I posted this on 11 November. I think it is worth visiting again. Things are going as badly as I expected:
Trump controls the Presidency, Senate and, most likely, the House. He has no excuses for not delivering on his promises as a result. But, he is also going to rely on very inexperienced people to deliver them. The chance that a great deal will go wrong is high. And if he fails, the backlash from voters will be strong. 2026 might be a good year for the Democrats.
This is the transcript:
2025 is going to be a nightmare year for Donald Trump. He is cock-a-hoop right now. He's just won the presidency. The Republicans control the Senate. It looks quite possible that they will control the House of Representatives as well.
So, what is the consequence? Donald Trump is in charge, and that's what's going to create his nightmare. There are no excuses this time for Donald Trump not to deliver on his promises.
And he has made a mighty lot of promises. Almost everybody in the USA seems to have been offered something.
It might be that he's going to create tariffs, which will, of course, create inflation.
It might be that he's going to expel 11 million or more undocumented people, which is going to destroy hordes of American companies and deny workforces to most of the care sector in the USA.
It might be that he's going to withdraw funding for Ukraine and make the USA into an isolationist territory, and that is going to create international chaos from which the USA will suffer.
We could go on. The point I'm making is that whatever Trump has promised, he's now got no excuses for not delivering. And what we know is that between 2016 and 2020, Trump delivered on very few of his promises, indeed.
Look at ‘The Wall'. It didn't happen. The bits that were built replaced earlier, smaller sections of the wall that were already there. The number of actual new extensions? Tiny.
Did he get Mexico to pay for it, as he said he would in 2016? No, of course, he didn't.
Did he succeed in delivering massive tax cuts for the wealthy? Yes, he did that.
But did he do anything for most working people in America? No, he didn't. That is why he was voted out of office in 2020, of course.
And this time, he hasn't got the excuses he had back then of having some opposition to his plans. He will have the ultimate in the US power dream, control of the Presidency, the Senate and the House altogether. There are no obstacles to his progress.
But, unless he hits the ground running very hard in 2025, which of course he might, unleashing mayhem all over the place, including trillions of pounds of cuts in the US federal budget, cutting Medicaid for vast numbers of old people, and cutting the education budget, creating mayhem in those sectors as well - unless he does all of that he will not, by the time of the midterm elections, which arise in just two years' time, have succeeded in delivering on any of his promises.
And what happens if he doesn't do that? There will be the most massive buyer's regret amongst the US population.
We've already seen such a thing happen here in the UK. Labour won the general election in early July and are now behind the Tories in the polls. Now, polls, we know, aren't necessarily the whole truth, but the point is, there is no doubt that Labour's popularity has collapsed since the time that it won a significant majority in the House of Commons. And it's collapsed because it doesn't know how to deliver.
And I very strongly suspect that Trump doesn't know how to deliver either.
One of the things that characterised his administration from 2016 to 2020 was the fact that he pulled inexperienced people to try to deliver his promises. They all ended up disenchanted, and most of them were sacked, but the point was, competent people could not do what he wanted.
This time, he's not going to do that. He's going to bring in people untried and untested in the process of government, like Elon Musk, for example, who knows nothing about how to administer a government department, let alone a Federal budget, and try to deliver change nonetheless.
Now, I'm not saying it is impossible for people to change government when they have no prior experience. Labour in 1945 had relatively limited experience of government, at least in government leadership. But even though you can say they were untried and untested at the scale that they had to face at that time, Clement Attlee had basically run Winston Churchill's government during the Second World War. He knew what he was doing, but I suspect that very people in the Trump administration will.
The likelihood, as a consequence, that there will be massive errors in the delivery of programmes will be enormous. The chance that chaos will arise is very high.
Will the Fed and the Trump administration fall out over interest rate policy, particularly if Trump drives up inflation, as it seems that he might? Yes, I think that's likely, and that will cause problems all over the place for his government and for the people of the USA.
Will the dollar swing wildly in price, depending upon his policy and what he does in foreign relations? That's also likely.
My point is simply this. Trump is not an experienced governor.
He relied on others from 2016 to 2020 and failed. Now, he's going to rely on people without experience in government - often of any sort at all. And I think they will fail. Even his vice president has only been in the Senate for two years. So, the chance that he will turn his victory into a success in 2025 is quite low.
If he doesn't, then in the run-up to the 2026 midterm elections, expect the Democrats to be back in town if they can get their act together. If they can't, well, everything is on the table. But I think that Trump is going to face such a nightmare in 2025 in delivering the promises that he has made to so many people, which he is probably incapable of delivering upon.
