Message
This is striking me as similar to the NUM (National Union of Mineworkers) coal strikes in the 70s and 80s UK. You had (possibly, although not as much as feared) Soviets in the background egging on the most Militant of tendencies within the labo(u)r unions and Labour, you had Thatcherites aching to cut everyone off at the knees, you had Liberals wondering which side to support, and people who just wanted to get on with their lives.
Of course, with automated trucks, this may end about as well as the the latter, at which NUM began to dwindle into irrelevancy.
I will admit it's kind of offputting to see people who'd run over BLM protesters blocking the roadways cheer on these guys, and to see folks who turned a blind eye to rioters within the BLM movement declare that Someone should just get rid of the protesters.
I suspect any parallel action in the US will end up getting dragged down into QAnon untruth and/or random grifters, and working conditions/wages will get left in the dust. (Such was the case with the CHAZ in Seattle).
Of course, you've got the BNSF railroad strike lurking in the background. That one seems to be a more standard left-wing strike as opposed to what will likely emerge as a mix of right-wing culture war grievances, left-wing wage/condition grievances, and anti-vax paranoia.
Remember - there are grifters lurking in any cause and there are those just itching for a fight lurking in the support base of any cause.
Of course, with automated trucks, this may end about as well as the the latter, at which NUM began to dwindle into irrelevancy.
I will admit it's kind of offputting to see people who'd run over BLM protesters blocking the roadways cheer on these guys, and to see folks who turned a blind eye to rioters within the BLM movement declare that Someone should just get rid of the protesters.
I suspect any parallel action in the US will end up getting dragged down into QAnon untruth and/or random grifters, and working conditions/wages will get left in the dust. (Such was the case with the CHAZ in Seattle).
Of course, you've got the BNSF railroad strike lurking in the background. That one seems to be a more standard left-wing strike as opposed to what will likely emerge as a mix of right-wing culture war grievances, left-wing wage/condition grievances, and anti-vax paranoia.
Remember - there are grifters lurking in any cause and there are those just itching for a fight lurking in the support base of any cause.
Would Putin settle for a relationship with Ukraine similar to that which the USSR had with Finland during the Cold War?
Putin, I would hope, has no stomach for occupying Ukraine from Kiev on west, outside of some small area in SE Ukraine where pro-Russia sentiment runs strongest. Quite frankly, once he gets past Kiev, it will be a fight for national survival for the Ukrainians, and even east of Kiev, there's enough anti-Russian sentiment to make any wide-ranging occupation damned near impossible.
Would Lviv (heartland of the anti-Russian forces in Ukraine) be willing to accept a partition where the eastern part joins Russia/becomes like Kazakhstan and the western part goes down the NATO road that Albania and North Macedonia have chosen?
Likewise, I hope Biden doesn't want Ukraine as it is currently constituted to join NATO. Ukraine's per capita GDP is 70% that of Albania (the next-poorest NATO member) and under half that of Turkey. Its corruption is near-endemic, and domestic opinion is really and truly split.
Albania has historically been more supportive of the US than the US (a class in which I'd put Poland and the Baltic Republics, and in Asia Vietnam and the Philippines.) Ukraine on the other hand is split between a western half that's in the more supportive of the US than the US, and an eastern half that wants to be like Kazakhstan or part of Russia itself.
In the 2004 election, Yanukovich got over 85% of the vote in the currently occupied zones, and Yushchenko got a similar percentage in far western Ukraine. I have my doubts that sentiments have really changed.
A lot of left-establishment and right-establishment Westerners express shock that people around the world would prefer alternative leadership models. A lot of left-populist and right-populist Westerners express shock that other people around the world would prefer Western-style liberal democracy.
Putin, I would hope, has no stomach for occupying Ukraine from Kiev on west, outside of some small area in SE Ukraine where pro-Russia sentiment runs strongest. Quite frankly, once he gets past Kiev, it will be a fight for national survival for the Ukrainians, and even east of Kiev, there's enough anti-Russian sentiment to make any wide-ranging occupation damned near impossible.
Would Lviv (heartland of the anti-Russian forces in Ukraine) be willing to accept a partition where the eastern part joins Russia/becomes like Kazakhstan and the western part goes down the NATO road that Albania and North Macedonia have chosen?
