The Donelson Files

I have noted as the unemployment continues to drop, this is the Trump recovery continuing. https://cnbc.com/2021/07/19/its-official-the-covid-recession-lasted-just-two-months-the-shortest-in-us-history.html… as you can see here, the recession ended before summer of 2020.

Unemployment went from 14.4 in April to 6.7 percent in December with an average of 1.5 million jobs returning to job force. From January 2021 to the present, the unemployment dropped from 6.3 to 4.2 percent. From January of 2021, we have seen 500,000 plus jobs returning.

third quarter growth 2020 33% followed by 4%, in the fourth quarter followed by 6% in First quarter 2021, 6% in the second quarter, 2% in the third quarter. As you can see, this recovery began in the Trump administration.

There are issues with the recovery as we have seen many workers losing ground they gained in the first three years of the Trump administration. We are now seeing inflation which is wiping out wage gains.

Inflation is a Fed responsibility as monetary policy has increased over the past two years and with no growth oriented policies to increase economic growth, we have less goods to buy with all this extra money out there.

Energy prices are strictly the result of Biden’s own plan that reduced our own production while OPEC has basically given the Biden’s administration the middle finger on increasing their production.

As mentioned in the past, this is a Republican job creation recovery as Republican states have unemployment rates 30% lower than Democratic states. The question will inflation turn to stagflation or worse with recessions around the corner?

In reading Scott Atlas book, A Plague Upon Our House, the reader is given the inside story of the Trump response to the Covid pandemics and what become obvious, the mistakes caused by our scientific class.

Atlas details the debate within the administration but what becomes obvious is that neither Trump nor Pence had control of the bureaucracy as Debbie Birks and Anthony Fauci did essentially what they wanted and never considered the results of their failures.  Trump failed to rein Fauci or Birks as they determine policy.

Trump from the beginning was not sold on the original lockdown but he depended upon his experts but as Atlas noted, Birks along with Robert Redfern, the CDC head, fail to comprehend the virus they were dealing with.

Original debate in the Trump White House in January of 2020, how serious was Covid?  It was Peter Navarro who viewed this the second coming of Spanish flu and felt this could have massive impact on the economy.  It was Fauci and other of the scientific class within the administration who viewed this lightly. (Part of Fauci problem is that he believed the Chinese propaganda that it was not serious but then we will find out Fauci and others within the NIH were supporting with American tax dollars gain of function research.)  This was a debate with models beginning to support the original Navarro position that this could be the Spanish flu repeat which would have resulted in at least two million people

In February, Fauci and Redfern stated the IFR would be between .1 to 1 percent which proved correct but by March Fauci was telling Congress this was ten times worse than the flu.  The lockdown originally advertised as short term to reduce overcrowding at the hospitals, but it turned into a stricter economic restriction that threw millions of people out of work. 

Fauci and Birks strategy of “stopping virus in its track” was a disaster from day one and unattainable goal that they should have known unattainable. 

Atlas along with others like Martin Kulldorf, Jay Bhattacharya, and John Ioannidis feared the potential lockdowns and economic restrictions would be worse for America and lead to economic dislocation, more deaths from untreated chronic diseases, impact on younger workers and blue-collar workers who could not afford to say home as well the impact on learning of children not in school.

Much of their concern have been validated but Atlas view of his colleague is worth reviewing since it coincides with my upcoming book, America at the Abyss.  He noted how much of the scientist within the government like Birks and Fauci were not even up to date on the latest research and hung on the losing strategy no matter the cost.  Atlas also concluded that politics colored much of the response.

