Democrats' dreams of somehow prying Donald Trump out of the White House are in a race against time. The longer he remains as president the more likely is a significant portion of the Democrat base to wash right over to him in 2020. Several news stories this week tell why.
First, black unemployment is at its lowest rate in 17 years. If African Americans come to believe that their improved prospects didn't just fall out of the sky but are due to an improved economy brought about by Trump's dismantling of the stifling regulations put in place by past administrations some fraction of them will begin to realize that Republicans have done a lot more for them than have Democrats.
And the perception is that the economy is improving. Indeed, economic optimism is soaring.
James Carville famously demanded that Bill Clinton's campaign focus on the economy since it's the economy that wins elections ("It's the economy, stupid"). Well, if that's true, Democrats are going to have a very difficult slog, especially in 2020 when Trump is up for re-election.
In 2017, for the first time ever the Dow-Jones stock index rose 5000 points in a single year, and buoyed by the prospect of passing tax reform this week, stock futures continue to rise.
Despite the economic boon this reform would provide to the country, the Democrats, under the leadership of liberal dinosaurs like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, are resolved to vote against it, but their recalcitrance will look absurd to all but the uninformed and the left-wing true believers if the economy continues to flourish under the new tax policy.
Meanwhile, GDP is projected to approach 4% in the fourth quarter of the year. During the Obama years it struggled to achieve an annual rate greater than 2%, and in 2016 it was an anemic 1.6%.
If Carville was right the Democrats would do well to give up their hopes of impeachment, take off their Resist! buttons, and start working with Republicans so they can claim at least a piece of the credit for all this. But they won't. It's just not in their DNA.
If you're interested in how you might fare under the Republican tax reform bill, you can go here to get an idea. You have to ignore the glass half-empty headline (it is an NBC site, after all) and understand that the data isn't definitive, but it gives an idea of what you can likely expect given your income and the state in which you reside.
