During his first and, mercifully for Republicans, only, debate with Kamala Harris, Donald Trump famously referred to his strategy for overhauling a broken health care system as “a concept of plan.”
In a sad testament to the deplorable (get it?) state of political discourse in the 21st century, Trump’s de facto admission that his party had no concrete proposals for mitigating the prohibitive cost of staying healthy in America wasn’t the worst soundbite from that evening’s spectacle in Philadelphia. That distinction went to Trump’s claim that immigrants in Ohio were in the habit of stealing their neighbors’ pets — and eating them.
For a few hours that evening, it appeared as though Trump might’ve torpedoed modern history’s most unlikely political comeback with a silly digression about Haitian cat-eating. But as was the case with the Access Hollywood tapes eight years previous, he shook it off and went on to win The White House.
Fast forward a year and things in America are… I don’t know, really. Not great. “Again” or otherwise.
The streets of the nation’s capital are patrolled by uniformed troops, one of whom was murdered late last month by an Afghan who owed his residency in America to a stint as a CIA collaborator.
The MAGA movement — not just the GOP — is grappling with at least two internal rifts, one of which centers around Trump’s handling of documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein saga, the other around whether it’s ok to embrace Nick Fuentes.
In a sign of the domestic political times, Marjorie Taylor Greene has emerged as one of the most principled, honest people in Washington — from either party. She’s retiring in disgusted protest to the whole sordid business of American politics, but somehow, I doubt we’ve heard the last from her.
Democrats, meanwhile, are wandering aimlessly through the desert, hoping against hope for some manner of divine intervention that might point them in the direction of a strategy. So far, no dice. A gambit to figuratively starve out Republicans via a government shutdown in the name of health care subsidies resulted in a humiliating fold after the GOP threatened to literally starve out low-income Americans by — and this is Trump for you — refusing to distribute food aid to the poor.
Long story short, it seems like more or less everyone’s losing in one way or another so far in Trump’s second term. And not for being too exhausted with winning to carry on with it anymore.
As is always the case, Main Street has it worst, and that’s reflected in consumer sentiment loitering at or near record lows on both marquee national surveys. The figure below, which I’ve used previously, is as remarkable as it is simple: It’s just the average of the Michigan sentiment headline and Conference Board confidence.
I’m not sure which is more darkly amusing: That the mood was worse around Trump’s attempt to turn his tariff rollout into a new national holiday than it was when headline CPI was running near double-digits under Joe Biden, or the fact that six months on from “Liberation Day,” the mood’s damn near as bad as it was in April, when you might’ve assumed things couldn’t possibly get any worse.
Of course, a lot of Republicans — and everyone in Trump’s cabinet — will insist things have never been better, but when you go looking for evidence to back up such assertions, it’s lacking. Besides stocks prices — and that’s just the AI bubble — I doubt you can surface a single metric to support the contention that things are better now in American than they were a year ago.
Certainly such evidence isn’t to be found in the labor market. This week brought another run of decidedly poor numbers, including the worst read on private hiring since 2023, one of the largest one-month mass layoffs among small businesses since the GFC, the third-highest November tally for job cut announcements since Lehman and a fifth decline on an alternative measure of overall nonfarm employment in seven months.
The figure above shows the average of official NFP, ADP private hiring and Revelio’s NFP proxy. The fact that the official BLS NFP tally isn’t included for October and November speaks volumes: The dysfunction in D.C. is such that the government’s no longer able to tabulate statistics on time. Or at all.
Simply put: Hiring’s flatlined at best. By most accounts, it’s gone into reverse, and the only silver lining from lost jobs is that as long as the layoffs don’t precipitate a recession, a decelerating economy can be bullish for equities through the monetary policy channel.
Complicating all this immeasurably is the soap opera around the legality of the tariffs. Even in a scenario where the Supreme Court ruled that Trump hadn’t overstepped in citing IEEPA to implement the levies, the chaos sown by the mere prospect they might be found unconstitutional is almost as farcical as the melee around the duties themselves.
Consider that, as The New York Times relayed this week, small business owners worried they might not be able to afford the cost of litigation in the event Trump simply refused to issue a hypothetical court-ordered refund were being approached by distressed debt investors offering to buy those theoretical claims for pennies on the dollar.
“In an email to a prospective client in late November, one broker at Oppenheimer & Company advertised that the rights to refunds on so-called reciprocal tariffs were trading at 20 to 30 cents on the dollar, while those for fentanyl tariffs were in the high teens,” Tony Romm and Ana Swanson wrote.
In one instance, Cantor Fitzgerald at least poked around in the nascent market for refund rights, an unfathomably ridiculous situation given Howard Lutnick’s prominent role in Trump’s tariff push. Romm and Swanson said the firm “explored” the trades but didn’t place any. Or hadn’t placed any through September.
To me, this all looks like abject chaos, the opposite of the order Trump promised to restore when he ran for reelection. And lest anyone should come away with the impression I’m being unduly partisan, it’s not lost on me — nor should it be lost on readers — that it doesn’t say anything good about Biden and Harris that a twice-impeached convicted felon who instigated a literal armed rebellion on the steps of the US Capitol was able to hold himself up, semi-plausibly, as the stability candidate.
Whatever the outlook for the stock market in 2026 (stocks tend to rise, so while I wouldn’t back up the truck with the S&P trading at 23x on a forward multiple, I wouldn’t bet against equities either), the prospects for American democracy and, relatedly, societal cohesion, seem somewhat dire.