The key argument he made included:

1. Protecting the most vulnerable, reduce testing to those with symptoms and the elderly and nursing homes.
2. The data was showing that children rarely got seriously ill and even the CDC data showed that the flu was more likely to kill children than Corona virus.
3. The elderly was impact far greater than the younger health population along with those with underlying conditions.
4. Schools should be open, and the data backed that up.
5. The politicization of science made it difficult to have reasonable discussion and many ideas were being censored.
6. The economic price was too high and the much of the middle class, small businesses, blue collar workers, minorities paid the brunt of the attack. 
7. The virus IFR overall was significantly lower than what was being touted in March of 2020 in the range of .2 to .4.  Fauci original NEJM article was closer to the truth than his congressional testimony in March in which he declared the virus to be ten times as bad as the flu.
8. Lockdown and economic restrictions did not at all reduce the transmission.
9. Mask mandates were ineffectual.

Atlas noted that Birks who mostly was in charge and Fauci often went against the desire of the President whose own gut instincts proved right more often than not.

1. He had doubts about impact of the lockdown and economic restrictions but Birks consistently were telling governors to continue the restrictions.  Mixed messaging was the problem with the Task Force mostly doing what they wanted in spite of the policy above.
2. Many in the White House did not want to rock to the boat and push Birks to stay within the stated policies
3. Pence deferred to Birks and rarely challenged her when she stepped on the stated policies of opening up the economy quicker, along with schools. Nor did she buy into the protect the elderly first and allow younger workers to go about their lives  
4. Trump and Pence failure to keep their own task force focused on their goals not the task force goals was not just a disaster but led to unnecessary suffering still going on.

My own view is that we can compare Trump, Pence and DeSantis on leadership based on this. DeSantis controlled his task force and got them on the page he wanted, they failed. Pence in particular did not do is job in dealing with the task force and Trump rarely pushed it

Vaccines themselves proved effective at reducing deaths and hospitalizations but like previous vaccines for flu, its potency waned and did very little to stop the transmission of the virus.   It was oversold, a point made by Kevin Roche of Heathy Skeptic who predicted much of what would happen on his website the Healthy Skeptic.

Carol Roth notes in her book the impact of the pandemic on smaller businesses as government policies in her view purposedly favor big business at the expense of smaller business.  As she noted, “We were not all in this together” and that restrictions allowed bigger business-like Wal mart and Amazon to increase their share while smaller business declined.

Below are books

What really happened in Wuhan A virus like no other countless infections, millions of deaths by Sharri Markson   

Atlas Plague on our House

The War on small business how the government use the pandemic to crush the backbone of America Carol Roth

When Politicians panicked The New Coronavirus expert opinion and the tragic lapse of REASON John Tamny

The number of jobs by month from May 202. From DOL, “Nonfarm employment has increased by 18.2 million since a recent trough in April 2020 but is down by 4.2 million, or 2.8 percent, from its pre-pandemic level in February 2020. ” means about 80% of jobs have been recovered.

The recovery that begins in May 2020, continues, call it the continuation of Trump recovery into the Biden years.

My final observation begins with how Youngkin added to the Trump coalition by running on a Trumpian theme.  He talked not about the economy and his business experience but also cultural issues including opposing Critical Race theories and questioning the wisdom of allowing “boys” into Girls bathroom by showing the result of those policies, rape.   He added those suburbanites we lost in 2020 back to the coalition. 

Youngkin ran on a platform that parents have a say in their children’s education and that he is understand that it is important to control what is taught in the classroom.  There is a cultural war going on and the GOP ran on winning that cultural war. Youngkin showed that you can win on a Trumpian theme without Trump on top of the ticket.  

New Jersey shows that the election battleground has expanded and even blue states are now on the docket.  States like Nevada is within reach and there could be other states up for grab that right now look hopeless but with the right tsunami, this can be changed.  

Also there will be GOP states that could be vulnerable including Iowa and Florida Senate races.   While Grassley looks good but a new candidate has enter the race, Admiral Franken and our own data shows that many voters like Grassley but concern that he is turning 88 and while other polls show Rubio well ahead, our own poll showed vulnerability to Val Demming. 

Virginia shows the GOP coalesced around ideas that can combined the best of the Reagan years and Trump issues.  And that the Democrats are not unified.