Likewise, I hope Biden doesn't want Ukraine as it is currently constituted to join NATO. Ukraine's per capita GDP is 70% that of Albania (the next-poorest NATO member) and under half that of Turkey. Its corruption is near-endemic, and domestic opinion is really and truly split.
Albania has historically been more supportive of the US than the US (a class in which I'd put Poland and the Baltic Republics, and in Asia Vietnam and the Philippines.) Ukraine on the other hand is split between a western half that's in the more supportive of the US than the US, and an eastern half that wants to be like Kazakhstan or part of Russia itself.
In the 2004 election, Yanukovich got over 85% of the vote in the currently occupied zones, and Yushchenko got a similar percentage in far western Ukraine. I have my doubts that sentiments have really changed.
A lot of left-establishment and right-establishment Westerners express shock that people around the world would prefer alternative leadership models. A lot of left-populist and right-populist Westerners express shock that other people around the world would prefer Western-style liberal democracy.
So what can Putin do in response to Nordstream-2 getting canceled and to getting frozen out of SWIFT?
Also, the soldiers fighting in Russia's war would be part of their Baby Bust generation - 12.5 million Russians born between 1988-1992 (post-Soviet chaos) and 6.5 between 1998-2002 (economic chaos).
Militarily, Russia could size Novorosiya (land bridge to Crimea) and some area around Donbass with relative ease. After that they'd be hitting areas with more hostile demographics.
Of course, a lot depends on how much the Ukrainians have planned for Operation Gladio type operations. (i.e. stay behind and wreak havoc)
Russia's gotta keep their army supplied.
Also, the soldiers fighting in Russia's war would be part of their Baby Bust generation - 12.5 million Russians born between 1988-1992 (post-Soviet chaos) and 6.5 between 1998-2002 (economic chaos).
Militarily, Russia could size Novorosiya (land bridge to Crimea) and some area around Donbass with relative ease. After that they'd be hitting areas with more hostile demographics.
Of course, a lot depends on how much the Ukrainians have planned for Operation Gladio type operations. (i.e. stay behind and wreak havoc)
Russia's gotta keep their army supplied.
Anonymous wrote:Love this thread for the insight into certain mindsights.
There was no coup. How could there be - even the protesters, ahem, rioters, didn't have weapons.
Worst case outcome would have been that the certification is delayed a day or two. A coup can't happen when there is no support for it, no armed support, no legal support, no constitutional support, no one at the courts to back it up. Nothing, nada, zip. So how could a "coup" work due to sub 1k protesters, ahem rioters running around Congress?
Trump is an egoistical moron and all he wanted was lots of noise and fuss and protesters but he never expected anything meaningful to happen.
And, even if in the most extreme hypothetical scenario, somehow some legalistic coup did happen (har har har) of course people wouldn't have taken it lying down. The Democrats have no problems churning out millions for BLM protests. Naturally there would have been mass protests everywhere and in DC.
Yeah, just ignore the pepper spray, the weapons caches brought in by the various right-wing militias, and the pipe bombs planted near the DNC headquarters. For at least a few hundred of the protesters, it was srs bns, unless they're bringing zipties and baseball bats to play an impromptu game of baseball or two.
Anonymous wrote:The Rs have already announced that they plan to take 3 congressional members off committees ...basically because they don't like them
Omar has probably earned it to some extent, as she seems to have a bigger anti-Semitism problem than the other Squad members. The other two are just retributions imho.
We're assuming that:
1) states initially certified results
2) the December flurry of lawsuits went down in flames as before.
3) no evidence of actual fraud emerged.
Remember, New!Congress has already been seated.
I think Perdue's term had ended pending results of the election. Loeffler got to stick around, since she was filling out a term that naturally expired on 1/3/2023. Perdue had to go back home since his term had already expired and his re-election was not yet done. So ... raw #'s, barring any illness or such:
House Raw #s: D 222, R 213
Senate Raw #s: R 51, D 48
House delegations by state: R 30, D 19, Split 1 (several R delegations do have members that voted to certify the election, so it's not as impregnable as it might seem). I think IA had a House member that hadn't been seated just yet.
