Category: Politics and Issues

We saw in a period of one month, 20,000,000 people were thrown out of work in April 2020, due to the lockdowns.  There is one thing we have seen starting with Pandemic through the present time, Republicans states have outperformed their Democratic counterpart when it comes lower unemployment and job creation since the pandemic.  Regardless how you defined a GOP state whether you rate Republican governors versus their Democratic counterpart or those states that control all vehicles of government, the results are the same that GOP outperformed their Democratic counterparts.

I chose to review states comparing Republican governors and Democratic governors plus compare states with Republican complete control of all levers of government to Democrats controlling all levers.  This study shows what other studies dealing with unemployment and job creation, GOP states outperformed their Democratic counterpart.

Among Republican governors, their states returned 102.91 of jobs lost from the pandemics and their Democratic counterpart returned 100.81 percentage of their jobs.   Republicans’ governors made up 80 percent of the top ten states and 68 percent of states in the upper half of states in returning jobs from the pandemic. This reinforces the notion that GOP governors proved better at job creation.   85 percent of Republicans reached 100 percent or more of jobs returned versus only 58 percent of Democratic governors.

Then we looked at states where the Republicans controlled both the legislature and the governor seat to their Democratic counterpart.  We saw similar results as Republican states returned 103.08 jobs from pandemics compared to 100.35 for Democrats.  87 percent of GOP states returned 100 percent or more compared to 53 percent for Democratic states.  We did find that states that have mixed government outperformed states with Democrats control and slightly under GOP states.  75 percent of mixed states returned 100 percent or more jobs from the pandemic and 102.31 percent jobs were returned.  

We have found that in previous research that Republican states had lower unemployment than their Democratic counterpart in the December of 2022 and then we continued to follow up and so far, we have found Republican states with Republican governors or Republicans complete control of all levers of government have lower unemployment than their Democratic counterpart in the latest unemployment released by Department of Labor. 

Newt Gingerich recently noted the Biden campaign is competent and capable of taking Biden over the line to presidency one more time as they did in 2020.  Gingerich observed, ““The more I watch the polls and follow the methodical steps of the Biden team, the more I am convinced that we are underestimating Biden’s strength. A great deal of our underestimation comes from a deep misunderstanding of the nature of the modern Democrat Party.” Gingerich added, “Everyday Republicans tend to be the party of free enterprise, small business, and people who just want to be left alone. They don’t tend to have a real appreciation of the power of trillions of dollars in spending which holds together a coalition unbound by principle other than greed for tax dollars. So, seen from the values and interests of the left, Biden has been an outstanding president. He is not inept or incompetent. He’s faithfully exercising the liberal agenda. He is spending far more on the environment than any previous president. He is shoveling money to union contracts and changing regulators and government agencies to favor unions and undermine management.”

For the Democrats, government is their business, and they are willing to do what it takes to win to keep power.  Each group that is part of the coalition, work together as long they all get their cut of money and power.  The polls in many ways reflect this.

First the most recent polls from Real Clear Politics have seen Trump averaging 43.8 percent vs Biden 43.6 percent since June 6^th and Biden won 4 of the polls compared to 3 for Trump with one tie.  So, they are tied essentially.  DeSantis runs behind Biden 42.6 percent to 43.6 percent for Biden.  Biden won 2 of the polls, DeSantis leads in two and they are tied in three polls. So, like with Trump, DeSantis is essentially tied with Biden, only one point separate the two but they each lead in equal number of polls and nearly half of the recent polls are tied.

These recent polls are reflective of polls taken since the midterm elections.  Trump has 44 percent to Biden 44.2 percent, not much different that recent polls in the month of June.  DeSantis is 44.2 percent to Biden 44.6 percent, again not much different than data from the last month. So the question remains with Biden agenda unpopular with much of America is still tied with both Trump and DeSantis.  I doubt the other GOP candidates would fare any better. 

In a Democratic poll done in May, Trump ran behind Biden 50 percent to 48 percent, and they were tied in battleground state whereas DeSantis is up by only one point 49 percent to 48 percent but in battleground state, those numbers saw DeSantis was ahead 53 percent to 42 percent.  If this accurate, it means DeSantis has a better chance of winning than Trump the general election.

The bottom line, it doesn’t matter who the Republican candidate is, it will be a tough race and while some may make a case for DeSantis better able to win in 2024, he is not guaranteed to win and the Democrats and their co-political operative with bylines will make DeSantis the next Hitler. 

