Title: Biden: First thing we gotta do is go after people clipping coupons in the stock market Source:
Hot Air URL Source:https://hotair.com/archives/ed-morr ... b9fbd11ac091829e9a2770363e45c0 Published:Oct 16, 2019 Author:Ed Morrissey Post Date:2019-10-16 12:38:17 by IbJensen Keywords:None Views:1772 Comments:8
Last night’s debate may not have had a clear winner, but Joe Biden might not have even been in the running. In the last major debate, Biden advised African-American parents to make sure they had their “record player on at night” in order to build their child’s vocabulary, an answer that was considered both racist and hopelessly anachronistic. That set up last night’s apparent stumble — or maybe, maybe an attempt at humor that ended in a faceplant.
Clipping coupons? We”ll get back to that, but it wasn’t Biden’s only problem in this answer — although you’d never know it by reading the New York Times transcript of the exchange. I included in bold what they left out:
BIDEN: No, look. Demonizing wealth — what I talked about is how you get things done. And the way to get things done is take a look at the tax code right now. The idea — we have to start rewarding work, not just wealth. I would eliminate the capital gains tax — I would, I would raise the capital gains tax to the highest rate of 39.5 percent. I would double it. Because guess what? Why in God’s name should someone who is clipping coupons in the stock market pay a lower tax rate than someone who in fact is, like I said — a schoolteacher and a firefighter? It’s ridiculous, and they pay a lower tax. Secondly, the idea that we, in fact, engage in this notion that there are — there’s $1.64 trillion in tax loopholes. You can’t justify at minimum $600 billion of that. We could eliminate it all. I could go into detail had I the time.
Did Biden get confused about which audience he was addressing? That’s not really a mere slip of the tongue. Eliminating the capital gains tax, a longtime conservative/Club for Growth position that has not gained much traction in these populist times, and might be a bit anachronistic itself for that reason. It sounds as if Biden is having trouble keeping up and keeping his arguments straight, and that’s not a good look for a candidate who can’t manage to spike the football even with the other team mainly on the sidelines.
One has to wonder why the NYT didn’t transcribe that part of Biden’s answer, too. Do they make a habit of cleaning up Biden’s rhetorical missteps? If so, what other Biden-friendly edits have they made for their readers in the past?
It’s possible that Biden was being sardonic with his “clipping coupons in the stock market” line. It could be read as a sarcastic comment on the oh-so-tough lives billionaires lead, in a “while you’re broke and clipping coupons in the supermarket, these guys are clipping coupons in the stock market” class-warfare sense. It sounds like something a speech writer might have dreamed up for Biden to say as a lead-in to a typical class-warfare argument, a way to zing billionaires while charming his way into working-class hearts.
If so, Biden is terrible at delivering those punch lines. Even with that generous assumption, Biden injected only half of the zinger in the middle of a serious point that he’d already screwed up, as the NYT noticed as well. Put that together with his previous musings on the importance of record players in raising children, and it’s not charming at all. It looks more like a pattern that suggests Uncle Joe should seek retirement soon and maybe watch a little more Hee Haw than Maddow.
Finally, just on the substance of the answer, Biden’s still all wet. Even if one could wave a wand and eliminate $600 billion a year in deductions without harming the economy, that’s only a drop in the bucket when it comes to what Biden and his fellow Democrats want to add in spending. Medicare for All alone would add at least three trillion dollars a year, let alone the rest of the Green New Deal projects being pushed at these debates. Pretending that Biden and Democrats can lower the tax bill for the middle class while spending all that cash is even more incoherent than “clipping coupons in the stock market,” and Biden’s hardly the only one on stage suffering from that incoherence.
Poster Comment:
Biden is a colossal asshole and criminal. He and his drug-addled son should be in prison along with the Clinton trio and a host of others!
As regards clipping coupons in the stock market, yes, we understand that is a concept in the bond market, but, I suspect that Joe does not understand that difference. Big difference in the stock market and the bond market.
But Biden is essentially right. Stocks and bonds are passively invested money, and the profits/gains/dividends paid on them are taxed at a lower rate than a similar amount of wages - a MUCH lower rate.
That's not right. The differential should be eliminated, by bringing the capital gain and dividend taxes UP, and the wage taxes DOWN, to the same combined level, so that a dollar of gain, whether from labor or from clipping coupons, is taxed at the same rate. That's the right thing to do.