I'm assuming your POD (point of departure) is January 6, Pence says some mumbo-jumbo about electors in several states (enough to prevent Biden from reaching 270). There is NO violent storming of the Capital at least not here. I don't know how openly it's known by Congress, law enforcement, DoD, etc., etc., that there's a few hundred well-armed militia types prepared to move in "if necessary."
Democrats demand a vote to halt the counting. I know they'd have won in the House and I can't see Romney or Murkowski sitting on their hands (could this be filibustered?)
Lawsuits are filed within minutes, both by Pence asserting his right to refuse to certify the results, and by Democrats asserting Pence was going off script.
Never Trump Republicans angrily denounce everything involved with this. McConnell stays quiet (for now).
A motion to impeach Trump and Pence is filed and passes the House by the end of the day, probably with 30-40 Republicans joining in this time.
Multiple Cabinet officials resign in protest. All living former Presidents issue a joint statement insisting that Trump step down at noon on January 20.
The Dow goes down 8-10%. Two circuit breakers are tripped. The Fed meets in all sorts of emergency meetings.
The bleeding in the Dow is staunched - by day's end - by the Fed issuing a statement that quantitative easing would be unlimited. The ECB, BoJ, and CCB all issue similar statements.
In the next 24-48 hours, protests emerge all over the nation, dwarfing the George Floyd protests in size, and with an eclectic mix of races, political viewpoints, etc. International media is horrified.
I would not be surprised if 20 million people turned up across the nation, with DC, LA, NYC, and Chicago pushing in the upper six figures.
Some turn violent, with a mix of "native" violence, police/alt-right provocateurs, and excess police force turning formerly peaceful protests into violence. In a few cases, police join the demonstrators. Again, all this dwarfs the George Floyd protests.
Smaller (relatively speaking) protests in support of Pence's move emerge.
CEOs meet with each other, political leaders, and other movers and shakers, insisting on some sort of order. Celebrities of varying degrees of influence wring their hands, with a few exceptions celebrating Pence's move.
I'm assuming the 12th Amendment debate in the House would start the evening of the 6th and go on through the 7th and 8th. If we go off voting to certify, Biden would still win, as WY, AK, SD, and ND all voted to certify, IA and PA would have a R "defector" each, and ID would be split. Several other states would need just one R to "defect" and split their delegations or turn them to the D's.
I suspect - but could be wrong - that Biden would win the House delegation vote by something like a 27-20-3 split.
This is another opportunity for Trump to have a rally and a possible violent storming of the Capital if things don't look to be going his way here. I don't see 1/8 ending in this timeline any differently than 1/6 did in OTL.
SCOTUS would've been forced to rule before 1/20. If Biden wins the 12th Amendment vote, SCOTUS would rule that was done all good and proper and the question is now moot. If Biden lost, it'd require a ruling on whether Pence's move to refuse to certify was legally sound. I *think* they'd have voted that it wasn't sound but it would be a 6-3 or 7-2 vote here.
Bush v Gore was accepted simply b/c Florida was *that* close and both parties seemed to indicate they'd have conceded gracefully. The closest state in 2020 (AZ) was a good TEN times the widest possible margin in FL in 2000 in raw votes. In terms of percentage, the closest state was GA, a good TWENTY-FIVE times bigger margin than FL 2000.
Inauguration - if there had been no large scale actual violence beforehand, I could see the establishment being caught flat footed and things turning real ugly, real quick as the die hard Stop the Steal people would've been emboldened and not shamed.
1) states initially certified results
2) the December flurry of lawsuits went down in flames as before.
3) no evidence of actual fraud emerged.
Remember, New!Congress has already been seated.
I think Perdue's term had ended pending results of the election. Loeffler got to stick around, since she was filling out a term that naturally expired on 1/3/2023. Perdue had to go back home since his term had already expired and his re-election was not yet done. So ... raw #'s, barring any illness or such:
House Raw #s: D 222, R 213
Senate Raw #s: R 51, D 48
House delegations by state: R 30, D 19, Split 1 (several R delegations do have members that voted to certify the election, so it's not as impregnable as it might seem). I think IA had a House member that hadn't been seated just yet.