The question that Republican primary voters and caucus goers need to ask themselves, who provides the best chance of winning and when they win, who can govern effectively.  While you may view the prosecution of Trump a political persecution, the impact on many independent voters, suburban voters and even a few Republicans need to be consider.  Will they tire of the drama a second Trump administration and simply either stay home, sinking those down tickets or vote for someone else?  And Republicans need to prepare for the possibility that Biden doesn’t run or maybe RFK or another candidate wounds Biden in early primary votes.  In 1968, LBJ won New Hampshire but McCarthy came within 5 points, and this caused a wave within the Democratic party.  LBJ quit the race after that, and his Vice President Hubert Humphrey won the nomination.   Unlike LBJ, Biden has shown serious age issues and maybe signs of dementia as his obvious decline can no longer be hidden.  Many Democrats may view him as handicap and possibly a loser so what happens when Democrats go with Galvin Newsome or another candidate much younger?  That changes the dynamic of the race and may make it even tougher for Republicans to win.  Even Harris may prove tougher even though she is running behind both Trump and DeSantis, but she is still close despite that she is even more unpopular than Biden.  Biden could easily do a 1968 LBJ and say he is not running after all.

In 2022, GOP had many advantages in key battleground states with inflation and the unpopularity of Biden but while they got the House back, they lost the Senate and lost key races in those battleground states.  It could happen again in 2024.

Winston Churchill once said of Russia, “A riddle wrapped up in a mystery inside enigma” and the recent events in which Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin decided that he would retreat from his march on Moscow as part of a bargain brokered by Belarusian president Aleksandr Lukashenko to avert a potential bloodbath that for the past week, thrown Russian’s leadership class in turmoil.  The previous twenty four hours looked like a coup against Putin and his military leaders but suddenly it ended just like that.

According to news report now, Prigozhin will leave for Belarus and criminal charges dropped but who knows what all this means and what political calculations are being considered.   What will be the impact on the war on Ukraine?  Will Wagner group be involved in further combat or retired from the front line?  It was reported that Putin had to flee Moscow and does this hurt his own image internally?  Will Moscow be willing to take a deal on Ukraine to get out of this morass?  Or Putin feels pressured to push the envelope to win the war?  What don’t we know is the impact and what deal between Prigozhin and Putin produced? 

As of this moment, I couldn’t tell you if this was a victory for Putin or not, but in the long run, I can’t believe it is.   The Wagner group began a mutiny and was marching to Moscow, before a deal stopped the march.  What is intriguing is how many of the oligarchies or military leaders did not openly support Putin during the entire crisis or that Putin was forced to leave Moscow.

The recent turn of events saw Prigozhin leave Russia for Belarus and those who participated in the coup were given amnesty but doesn’t sound like they will be in the Russian army or fighting in Ukraine.  The Wagner group bore the brunt of the battle for Bakhmut and lost heavily there.  During the crisis, they had control of the City of Rostov-on-Don and even occupied the headquarters of the Southern Military District.  As one observer noted, Prigozhin and Wagner must have gotten something in return and what is happening behind the scenes?  How secure is Putin’s position? If Wagner is no longer involved in Ukraine, how does that impact Russian war there?

The events have shaken up world political calculations as Putin is in a weaker position today than he was a week ago.  Part of Putin’s army essentially sided with the rebels and now the question remains, who can Putin’s trust now?

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There is one way to judge a Presidential candidate for 2024, what did they do during the pandemic 2020.  Trump in his first three years did a decent job of being President and while he had many accomplishments in foreign policy and his judicial appointments, he failed big time during the Pandemic.  As stated, Trump federalist approach worked in that those governors who followed the science, open early.

Trump failure was allowing Fauci and Birks to run the operation and we should not forget Trump attacked Brian Kemp when he opened his economy at the end of April 2020 but now, he is saying Kemp did a good job.  He continues to lie about DeSantis record, and he did little to change course He can claim that he did not listen to Fauci but the reality Birks and Fauci ran the show.

Trump did bring in Scott Atlas, who was a leading skeptic to offer a different view and Atlas does make the point in his book, “A Plague Upon Our House” that Trump was skeptical of the lockdown, but he also makes clear that it was Birks and Fauci who controlled the policies.  He tells the story that Trump did meet with the leaders of the Great Barrington Declaration, but behind closed doors and Atlas was not given power to make changes.   