Coming full circle, I don’t think there’s any plan whatever at The White House. For anything. I don’t see any indication that the administration even knows where it wants to go from here, having mostly succeeded in checking the unitary executive theory boxes already.
To be clear, Trump did have a plan for his second term. It was called “Project 2025,” and credit where it’s due: He’s executed on it flawlessly thus far. The problem: That plan’s a roadmap to autocracy. And having travelled most of the way towards the destination in the short space of 11 months, it’s not obvious where America goes next domestically. Particularly considering that autocracy tends to be a societal dead-end.
If Cantor Fitzgerald starts buying refund rights via World Liberty Financial, those refunds will start flowing.
I’ve noticed lately that Republicans have once again turned their anger toward Tim Walz, the Somali lover and baby killer. The salt-of-the-earth schtick is just a cover so he can take his cut of the ill-gotten gains from Somalis who took advantage of pandemic relief programs.
Meanwhile, Trump repeatedly takes bribes in open daylight and pardons actual fraudsters because if you’re white and rich, you were a victim of the Biden administration.
I wonder if my kids will believe me when I someday tell them of the stupidity of the era they are growing up in. Thankfully, they are too young and I don’t and won’t expose them to any of this for many years.
One of these days the floodgates will open and we will hear all the insiders’ versions of these times and how they themselves were unaware of how illegal and immoral this whole thing was…..
+1.
Don’t wait too long to expose your kids to “how the world works “- both the good and the bad! Although, I’m guessing they pick up a lot at your dinner table (my main source of information regarding “this is how the world works” when I was growing up).
And don’t leave out the part about how corrupt politicians, even in the USA, and especially throughout the world, actually are.
Better to make decisions about what they want their life to look like, as adults, with actual knowledge.
One; neither party is able to make things better, government in DC is broken. More elections between Democrats and Republicans won’t fix it. Unless something major happens, like an alien invasion, the spiral down continues.
Two; healthcare isn’t going to get better, see item one above. Both parties are so entangled with healthcare lobbyists that they are bound by unbreakable chains.
Three; just reading this post gives a good explanation why Americans are so depressed. Trump One was a lot of talk and ‘fake news’ accusations. In Trump Two world the results of governing insanity
are real for the average citizen and none but the criminally insane like it.
SNAFU!
Mitch deserves a lot of credit for where we are as a country. He stacked the high court with hacks that back whatever the far-right wants, to the point it takes everyone else that isn’t 100 percent bought-and-paid for to do the right thing.
Also, Mitch managed to block or distort any legislation that would have really helped anyone, leading to people feeling like government can’t be a good thing, so we should burn it all to the ground.
Credit where credit is due Mitch. I hope history records your great works as such.
Almost forgot, Mitch could have impeached, but choose not to.
+1
The election of a twice-impeached convicted felon, … etc. may not say anything good about Biden and Harris, but it says clearly that at least a majority of US voters are brain-dead.
Not exactly a majority of Americans. There was no majority vote for anyone in 2024. Trump beat his opponents by scant plurality of those eligible who actually voted. Sadly, so many didn’t vote (I was one of them) that the total vote was less than 90% of those eligible and no one one received a majority.
Nice read. This whole situation is ripe for Trump corruption. What’s new. Piling on. Soon the court will win SCOTUS decision – Trump vs Slaughter, giving him control over independent agencies. He will be free to fire and hire as he pleases without cause – think FTC, Fed Reserve, Fed Communication Commission, National Transportation, SEC, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, AND Federal Elections! Lisa Cook case will go away, my guess. Lastly, Imagine how our mid-term elections will be run after he fires and hires new leadership at the Fed Election Agency?
Whoops, soon the court give Trump a win…
The only plan is to throw sand in the gears, bring Washington to a grinding halt, and try to make sure that it can never truly function again. The courts are stacked, there are more lawsuits than legislation, and the Congress isn’t even pretending to try anymore. The only functioning governments are now state and local, and they seem as bewildered as we are.
Sadly, you are 100% right. Here is how the majority of your neighbours, looks at the state of the union:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-donald-trump-american-democracy-us-corruption-extremism-authoritarian/
The most underreported story about Trump is the level of corruption, including “pay to play”, that Trump is dragging our country into. H has touched on this, but just the tip of the iceberg, imho.
This is the problem with ignoring “low level” corruption because each successive politician/set of politicians can potentially justify a slightly higher level of corruption- thinking they will be allowed to get away with it because the last guy did.
Unfortunately, the level of corruption throughout the world seems to be increasing significantly. In some ways, people are just as fearful of calling Trump out on his corruption as people are in China and Russia. Just because the “whistleblower” doesn’t get killed in the US, their lives can still be destroyed by retaliation.
This article from Matthew Syed includes descriptions of some of the deals that Trump and his family are entering into that are absolutely inappropriate and corrupt.
US foreign policy is simply a racket but no one dares defy Trump
https://www.thetimes.com/article/b32ca55b-ee7f-497c-adf5-10b7854f12c1?shareToken=0a71bb6403f99169e707c25a511e858d
Another in a long, long line of examples of Trump’s out-in-the-open corruption was his berating of the democratic lawmaker he pardoned because the lawmaker had the audacity to not switch parties as thanks for Trump’s mercy. It’s so comically brazen.