I'm assuming your POD (point of departure) is January 6, Pence says some mumbo-jumbo about electors in several states (enough to prevent Biden from reaching 270). There is NO violent storming of the Capital at least not here. I don't know how openly it's known by Congress, law enforcement, DoD, etc., etc., that there's a few hundred well-armed militia types prepared to move in "if necessary."
Democrats demand a vote to halt the counting. I know they'd have won in the House and I can't see Romney or Murkowski sitting on their hands (could this be filibustered?)
Lawsuits are filed within minutes, both by Pence asserting his right to refuse to certify the results, and by Democrats asserting Pence was going off script.
Never Trump Republicans angrily denounce everything involved with this. McConnell stays quiet (for now).
A motion to impeach Trump and Pence is filed and passes the House by the end of the day, probably with 30-40 Republicans joining in this time.
Multiple Cabinet officials resign in protest. All living former Presidents issue a joint statement insisting that Trump step down at noon on January 20.
The Dow goes down 8-10%. Two circuit breakers are tripped. The Fed meets in all sorts of emergency meetings.
The bleeding in the Dow is staunched - by day's end - by the Fed issuing a statement that quantitative easing would be unlimited. The ECB, BoJ, and CCB all issue similar statements.
In the next 24-48 hours, protests emerge all over the nation, dwarfing the George Floyd protests in size, and with an eclectic mix of races, political viewpoints, etc. International media is horrified.
I would not be surprised if 20 million people turned up across the nation, with DC, LA, NYC, and Chicago pushing in the upper six figures.
Some turn violent, with a mix of "native" violence, police/alt-right provocateurs, and excess police force turning formerly peaceful protests into violence. In a few cases, police join the demonstrators. Again, all this dwarfs the George Floyd protests.
Smaller (relatively speaking) protests in support of Pence's move emerge.
CEOs meet with each other, political leaders, and other movers and shakers, insisting on some sort of order. Celebrities of varying degrees of influence wring their hands, with a few exceptions celebrating Pence's move.
I'm assuming the 12th Amendment debate in the House would start the evening of the 6th and go on through the 7th and 8th. If we go off voting to certify, Biden would still win, as WY, AK, SD, and ND all voted to certify, IA and PA would have a R "defector" each, and ID would be split. Several other states would need just one R to "defect" and split their delegations or turn them to the D's.
I suspect - but could be wrong - that Biden would win the House delegation vote by something like a 27-20-3 split.
This is another opportunity for Trump to have a rally and a possible violent storming of the Capital if things don't look to be going his way here. I don't see 1/8 ending in this timeline any differently than 1/6 did in OTL.
SCOTUS would've been forced to rule before 1/20. If Biden wins the 12th Amendment vote, SCOTUS would rule that was done all good and proper and the question is now moot. If Biden lost, it'd require a ruling on whether Pence's move to refuse to certify was legally sound. I *think* they'd have voted that it wasn't sound but it would be a 6-3 or 7-2 vote here.
Bush v Gore was accepted simply b/c Florida was *that* close and both parties seemed to indicate they'd have conceded gracefully. The closest state in 2020 (AZ) was a good TEN times the widest possible margin in FL in 2000 in raw votes. In terms of percentage, the closest state was GA, a good TWENTY-FIVE times bigger margin than FL 2000.
Inauguration - if there had been no large scale actual violence beforehand, I could see the establishment being caught flat footed and things turning real ugly, real quick as the die hard Stop the Steal people would've been emboldened and not shamed.
Any Republican questioning the severity of this needs to wonder how they'd be feeling if it were hundreds of Antifa/BLM extremists storming the Capital Steps, with a mix of tourists, clowns, and well-armed people (and you cannot deny any longer there were some 100-200 people with some sort of longer-term plan who had some sort of training and C&C structure, as opposed to tourists just getting a bit overly exuberant.)
Any Democrat crowing about 1/6 needs to ask themselves how the George Floyd riots helped things - or how the 1967/8 riots helped liberal causes in the long run. Parts of DC stayed pretty much in statis for 40 years.
I view the J6 riots as more damaging long-term to America's strength as a federal republic of any sort. These wounds are harder to heal than the wounds of smashed storefront windows. For this reason alone I cannot ever vote Republican - but I was largely a lost cause to them.
But not everyone thinks of this in the same manner.