Trump had not admitted no mistakes in his handling of the Covid and that is a problem.  I will add I have yet to hear if Mike Pence has any regrets.   If you want to make the argument that DeSantis joined others in closing his state in the beginning based on Fauci/Birks/Trump recommendation, but he moved away from this and by the time the fall came, Florida was open along with other Republican states.  Kemp and Noem opened first before DeSantis, but DeSantis did open and while Trump met with Great Barrington Declaration behind close doors, DeSantis did it openly.   

DeSantis admitted that he should have opened earlier, and Trump will not admit any mistakes. Voters must ask themselves do they want a candidate who understood early that he needed to change course or if the candidate at a crucial part of history fails to change course. 

Story that caught my mind, “Kenya Abandons U.S. Dollar, Petrodollar Decline Accelerates” and one of the key phrases, “Kenya has joined the long and growing list of former staunch American geopolitical allies to ditch the dollar in favor of using local currencies, gold or other precious metals, or cryptocurrency for international transactions of oil and other precious commodities.”

The failure of Biden foreign policies is proving disastrous, and this will be a mess that the next President will inherit but a problem that may be unfixable.   As reported by Nigeria Ripples, “The President of Kenya, William Ruto, has spoken against the use of the United States Dollar (USD) during trade between African countries. Ruto said traders from Kenya and Djibouti are facilitating trade with the dollar when they could take advantage of the pan-African payment and settlement system (PAPSS) created by Afreximbank. He suggested African countries should trade with currencies on the continent rather than depending on US legal tender, as traders often must search for dollars to complete transactions. The president spoke about the dollarisation of the African market on Tuesday during his address at the Djibouti parliament on Tuesday. According to Ruto, prioritising local currencies ahead of the dollar during trading between two African countries will ease trade.”

 Multinational banks are concern about the decline of the United States and this process has been accelerated by America’s proxy war in Ukraine and United States efforts to cut Russian out of the Global economy. For many nations, they fear the power of the United States to force them out of the economic system and for many of these countries, they simply want more option in the future. Another aspect the fecklessness of the Biden administration has reduced confidence in the United States leadership and our economic policies of excessive debts, increased spending and inflation is leading other nations to doubt if we are responsible enough to continue to be the reserve currency. As on pundit noted, “Beyond that, there are a lot of other reasons the petrodollar is collapsing that cannot be laid at the Biden entity’s feet. But it surely does not help having a geriatric corpse wheeled around the world and said to be the chief executive.”

Dollar allowed us to exercise leadership in the world and now we are risking our own economic decline and accelerate our economic decline. The decline of the dollar worldwide and many of our friends thinking elsewhere is another example of our decline. It has been said that Decline is a choice, and we are making that choice.

What happened in 2020 in particular dealing with pandemic and who did what? In April, my friend Dr. Larry Fedewa observed when Donald Trump went along with the lockdown, he was gambling away his election chances.  Fedewa was proven right as Trump ceded not just the overall pandemic response to Anthony Fauci and Debbie Birx, but he ceded to them the control of the economy to them.

The lockdown was a complete failure but none of those who presided over it and supported it have yet to pay a political price for their failures.  Trump, who decided to make this a talking point against DeSantis, has his own record to defend. 

Here is what Trump got right, he allowed federalism to proceed and not interfere with governors decisions and that nearly bailed him out.  States like Georgia and Florida opening up their economy led to significant growth over the last six months of the year.  Unemployment went from 14.4 percent to 6.7 percent with 1.5 million jobs a month being returned to the workforce from May 2020 to December 2020.  Nearly 55 percent of those jobs were returned at the end of 2020.  Joe Biden inherited a growing economy.  As I have mention in previous posts, Republican states created more jobs and returned more jobs than their Democratic counterpart.  Without these states reducing their lockdown mandates, the economy would have been in dire straits.

Trump biggest failures however was that he never had the back of his Republican governors who was doing what they could to bail out the economy and Trump re-election chances.  When Brian Kemp at the end of April begin to reopen, Trump joined Fauci in criticizing him and never did he have DeSantis back when he begin to reopen Florida.   Fauci even praised Cuomo for his disastrous response and recently so did Trump as a move to attack DeSantis. 