That the Democrats will swing back, and from the middle of his presidency onwards, he will not control the Senate, and he will not control the House, and he will, therefore, face constructive opposition at every point to which he turns, and, therefore his chance of delivery from then on will be close to zero.
Trump may be a very happy man at this moment, but the likelihood that that will continue appears to me to be very low.
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Very good analysis but the Democrats need to get their act together and stop kow-towing to the rich like the UK’s Labour government. I’m doubtful this will happen they have the Neoliberal Single Transferable Party problem over there even worse than we have in the UK.
They are trying to grab hold of the entire Federal payment system : https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show
and sack thousands of FBI agents
Democracy is being destroyed as fast as possible. And women now need to be very fearful – Trump and co are heading towards the Taliban stance, unbelievable as it seems:
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:cmirgee4f4vb77hyn7klmygx
Chris Hedges has a less optimistic view than most on American democracy but he is worth listening to.
His distinction between Oligarchs and Corporatists is interesting. He says the Oligarchs have won. I like his quote that all totalitarian movements are grounded in magical thinking (gives certainty perhaps)
It is to be regretted that such views are very unlikely to be aired on our TV channels.
I clicked too soon
https://www.aljazeera.com/program/upfront/2025/1/31/democracy-doesnt-exist-in-the-united-states-chris-hedges
FYI
Worth a look is Chris Hedges 2 part series with Michael Hudson :
Days of Revolt: part 1 How We Got to Junk Economics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4ylSG54i-A
Days of Revolt: part 2 Junk Economics and the Future
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMuIoIidVWI
Thanks
This, so far, bloodless coup is being directed by Musk with the aid of 6 lieutenants whose names and photographs are now in the public domain.
They are all young men, aged between 19 and 24, and they have apparently turned up, sacked people in charge of, eg., the Treasury and have gained access to $5 trillion there plus all the sensitive data. At least one of these wee boys is still in college.
They are all connected to Musk and/or Peter Thiel of Palantir – the company involved with the English NHS’s software/data.
A country of some 334m people is being brought to its knees by Musk (unelected), 6 wee boys and a demented, malevolent felon and insurrectionist of a President.
Nobody would believe it if it was film script.
It is terrifying
Have you read any of the books co-authored by Donald Trump? “Why We Want You to be Rich” and “The Art of the Deal” are the ones that stand out. The reason for asking is that I’d expect people with an academic bent on what he is like to take an interest in what he has written. It would be unusual to present oneself as an expert on Hitler without having read Mein Kampf.
Yoiu assume he wrote them
I don’t
And you are trolling
TBH what is more terrifying for the UK is that Trump currently ‘likes’ Starmer and is apparently trying to separate the UK from the EU as far as possible – Putin’s original dream found expression in Brexit. the UK is deeply penetrated by US business and military; many years ago in the mid 80s some Labour colleagues and I debated possible reactions to the US threatening us with weapons on our shores, as there was then and still is – Airbase 1 in the Cold War, and a USA wanting to control UK. Our economy is fragile and our politicians servile.
“America First” means a divided World. That’s Trump’s plan. The US led the West and gained huge economic benefits from the Cold War in Europe, estimated to have added up to 2% to their GDP in some years, a bit less in others. That’s what Trump is seeking to recreate for Europe. It’s happening in plain sight, but too may people can’t bring themselves to believe it’s true. It is. Wake up everyone!
I don’t know what is going to happen in the States.
I do know however that both sides have guns and it would seem possible that the anti-Trump side might be capable of an insurrection of their own. They have a history of kicking out dictators over there and violently disagreeing with each other.
Chris Hedges is right BTW IMHO. Democracy has stopped existing in the States for some time. They are actually in a post-democratic stage like most of the West. Their gun laws make their post democracy a lot more different to elsewhere though.
And I’m not being flippant at all. I’m being quite serious.
The damage Trump and his cronies are willing to do, and the laws they are willing to break makes it all the more unlikely they will not risk having to hand back the keys in 2029. They will become prisoners of power, their only option being to stay in power or go to jail. If there is an election in four years, I don’t see it being anything but a sham.
“there is no doubt that Labour’s popularity has collapsed”. Was there a “popularity” in the last election though? Or a combination of a resigned and reluctant “we’ll vote Labour without any great expectation” and a mass desertion of the disgraced Tories?