” just before the 2024 elections. As in, I wish we could go back to $5 eggs so I could afford to put gas in the car and actually buy groceries

  • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I think even if this was on billboards and schools started to teach this basic fact, it would take decades for it to finally sink in.

    I cannot tell you how many “non political” people tend to believe it, too. I could see dumbass cult members parroting nonsense talking points about how magical Republicans are on the economy, but the fact that people that barely pay attention believe it is just exhausting.

    Far too many idiots think: “the government should be run like a business, and Republicans bend over the hardest for business, therefore we should put a Republican in as a President-as-CEO, preferably someone also from the world of business”.

    It’s all so very fucking stupid, starting with the very premise…

    • spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.worksOP
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      2 days ago

      In the presence of continued propaganda from the GQP and the duplicity of the Fourth Estate supporting and distributing that propaganda I don’t think it will ever sink in.

      Oligarch owned mainstream news providers have become Republican disinformation tools - slightly veiled versions of Fox News held to no standard at all. Facts have little chance against widespread lies repeated constantly almost everywhere.

      • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Hell, even before Faux came along, the mainstream media was and is embarrassingly skewed to the right.

        But that was not enough for the Bircher types. They resented that something like Watergate was allowed to bring down their Nixon. They needed outlets that were ridiculously, cartoonishly even, right wing. And they had the balls to call them “fair and balanced”.

        The funniest thing is when you see some Bircher bitching about how Faux is “woke” or something unhinged like that.

        I mean, Network skewered the corporate capture of news quite well, and that was 50 years ago.

      • zd9@lemmy.world
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        23 hours ago

        The liberal media helped fascism grow in the 1920s and 1930s in America. They also did the same the second time in the mid 2010s to now.

        edit: seems quite a few don’t like to acknowledge reality

    • brygphilomena@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 days ago

      Republicucks always said they were fiscally conservative. It’s always been what they touted as a defining characteristic when you took idealogy tests.

      Turns out, that was all lip service. At least for the last few decades.

      • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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        23 hours ago

        They just want a strong Daddy type (or a facsimile of one, like PEDOnald, who strikes me as one of the most effete people in the public eye, but I digress. It doesn’t have to make sense to people of average+ intelligence) that tells them it’s okay to say the N-word, grab women by the pussy, burn whatever you want and cut everything down, and own the libz by rolling coal on bicyclists and sneaking meat into the diets of vegans or whatever.

        That’s pretty much it.

        All the other lofty rhetoric coming from conservatives is just window dressing.

        Of course the donor class running the party just wants tax cuts and businesses to be completely unrestrained by law.

      • JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca
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        2 days ago

        Oh conservatives have always loved to spend money, just on things like weapons for “defense” and not like, people.

  • Hanrahan@slrpnk.net
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    1 day ago

    And, for the third straight time, the Republican has made things worse.

    this completely misunderstands their popularity in the first place.

    They’re alright with that along as its worse to brown people, gays, trans etc who after all are causing all this /,s

    that the rich hucksters make away with the bank is a price they’re prepared to pay as they put a maga hat on face full of shitty teeth because they can’t afford decent dental care.