Scott Atlas in his book, “A Plague on Our House”, details the inner struggle dealing with Covid from his own perch within the administration.  Atlas details the failure of the lockdowns including missed cancer screenings, missed surgeries, nearly two years of educational losses, bankrupted small business, depression and drug overdoses, overall citizen demoralization, violations of religious freedom, this while public health officials ignored those at-risk population in nursing homes and the elderly plus immunocompromised.  Scott Atlas observed, Yes, the president initially had gone along with the lockdowns proposed by Fauci and Birx, the “fifteen days to slow the spread,” even though he had serious misgivings. But I still believe the reason that he kept repeating his one question— “Do you agree with the initial shutdown?”—whenever he asked questions about the pandemic was precisely because he still had misgivings about it…to disregard his own common sense and allow grossly incorrect policy advice to prevail…. This president, widely known for his signature “You’re fired!” declaration, was misled by his closest political intimates. All for fear of what was inevitable anyway—skewering from an already hostile media. And on top of that tragic misjudgment, the election was lost anyway. So much for political strategists.

Altas view was that Trump had his doubts about the policies, but Trump also did nothing about those doubts and thus his biggest failures.  DeSantis decided to ignore conventional wisdom and seek outside experts to explain what was really happening.  In the winter of 2020, many states continued their lockdown or reinstated lockdown, but Florida and ten other states refuse to do so and as we now know, these governors prove to be correct.

If Atlas is correct and Trump had doubts, he refused to act on them.  Kemp and DeSantis did act on their doubts and proved to be correct.   Trump efforts to criticize DeSantis on this only expose Trump own failures on this as he may have allowed governors to do their thing, he refused to move those around him to discard obviously failing policies and instead allowed Fauci and others to promote these policies to governor, many of whom were perfectly willing to take advantage of the pandemic to use their newly found powers to restrict their citizens freedom.

What voters need to ask is the progress that Trump made on the economic front going into 2020 and his foreign policies successes make up for the complete failure of the Pandemic governing.  Trump ceded his power to the DC health care insiders and if he is not willing to admit his failures here, then voters need to ask can he be trusted again in a similar crisis?

Much of the solutions that was used to shut down the economy for Covid is now being considered for climate emergency and the next Republican President has to put complete stop to this stupidity. On this issue, Trump has been solid on climate policies and removing us from the Paris accord showed that what he will do but his failure to rein in the bureaucracy during the pandemic has to be consider as well. 

DeSantis was right and when you look at the full picture of the economy, education and even deaths based on variables including age showed that Florida performance was superior to Cuomo’s New York that Trump recently praised. 

 Red State writer Bonchie noted, “Yet, the biggest issue with Trump backing Cuomo at the expense of DeSantis is that it shows he doesn’t take the suffering that happened throughout 2020 and 2021 seriously. If he’s willing to praise a guy who instituted lockdowns for two years just for a cheap, false political attack, what other basic principle is he willing to throw aside? Why wouldn’t he recommend another regime of lockdowns if he thinks it will benefit him? Trump may end up the nominee, and I’d like to be able to vote for him with confidence that he’s going to do the right thing on policy. To be honest, I don’t have that confidence anymore. What happened with the nation’s COVID response was not a game. It was horrible, and it can never be repeated. Trump’s fluidity on the issue is not good enough.”  Is he right?

When few GOP governors ignored the advice of Tony “I am Science” Fauci and his sidekick Debbie Birks, GOP states have outperformed Democratic states when it came to unemployment. In August of 2020, the GOP governors had an average of 6.4 percent to Democratic governors 8.4 percent. Wilfred Reilly own research showed similar data in favor of GOP states 6.4 percent to 8.2 percent. In the winter of 2020, eleven Republican states did not reinstate lockdown as there was increase in covid infection and after two years, their unemployment was only 2.9 percent vs. 3.9 percent for those lockdown states,

After numerous studies for Americas Majority Foundation over a period of two years and based on Department of Labor data, we have seen consistently, Republican states outperformed Democratic states no matter if the state had a Republican governor or if the state has state government controlled by one party. Republican states with control of both the legislative and executive had unemployment of 3 percent in December of 2022 to Democrats controlled states of 4 percent. States that had mixed government 3.5 percent unemployment
After the 2022 midterms changes were made as four states, Massachusetts, Maryland, Nevada and Arizona saw changes in the governor race. Both Massachusetts and Maryland are now under complete Democratic control whereas Karen Hobbs is constrained by Republican legislature in Arizona. Nevada, the state with the highest unemployment has a new Republican governor and we will see if he has similar results than other Republican governors in lowering Nevada unemployment.