Any Democrat crowing about 1/6 needs to ask themselves how the George Floyd riots helped things - or how the 1967/8 riots helped liberal causes in the long run. Parts of DC stayed pretty much in statis for 40 years.
I view the J6 riots as more damaging long-term to America's strength as a federal republic of any sort. These wounds are harder to heal than the wounds of smashed storefront windows. For this reason alone I cannot ever vote Republican - but I was largely a lost cause to them.
But not everyone thinks of this in the same manner.
If the filibuster is so great, why don't we have other legislative bodies in the US do it? Is there any other country in the world in which routine legislation requires a supermajority to pass?
I'm willing to accept the risk that Trump gets his entire agenda passed without a fuss. It's the price of losing elections. I also think abolishing the filibuster would reduce tensions across the board as each side would be able to see their legislative programs put into law and attempt to create their vision of this great nation.
But if Dems can't say to themselves, honestly, that they'd be prepared for (say) a nationwide ban on abortion, or whatever the GOP wants to pass, then they might not be so eager to abolish the filibuster.
I'm willing to accept the risk that Trump gets his entire agenda passed without a fuss. It's the price of losing elections. I also think abolishing the filibuster would reduce tensions across the board as each side would be able to see their legislative programs put into law and attempt to create their vision of this great nation.
But if Dems can't say to themselves, honestly, that they'd be prepared for (say) a nationwide ban on abortion, or whatever the GOP wants to pass, then they might not be so eager to abolish the filibuster.
If Dems are that serious, then they have to abandon R+10 and higher districts and states, and support Republicans who'd support a proper investigation into 1/6 and maybe a few other VERY basic things.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:
Why doesn't Biden offer a path to citizenship for certain truck drivers. Perhaps some immigration documents already reflect who has truck driving experience.
America can train its own truck drivers. Believe it or not but these are actually pretty highly paid jobs in much of America.
Up until last month America was focused on paying truck drivers $300/pm per kid to sit at home on their butts. So yeah - I say let the Mexicans have the jobs. At least they’re willing to work.
I bet you thought the labor shortage would end when enhanced UI was ended.
$600-$900 a month would've still gone to a truck driver had s/he been working. Under this means testing people seem to be infatuated with, it'd only go to those who don't work.
Anonymous wrote:Frankly, I wish Republicans would make a big effort to make ballot harvesting illegal in all states.
You don't want to write this too broadly. While I think while it's arguable that anyone dropping off more than say two ballots of people unrelated to them and not living with them is of questionable value, or that a decent case can be made for not sending off live ballots to all registered voters, what of:
1) an adult kid dropping off a ballot for an aged parent
2) a dad dropping off a ballot for his daughter before she goes off to Liberty U
3) a husband/wife dropping off a ballot for their spouse (I've done just this although with my wife in the car!)
4) a roommate dropping off a ballot for the both of them
?
Now these aren't as suspicious as say
1) a union rep dropping off all twenty ballots from a field
2) a conservative minister dropping off a dozen ballots from aged members living in assisted living
3) a community organizer dropping off fifteen ballots from homeless people
4) a business owner collecting ten ballots from his workers and dropping them off
Is that harvesting that needs to be illegal? So far only Alabama has made it so only the voter can drop off their ballot. Other states set limits (e.g. no more than N ballots per person, or only people living with you, etc.) and others don't set any limits.
What is ballot harvesting to you? Do you (or anyone, really) have any numbers of just how many ballots are cast via ballot harvesters (the latter group of examples), and not innocuous "people doing favors for those living with them" activity?
Given the massive turnout in 2020, it seems that people can vote if they want to. So efforts to abolish voter ID just seem, on the surface, to be so much political theater, although it's a bigger issue than electoral fraud for sure.
If it turns out that most of the people who want to vote but don't have ID are senior citizens, I don't see the problem with some sort of amnesty where an affadavit can be made as to birth (e.g. I was born as Jana Blohova, but put down Jane Blow on my wedding license and voted as Jane Smith before moving to this state) as long as proof of current address (e.g. utility bill, etc.) can be established. So if I can trace my activity back to say 1990, at some point, the system needs to have grace. But the central fact is that a consistent ID system is needed, with states able to communicate with each other when people move.
