Bad News — Good News

There's an old saying among defense attorneys, "When your client is guilty, change the subject." This aphorism can be broadened in politics: "When your political opponent is improving the national economy and succeeding in international relations, change the subject."

The Democrats and their trained hamsters in the main stream media have done just that during the first 15 months of Donald Trump's presidency. Trump is winning where it matters—improving the lot of middle class workers, dramatically increasing minority jobs,* boosting businesses big and small, and improving the economy in general. He's reducing regulation to manageable levels and trying to reform bloated federal agencies (with less success). He's achieved some startling things on the foreign policy front (NoKo comes to mind).

But the Dems, having no explanation for those successes and no real ideas that would improve upon them, decided to change the subject, even before Trump was sworn in. Their "Russian Collusion" canard, their empty allegations of "obstruction of justice," and their insistence (with the help of #NeverTrump GOP) on a special counsel, has ensured that a continuous stream in generally meaningless news will overwhelm news of Trump's successes. There's no doubt that Trump has helped the Dems with their strategy (think: porn star Stormy Daniels) and with hindsight, his firing of inveterate liar and partisan operator, James Comey, opened the door for what Trump correctly characterizes as a witch hunt."

James Freeman provides an example of the good news:

The forecast for political news may be stormy, but the owners of American small businesses are seeing blue skies in the economy as they continue to create jobs and increase wages. That’s according to the latest employment report from the National Federation of Independent Business, due out later today. The NFIB April survey finds that small firms are healthy, and that there are more of them.

According to NFIB Chief Economist William Dunkelberg, “The increase in new business establishments is running well ahead of eliminations, a real boost to new employment. Owners reported adding a net .28 workers per firm on average, the third highest reading since 2006 (down from .36 workers reported last month, the highest since 2006). Reported gains were higher only six times since 2000.”

The recurring story of recent months continued into April. While owners of small businesses are ramping up employment, they’re not hiring as many people as they’d like to hire because they simply can’t find the workers. Most of the 1,554 participants in the survey reported hiring or trying to hire in April, but a full 88% of those trying to add employees reported few or no qualified applicants for the positions they were aiming to fill.

Twenty-two percent of owners cited the difficulty of finding qualified workers as their single most important business problem, “exceeding the percentage citing taxes or regulations. Shortages of qualified workers are clearly holding back economic growth,” says Mr. Dunkelberg.

Of course, the trained hamsters, doing the bidding of their Dem masters, do not report news like this, preferring instead to discuss the empty results of Robert Mueller's "investigation" ad nauseum.

But there is something that might concern the Dems and their hamsters. Despite the tsunami of "bad news" promulgated by the Dems, the general public—millenials included—seem to be aware of the good news. Trump's poll numbers are rising slowly and the percentage of people who want an end to the interminable "investigations" is also on the rise.

On the other hand, it's likely that the Dems will achieve their goal of a House takeover later this year, but that's not at all unusual from a historic perspective. The real problem is that their victory will encourage them to continue a strategy that does absolutely nothing to improve the lot of working people, the economy, minorities, or the country's posture on the international scene. The sad thing is — they just don't care.

FOOTNOTE:
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* Joseph Lawler reports:

Jobless claims ran at historic lows to end April, a great sign for the economy.

After hitting the lowest level since 1969 the week before, new claims for unemployment benefits rose just 2,000 to 211,000 in the last week of the month, the Department of Labor reported Thursday morning. That number was well below the 224,000 that forecasters had expected.

The past two weeks' very low readings drove the monthly average for claims down to 221,500. That's the lowest since early 1973.

But ... but ... but ... Stormy Daniels ... "racism" ... Mueller ... impeachment!!!!