Woh, bro'. Looks like you've been spanked and sent to your wigwam in perpetual shame. LOL
Strangely, as I recall it, you were LF's first big Trump supporter when everyone else was supporting one of the sixteen losers of the 2016 GOP primaries. And you supported him all the way through the general election too. And some people here threw rocks at you about it the entire time. And you still seem to be supporting Trump over all challengers, GOP and Dem. Was there anyone else here at LF that supported Trump 100% like you did early on? My recollection is that you were the first and the biggest Trumper here, by far.
Can't win for losing, huh? And you don't even get any local satisfaction because you live in a deep Blue state where they'll outvote you no matter what.
I can see why you get a little philosophical about politics most of the time.
I'm still with Trump for the same reason I was with him originally: foreign policy, and especially good relations with Russia. In Syria, we see the fruits of that. We are getting out of a place we don't belong, and handing places over to the Russians as guardians of the locals, restorers of order. It's part of a great dance, and it is good. Bringing the wannabee Islamist Erdogan to heel is a nice touch as well.
We're getting the Wall (ah slowly!), and we've gotten the camps in Mexico, instead of in the USA.
China is playing ball and will negotiate a trade agreement. It will be imperfect, but it will continue to move in the right direction.
Trump has broken the balls of the warmongers - Bolton's firing, and the mouth-twisting frustration of the hawks in Congress is fun to see.
He broke the Mueller investigation, which was bullshit, and his polls have not lost even a fraction of a point due to the impeachment blah-blah. Everybody remembers what these Democrat turds did to Justice Kavanaugh. They have no credibility.
I do support single-payer Medicare, and wealth taxation, which makes Warren my Democrat pick. But she won't win against Trump, and even of she did, Congress won't give her either of those things.
So, I stand with Trump, but because strange things can happen in elections, IF the Democrat wins, I want it to be Warren, because universal Medicare and a high wealth tax are both things whose time has come.
So, I stand with Trump, but because strange things can happen in elections, IF the Democrat wins, I want it to be Warren, because universal Medicare and a high wealth tax are both things whose time has come.
She couldn't get it passed anyway, not in any meaningful form. The best you'd find is a tax code completely full of holes that could be exploited by the Dem tycoons and Wall Street fat cats. They've had extensive practice at writing such tax laws as you know.
As for Trump's re-election prospects, I liked this bit today.
According to a story over at Moody’s, the 45th President will keep his place at 1600 Pennsylvania for another 4 years if the economy holds up.
President Donald Trump looks likely to cruise to reelection next year under three different economic models Moody’s Analytics employed to gauge the 2020 race.
Barring anything unusual happening, the president’s Electoral College victory could easily surpass his 2016 win over Democrat Hillary Clinton, which came by a 304-227 count.
Moody’s based its projections on how consumers feel about their own financial situation, the gains the stock market has achieved during Trump’s tenure and the prospects for unemployment, which has fallen to a 50-year low. Should those variables hold up, the president looks set to get another four-year term.
The modeling has been highly accurate going back to the 1980 election, missing only once.
That one time that their model was wrong? Of course, it was the 2016 election where Donald Trump beat the wife of Bill Clinton.
The lowest electoral number Trump gets in these models is 289 which is above the 270 votes needed to win. The highest he gets is 352 which looks like a pipe dream to me.
This is all factored in on the economy doing well which under ANY OTHER President would be a safe, reliable gauge. However in the “Age of Trump” nothing is the same as it was prior to his election in Nov. of 2016 and you pretty much have to throw the rule book out and start rewriting it.
I live in the State of Michigan which Trump flipped to Republican for the first time since 1988. Team Bill’s wife did not take the threat serious that Michigan was up for grabs until the last 10 days of the election and they lost the state by 11,000 votes.
That is not going to happen again where the Democrats are asleep at the wheel.
. . .
I thought you might like that reporting, given your familiarity with Michigan. I was going to post it but you can't get many posts on political threads here at LF any more. It's all Flattardism and poking noses into other people's religious beliefs under various pretenses. Apparently, that's what the LF hordes go for now.
This is my view: if the economy holds up, Trump gets re-elected. If the economy collapses, Trump will be in trouble and Warren's ideas will have traction.