Do not, my friends, become addicted to cheap labor. It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence.
On the other hand, we can all ride immortal to Valhalla, shiny and chrome.
On the other hand, we can all ride immortal to Valhalla, shiny and chrome.
I was a (contractor) sysadmin at an FAA site and am now a sysadmin at a defense contractor's office.
If you're working at a customer (i.e. government) site it will typically take longer as there's usually (almost always?) a separate group who handles account setup on the government domain. (My domain involved everything in a separate enclave that for security reasons wasn't reachable from the rest of the FAA network.)
BUT - despite all this we had folks set up for Day One about 75% of the time - the other 25% - maybe 15-20% it was due to the government domain admin group having some delay, and the rest of the time it was having under 3-4 days to get someone set up. But if we had two weeks notice we had you set up 100% of the time, accountwise and laptopwise, for Day One.
The badge - that required yet another group. It'd come in the mail deactivated. There was a separate badging station you had to fill out yet another form on, although if you had the clearances/access, they typically gave you a temp badge on Day One.
Surprised they told you to put in your two weeks as if something came up in your public trust investigation you'd be SOL and out of a job.
If someone didn't have an active clearance and had harder-to-find skills, they'd typically wait 2-6 weeks for the interim to come through. BUT they'd give you a tentative offer contingent on obtaining the needed clearances. So you'd just keep working at your old job until everyone got tired of waiting OR your clearance and other paperwork came through. If your official start day is today, I suspect you're getting paid, although I'm shocked you didn't get that clarified from your future bosses.
Some interim secrets take longer than others (depending on foreign travel, cleared family members, and your general background) - I've seen it take as little as a week and I've had other people leave after it took six months to get the interim.
If you're working at a customer (i.e. government) site it will typically take longer as there's usually (almost always?) a separate group who handles account setup on the government domain. (My domain involved everything in a separate enclave that for security reasons wasn't reachable from the rest of the FAA network.)
BUT - despite all this we had folks set up for Day One about 75% of the time - the other 25% - maybe 15-20% it was due to the government domain admin group having some delay, and the rest of the time it was having under 3-4 days to get someone set up. But if we had two weeks notice we had you set up 100% of the time, accountwise and laptopwise, for Day One.
The badge - that required yet another group. It'd come in the mail deactivated. There was a separate badging station you had to fill out yet another form on, although if you had the clearances/access, they typically gave you a temp badge on Day One.
Surprised they told you to put in your two weeks as if something came up in your public trust investigation you'd be SOL and out of a job.
If someone didn't have an active clearance and had harder-to-find skills, they'd typically wait 2-6 weeks for the interim to come through. BUT they'd give you a tentative offer contingent on obtaining the needed clearances. So you'd just keep working at your old job until everyone got tired of waiting OR your clearance and other paperwork came through. If your official start day is today, I suspect you're getting paid, although I'm shocked you didn't get that clarified from your future bosses.
Some interim secrets take longer than others (depending on foreign travel, cleared family members, and your general background) - I've seen it take as little as a week and I've had other people leave after it took six months to get the interim.
Anonymous wrote:BlueFredneck wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:This has been my family’s most successful year financially by far. I got a new job with a big raise, my wife got a promotion, our retirement and bank accounts are way up, our daughter started grad school after being furloughed in 2020, one brother bought a bigger house, my mom sold her house and downsized with a nice profit, four nieces are doing well in college. So a little temporary inflation is not a problem.
Anyone invested in the market did great. The state of Virginia is running a huge surplus. Life is pretty good here in NOVA. Roads are being fixed. Bonuses being given in public service. There's not much to complain about here even with some inflation. Of course Omicron or whatever variant comes could change that.
Are you a Republican?
Because this is what Republicans used to be accused of in the past - as long as everything was hunky dory for them, who cared about the plights of other people.
I've long observed that the Republican and Democratic party are switching places and it sure does seem like it. The growing indifference of the Democrats to the everyday plights of ordinary people is getting worse, their obsession with grand schemes and fix-it-all policies (which of course never fix anything but promise to make things worse) at the expense of paying attention to the nuts and bots of everyday reality aka prices and rents and inflation and wages is something that really concerns me, especially as a greater share of Democrat leadership and voters live in affluent bubbles with no real clue as to what it's like to live paycheck to paycheck with inflation and economic worries. The Republicans, for all their many, many, many flaws, are capitalizing on these fears for a good reason - because these fears do exist and are real problems.
