Trump Drops Below Biden, Hillary, and Even Ghost Jimmy Carter in Popularity Contest

Let's trace a line from Jimmy Carter’s presidency through to Trump and the broader neoliberal catastrophe we inhabit today... Connect the dots with me...

1. Carter deregulated key industries (airlines, trucking, finance), under the logic that competition would lower prices. This deregulation began dismantling worker protections and union power.

He appointed Paul Volcker, whose interest rate hikes (to "fight inflation") tanked employment, crushed organized labor, and shifted power toward capital. This "Volcker Shock" initiated decades of wage stagnation and debt reliance for working people.

And he began rolling back the welfare state while not building meaningful alternatives, opening space for Reagan to fully gut it.

The economic consensus began tilting toward free-market absolutism: austerity, privatization, and attacks on labor.

2. Oh boy!

Afghanistan: Carter (through Brzezinski) greenlit support to Mujahideen warlords before the Soviet invasion. This led to a brutal proxy war that helped incubate violent jihadist networks, including the early precursors to al-Qaeda.

Iran: Carter supported the Shah until the regime collapsed. The hostage crisis and U.S. blowback paved the way for U.S. militarization of the Middle East.

Israel/Egypt Accord (Camp David): Removed Egypt as a counterweight to Israel, entrenching U.S.-Israel hegemony in the region, with Palestine marginalized entirely.

The U.S. became further entangled in Middle Eastern conflicts and oil politics, setting the stage for endless wars, 9/11, and Islamophobia.

3. Reagan didn’t invent neoliberalism, he codified what Carter started:

He Used Carter’s deregulation as precedent to further destroy labor, defund public goods, and privatize government. He pushed tax cuts for the rich, shifting wealth upward. And he expanded the security state and laid ideological groundwork for the racist turn in U.S. policy.

4. Clinton continued deregulation (Glass-Steagall repeal). He was responsible for mass incarceration (“tough on crime” laws), and he signed NAFTA, decimating domestic manufacturing and labor organizing, and he "reformed" welfare which deepened poverty.
5. Obama bailed out Wall Street, not homeowners. He expanded drone warfare and surveillance, and he sold a technocratic sheen over systemic rot, giving way to disillusionment.
6. Neoliberalism’s mask fell off, the culmination of 40 years of rot, Trump used populist rhetoric and fascist tactics to deepen wealth inequality, gutted regulations, and emboldened white nationalism.

I'll skip Biden and his genocide and go back to Trump, since Trump is continuing it, and we're back at the end of the line, what shape did it make? A pile of shit on fire.

Climate catastrophe unaddressed, mass surveillance and militarization is well entrenched, working-class despair fuels far-right movements, and Palestine remains occupied and brutalized with U.S. complicity.

All this starts not with Trump, but with liberal acquiescence to capital: Carter’s pivot away from postwar social democracy toward corporate and military alignment.

If you'd like to do some reading, and if you're willing to hate everyone you ever respected. First learn about neo-liberalism and why it's really bad, then review Carter's presidency.

Jimmy Carter started the fire everyone blames Trump for. He kicked off deregulation, empowered Wall Street, and backed brutal regimes abroad, all while smiling about “human rights.” That shift gutted unions, killed good jobs, and fueled endless wars. Reagan doubled down, Clinton made it bipartisan, Obama gave it a pretty face, and Trump lit the wreckage on fire. It’s not about party, it’s about 40+ years of selling out working people to corporations and empire. Carter didn’t end the New Deal. He started the funeral.