Mark This Moment

Republicans cannot govern. 

The party of perpetual grievance loves being in the minority. They love rallying the base around their culture wars and non-existent threats to their way of life. Every time a Democrat is running for president there is suddenly unprecedented concern about migrant caravans. In 2020, there was an existential crisis about critical race theory, a manufactured threat by Republicans to convince their voters that White children were being taught to hate themselves and their heritage in the classroom. In 2024, Republicans waged war on the Haitian immigrant community, bringing to the mainstream a far-right fringe talking point about Springfield, Ohio's most recent arrivals. The party's aging base along with its half-century mission to merge the racist and religious right knows it must sell fear of the "other" as its key motivator in getting people to the polls for each and every election. Without fear, they must run on policy and policy alone. 

And as we saw eight years ago, Republican policy does nothing to benefit the American people. Sure, Trump has an "ambitious" first 100 days lined up but as we've already seen with the immigrants in tech discussion, it's a lot easier said than done to figure out the politics and practicality of mass deportation. That's not to say that Stephen "Antichrist" Miller and his coterie of chaos won't try. But already we're seeing Trump back away from some of his most extreme promises to benefit President Musk and his ilk. After all, with such a razor-thin majority of the House, Republicans will want a legislative win those first three months and nothing brings the entire party together like tax cuts for the rich. Already there are stirrings of this starting to emerge as the House and Senate GOP's top priority and seeing how it was the only significant legislation passed during Trump's first term, there can be no doubt that this is where we're headed during the first quarter of 2025.

To this, I say: please proceed. 

Because now we have measurable marks for comparison. With last Friday's final jobs report numbers in, we know that Joe Biden's middle-out and bottoms-up approach successfully created 16.6 million jobs, making it the only administration in history to have positive net job creation for each and every month over the four-year term. This gives the US an unemployment rate of 4.1% making it likely that the Federal Reserve would not add additional rate cuts in the foreseeable future. As we all know, trickle-down economics do not work yet this will be the chosen economic approach from the incoming administration. What we have right now, in this moment, is the world's strongest economy and it was a direct result of Joe Biden and the Democratic Party's policies. From January 20th onward, what happens is on Donald Trump, President Elon Musk, and the entire Republican Party. 

I, for one, will be pinning a post to my social media profile that states exactly where we will be on January 20th. That post will include the unemployment numbers, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the average price of gas, and the average price of eggs, among other things. While Donald Trump will receive the windfall of Joe Biden's robust economy for a few months, come the summer of 2028, he will have to own everything that has happened under his watch. He will have to own the likely recession that will come about as a result of his massive tax cuts to the wealthiest 1%. He will have to own his administration's job creation, which will inevitably fall short of Biden's record-breaking numbers. He will have to own the price of gas, which we all know is dictated by global economic factors but is one that the average American voter sees as being controlled by the president. And Donald Trump will have to own the average price of eggs, regardless of price gouging and the impact of avian flu three-and-a-half years from now.

Sadly, the American electorate only understands surface-level politics. But knowing this, we have to be vigilant about documenting these next four years. Trump, Musk, and the GOP will try to gaslight us time and time again. But if we can continuously point to numbers as to where we were when Joe Biden left office, that gives us a great starting point. Often we see how the "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" question drives election year politics. If we can provide a definite answer, that gives us a strong foundation for whoever emerges as the Democratic candidate in 2028. Using these final job numbers for Joe Biden and documenting exactly where the country is on January 20th is a critical first step in holding Republicans accountable at the polls in both 2026 and 2028.

An accountability they only face as the party in power.