The GOP had all the levers in 2017 and 2018. Did the TCJA do anything for the plight of ordinary people? Heck, I've even asked what the GOP plan to tackle inflation might be ... McConnell surely knows after 2024 he has to do some actual governing; if inflation goes away on its own in 2023-4 it'll be Morning in America again (maybe, if the Dems can resist the temptation to be superwoke.) But for 2021-24, opposing is easy and it's all he has to do.
I suppose conservative judges allowing pro-life and anti-trans legislation through made ordinary people's lives a bit better if they started out that way. (pro-life/anti-choice and/or anti-trans/pro-gender norms.)
I suppose you could argue that they could've done more if it hadn't been for that nasty Schumerses and his filibusters, but, well, isn't that what Dems are running into? It does seem both parties are unable to get their stuff done, but get the blame from their less-devoted will vote no matter what base and from swing voters as if they could just Thanos snap and make stuff happen.
Now with that said ...
If front-line hourly workers are seeing their wages go up from $9-$10 an hour to $14-$16 an hour, they're doing okay even if inflation is at 10%, and skilled white-collar workers making $125k and up aren't feeling the pain (yet). The local grandee class (think the owner of a construction business, the McDonald's franchise owner, etc.) is likely feeling the pain as much of their business model is predicated on paying their workers $9-$10 an hour and their raw materials are going up in cost.
But skilled blue-collar workers/lower end white-collar/pink-collar workers making $20-$40 an hour (depending on locality) likely aren't seeing their wages keep up with inflation. (Plus they're more liable to feel the competition from foreign workers.)
We didn't have inflation in 2017-2018.... certainly not beyond the ordinary and if anything it was still part of the broadly accepted deflationary period.
We did have wage gains in that same period. Not enormous but there was decent and steady wage gains. If anything, the Trump years leading up to 2020 saw wage gains for working Americans for the first time in a while (part of the reason Trump gained a lot of support among working class men of all races).
The problem with your assumption is that front line hourly workers are starting to see much of the wage gains eaten away by inflation. With rents rising sharply, food prices rising sharply, costs of services rising noticeably, any wage gains they eke out is being whittled back by inflation and we're still at the threat of even more inflation next year that may wipe it out altogether. Most of these people exist at transitionary jobs - few people make a career out of driving Amazon delivery vans or working at a supermarket checkout counter. If a recession hits due to sharply rising interest rates, this front line class gets walloped big time. The price they pay for a real-life modest increase in wages is lost jobs and real economic struggles a year later - a distinct pattern that follows interest rates rises meant to combat inflation.
Most Americans - indeed, the great bulk of the majority - exist between the 125k salaries and the hourly front line workers. If inflation is 7 to 10% while most of this demographics are getting pay increases mirroring the feds, which is sub 3%, it represents a real decline in buying power. Another year of similar trajectory means things really start hurting for the middle classes and that is the political danger facing the Democrats. It's certainly a factor in Manchin refusing to vote for the $2T bill.
I don't think I was saying there was inflation in 2017-18 ... but needless to say Republicans will have to do something other than "inherit a good economy." Of course if it turns around in 23-24, it's Morning in America. And yes, concur that 2017-19 was a continuance of the Obama economy (I think some of the general gains started in 2012-13 ...)
Now if inflation is 10% and your income is up 30-50%, inflation isn't going to hit you. But you're right that those making 30k-70k (in LCOL areas) and 30k-125k (in HCOL areas) aren't getting the wage gains of the hourly workers BUT are getting pinched by inflation - I think I even said that in my post.
Another point I'm making is that we as a society have grown addicted to low cost labor. It has taken hold of us and we have grown to resent its absence.
These hourly front line jobs are necessary - they are often difficult to automate - and even if we did they'd be sitting around not working. Even the skilled trades have a shorter expected career than other white-collar jobs. It's possible to be a lawyer until your early 70s. Good luck laying tile or pipe that long.
There needs to be dignity in all levels of work.