One last things, Terry McAuliffee made a crucial mistakes, he told the truth about what he would do as governor.  He made it clear that parents’ children belong to the state and they had no role in what their children are taught.  Normally Democrats are not that blunt on how they are truly governed but McAuliffee told the voter exactly what he thought about parents.  And they voted accordingly.  

There were so many interesting tidbits about the past election including the Minneapolis rejection of the hard left version of policing (or the lack of policing).  In Minneapolis, the most radical Democrats including Representative Omar and Minnesota Attorney General Ellison campaigned for this but many others more established lefties in Minnesota supposedly oppose this but refuse to come out publicly against it.  They fear the left wing of their own party than the voters. 

In Buffalo, a incumbent mayor got ambushed in the primary and lost to a socialist who wanted to defund the police in Buffalo.  Buffalo is a blue collar Democratic area but as the general election shows, these voters are not crazy.  Mayor Brown decided to run for the mayor race on a write in basis and won by a big margin.  So far his opponent won’t concede but it shows the real divide is not in the GOP, but on the Democrats side.  The Mayor refuse to go slowly into the night and instead decided to fight for his city against a radical candidate.  This was a Democrat vs Democrat battle.  

While the Media concentrate on the impact of Trump on the GOP, they ignore the real battle, the take over of the Democratic party by the socialist wing of the party and so far, they are blaming moderates for the defeats and not their own radical agenda.  The treatment of Sinema and Manchin is showing that there is no role even for very liberal Senators.  (Sinema has already stated that she will support a 1.5 trillion infrastructure on top of other spending but is balking of spending an additional 3.5 trillion. There was time that being for a 1.5 trillion dollars spending plan would make you a liberal in good standing. Maybe these two Senators might want to consider changing Party.)  

As a political operative, I hope that the Democrats listen to their socialist wing and keep pushing their radical agenda since it makes my job easier.  Buffalo showed that many at the grass roots and many minorities are not supporting the more extreme features of the new Democratic socialist party.  (I should point out that Buffalo was not only a Democrat vs Democrat but a black politician vs a black politician. )  

My favorite take is that Youngkin won based on racism and reminds me of a joke when a White businessman, Black marine and Hispanic lawyers walk into a restaurant what do you get?  The next Virginia governor, Lt. Governor and Attorney General.   So who are the real racist?

From Joe Benson

Hi Tom, I saw your post about your view of VA and I wanted to put something else on your radar. One election that might have been overlooked was Seattle. I am originally from WA state so I keep an eye on things to see how much worse they are making it up there and I was quite surprised. Bruce Harrell ran on a Mayoral platform that was about taking action on homelessness and supporting law-enforcement, while he’s far from a Republican those issues were important enough to the electorate to reject his competition. Even more incredible is that they elected Ann Davidson for City Attorney, who is a Trump Republican. I never would have expected that to ever happen in Seattle… but even in a place that is about as far left as you can get, people were fed up!

This was a great effort on all of the GOP to win Virginia and shows the importance of keeping a watchful eye on cheating.  In reviewing Voter Reference data, we still have issues and have to expand our efforts to multiple states in 2022.  If I understand the data, there are 63,000 plus more votes than voters in Virginia but in 2020, these numbers were small percentage of the margin that Trump lost or below MOF (margin of Fraud) for 2020 but these numbers represent a significant portion of the margin that Youngkin and Sears won plus within the MOF of Mijares margin.   You can add in the possibility of illegal voters voting.  A few years ago, Public Legal Foundation found a number of illegal voters who had voted before being removed off the public voting role and data provided by research of Old Dominion University along with my own research foundation demonstrated that numbers of illegal citizens voting were significant.  We showed we can win by the other guy rules but it doesn’t mean we don’t have issues.  I will be curious what we find out about  New Jersey since much of our efforts were concentrated in Virginia and how that turns out.

Many of the states we compete in, including Nevada, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania will be conducted by the Democrats rules so obviously this coordination needs to continue as well as passing and enforcing election security rules.  The good news is that we showed that we can win under the worse of conditions and that our vote will count.    Plus it helps that most of the issues are running in our direction.