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One thing that really struck me about Trump's economic conspiracy theorizing was his assertion that "the Democrats are trying to 'will' the Economy to be bad for purposes of the 2020 Election." So opposition politicians can hurt the economy just by thinking bad thoughts? 1/
Since "voodoo economics" is taken, I suggest we call this "hoodoo economics". The thing is, while I haven't seen anyone besides Trump assert that the economy is being ruined by negative thinking, I've been seeing a lot of warnings that liberals shouldn't wish for recession 2/
Let's be clear: this is stupid — because it *doesn't matter*. There are always people who want bad things to happen on the other side's watch. So what? The question is whether you act on it, and deliberately make things worse. 3/
And here's the thing: while Democrats aren't doing that, Republicans did do it; they engaged in systematic economic sabotage during the Obama years 4/ nytimes.com/2019/05/04/opi…
The real tell is that the emergency measures the Trump team is demanding now are exactly the things the GOP denounced under Obama. Trump wants radical monetary easing, which people like Paul Ryan said would debase the dollar 5/
Trump officials are also floating the idea of a payroll tax cut to provide demand-side stimulus — exactly what Obama tried to do, but found himself faced with scorched-earth opposition 6/
Republican economic sabotage cost the U.S. millions of person-years of employment and hundreds of billions, at least, in wasted economic potential. To complain now about possible bad thoughts on the part of Dems is ludicrous 7/
On the other hand, I did say Trump would eventually blame the recession on Ilhan Omar, didn't I? Happening even faster than I expected 8/
