Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

...who spent his first full day in office having a temper tantrum, railing against accurate reports of small crowds at his inauguration—would already be facing a vote of no confidence. But we don’t; somehow we’re going to have to survive four years of this. And how is he going to react to disappointing numbers about things that actually matter? In his lurid, ghastly Inaugural Address, Mr. Trump portrayed a nation in dire straits—“American carnage.” The real America looks nothing like that.. but things could be worse. In fact, it’s likely that they will indeed get worse. How will a man who evidently can’t handle even the smallest blow to his ego deal with it?

Let’s talk about the predictable bad news. First, the economy.... Unemployment probably can’t fall much from here, so that even with good policies and good luck, job creation will be much slower.... Since bad stuff does happen, there’s a strong likelihood that unemployment will be higher four years... than it is today. Oh, and Trumpist budget deficits will probably widen the trade deficit, so that manufacturing employment in particular is likely to fall, not rise.... Second... health care. Obamacare caused the percentage of Americans without insurance to fall sharply.... Republicans who have spent seven years failing to come up with a real replacement won’t develop one in the next few weeks, or ever.... Third... crime.... Trump vision of an urban America ravaged by “the crime and the gangs and the drugs” is a dystopian fantasy: Violent crime is, in fact, way down.... Crime could, I suppose, fall further, but it could also rise....

So how will Mr. Trump handle the bad news of rising unemployment, plunging health coverage, and little if any crime reduction? That’s obvious: He’ll deny reality, the way he always does when it threatens his narcissism. But will his supporters go along with his fantasy? They might.... Two-thirds of Trump voters believe, falsely, that the unemployment rate rose under Obama. (Three-quarters believe George Soros is paying people to protest Mr. Trump.) Only 17 percent of self-identified Republicans are aware that the number of uninsured is at a historic low. Most people thought crime was rising even when it was falling....

Mr. Trump made big promises during the campaign, so the risk of disillusionment is especially high. Will he respond to bad news by accepting responsibility and trying to do better? Will he renounce his fortune and enter a monastery? That seems equally likely. No, the insecure egomaniac-in-chief will almost surely deny awkward truths, and berate the media.... How do you think the man who compared the C.I.A. to Nazis will react when the Bureau of Labor Statistics first reports a significant uptick in unemployment or decline in manufacturing jobs? What’s he going to do when the Centers for Disease Control and the Census Bureau report spiking numbers of uninsured Americans? You may have thought that last weekend’s temper tantrum was bad. But there’s much, much worse to come.