Over the first third of the year, GOP governors led states have unemployment 2.9 percent and Democrats governor led states have unemployment of 3.5 percent. States with Republican in complete of all aspect of governor unemployment of 2.8 percent versus 3.2 percent for Democrat complete controlled all aspect of government.

The advantages that Republicans with reducing unemployment continues into the first third of 2023 and when you look at top four most populous states with GOP governors outperformed their Democratic counterparts.

In December of 2022, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, and Texas averaged 3.4 percent unemployment and California, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New York average 4.25 percent unemployment. April of 2023, the four Republican averaged 3.35 percent unemployment and Democratic states averaged 4.2 percent unemployment.

In another study saw larger GOP states averaged 312,000 jobs created from February 2022 to February 2023 for a 3.4 percent increase whereas the four Democratic states averaged only 266,000 jobs created for only a 2.7 percent increase.

From August 2020, GOP governors have dropped from 6.4 to 2.9 percent unemployment versus Democratic governors dropping 8.4 to 3.4 in April of 2023.

Conclusion is that for the past nearly three years, GOP governors and state have outperformed their Democratic counterpart and first reason is that they opened their economy sooner during the pandemic and this gave them advantages. Open the economy and you can produce goods, services, and jobs. Governor Kemp, Noem, Reynolds, and DeSantis understood this and realized quickly the virus was not as lethal as originally predicted.

There are aspects of how to win a nomination and how not to win.  Trump strategy was to go after DeSantis before he entered the race and taking of advantage of the prosecution that aided in his popularity. 

Maybe Trump views his 30 plus points ahead in the polls not as safe as the pundits do or he would change his strategy and he has basically ignored the other candidates like Nikki Haley and Tim Scott as no threats. The real issue is how far do you go to go after DeSantis and risk tearing the party asunder? 

Trump advantages, he ran a successful foreign policy that made the world safer with no war in Ukraine, the Abraham accord with unified Sunni Arabs and Israel against Iran and changed our view of China to a more realistic view. 

Trump’s criticism of NATO included his view that NATO member states should contribute more toward their own defenses.  This may have seen results.  As Michael Barone noted, “Finance ministers, stung by Trump’s campaign criticisms, are ponying up more money to meet their NATO defense-spending commitments.”

Brexit was the first break in the European Union’s dominance of the continent. While Obama threatened Britain with being sent to the “back of the queue” if they voted to leave the EU, Trump supported Brexit and a possible future U.S-U.K. free trade agreement.  Brexit could be the first step toward the formation of the Anglosphere an alliance of English-speaking nations that would support Trump’s “America First” view of the world and should be part of any GOP talking point.

In the Middle East, Trump ditched Iranian deal and boosted the Sunni-Israeli alliance against increasing Iranian influence through various peace agreements between Sunni states and Israel.   These success can be contrasted with Biden approaches which abandoned the Abraham Accord and created a more chaotic Middle East, his w withdrawal from Afghanistan was a disaster and led Putin to think he could invade Ukraine with no real objection from the Biden’s administration.  Biden’s weakness led to the Ukraine invasion and now we are supplying Ukraine in an endless war that has no real endgame.

Inflation has reduced the average worker living standard and energy independence policy ended with Biden’s administration.

Trump biggest failure was his handling of the pandemic and the panic that ensued as result of lockdown.  The position of allowing federalism allowed states to decide their fate in dealing with the pandemic. He failed to change the policy openly but allowed Fauci and Birks to run the policy. 

DeSantis along with Governor Kemp of Georgia, Reynolds of Iowa and Kristi Noem of South Dakota move away from the lockdown and they along with seven other GOP governors did not redo lockdowns in their states during the winter of 2020.

DeSantis record of governor dealing with the pandemic and challenging the left in his state has shown a pathway to dealing with the administrative state in DC.

For DeSantis, he has to show how he will build upon the Trump legacy the first three years and how his record will translate.  For Trump, he has to show what he learned from his failure in 2020 and how it will shape his administration. Both men have their challenges.

The biggest challenge is not to forget who the real enemy is.  It is the Democrats.