Tortoises, Slugs, Sloths or Lions, Tigers and Sharks? - Top 3 Takeaways – May 27th, 2025 - Driven By Braman Motorcars

Takeaway #1: Tortoises, slugs or sloths; lions, tigers and sharks

If you could be one of those animals, or let's say for a minute you had to be one of those animals, which would you be? Personally, as an animal and nature lover I have a great appreciation for tortoises and sloths, but would I choose to be one? Of course not. As much as I love water the idea of being a shark would be tempting – but being a mammal is more my thing, so I’d prefer to be the Tiger King (no, not that one) - btw, there was related news recently if you hadn’t heard about that one. Joe Exotic’s husband, who’s an apparently a Mexican illegal immigrant, was recently deported by ICE after having previously been detained for participating in what appeared to be a human smuggling operation. You can’t make this stuff up, but it sounds right for ‘Ole Joe. Anyway – back to the animal kingdom stuff. If you had to vote for one of those animals to represent your interests, which one would it be? And on that note let’s say that one set of three represents what voters think of one political party and the other set of three represents the other...

Takeaway #2: Which party aligns with each of the three?

Recently a Democrat Party researcher who works with party-aligned pollsters conducted a study of voters. Her focus group of 250 independent voters were asked which animals best described each of the major political parties. What were the top responses? You guessed it – Democrats were most commonly viewed as tortoises, slugs or sloths – while Republicans were viewed most commonly as lions, tigers and sharks. We don’t have to parse additional details of the study to infer what the implications are politically if that’s currently the view of the two parties by those who don’t adhere to a party. This characterization is also an extension of what we’ve seen in the State of Florida during this off-election year where through the first third of the year Republicans had grown their advantage over Democrats in our state by over 93-thousand additional voters. With President Trump’s One, Big Beautiful Bill Act now in the hands of the senate – there's continued room for significant political upside for team Trump from here if congress delivers on his agenda. As I broke out last week, the President’s agenda doesn’t just mean keeping his existing tax policy in place, it means a lower overall tax burden still for approximately 90% of Americans by the time they file their taxes. Additionally, there are over 22 million Americans in the middle who would benefit immediately through the end of income taxes on tips and overtime. That’s likely to be met with additional positivity. Add in the resources needed for President Trump to carry out his popular detention and deportation plan in addition to the resources necessary to finish building the southern border wall among many other things and there’s reason to believe...

Takeaway #3: There’s considerable room for political upside for President Trump and the GOP from here...

If they deliver. Without getting into the weeds of economic forecasting – I did a lot of research around this over the weekend (yes – this kind of stuff is actually fun for me). If the OBBB is passed by Independence Day (which is what Trump wants) and the average tariff rate charged by the US at the end of the year isn’t higher than it is today (averaging 18% for what’s being imported in the US) - I’m showing the US with a greater than 3% growth rate for the second half of the year with the S&P 500 about 10% higher than it is coming into trading today. On that note, the Atlanta Federal Reserve’s newest GDPNow estimate comes out today – and most recently it had been accelerating significantly with expected 2nd quarter growth pacing 2.4%. If we have lower taxes, a faster growth economy, meaningful progress on illegal immigration and deportations (which also lowers the rate of inflation and reduces crime) and a record high stock market entering next year’s election year... The tortoises, slugs and sloths of the political world might find themselves close to being relegated to the Whigs in the dustbin of political history. There’s obviously a lot that still must break right, but the conditions are set and as I said going back to November of 2021 – when I highlighted for the first time the onset of a historical political shift with voter demographics in this country. The reemergence of Trump represented the second coming of the Reagan Revolution which early on appears to be having a similar impact politically in this country.