Sometimes we play “what if” games, but sometimes the game isn’t even needed because there was a clear example of the same or a very similar incident had played out.

The media made much of the recent Moody’s downgrade and used it to indict the Trump administration, but its coverage of the ‘first ever’ downgrade by S&P back in 2011 played out very differently.

Obama officials blamed S&P and targeted it for retaliation. They publicly suggested that the downgrade was some sort of capitalist conspiracy against Obama’s reforms. And Obama blamed Republicans in Congress.

The media largely swallowed these narratives and minimized the downgrade as not really a big deal.

Now the latest downgrade, contrary to what the media is asserting, is due to the massive amounts of debt that every administration has piled up. The media is choosing to spin it as a tariff issue and to blame Trump for what is really the unsustainable spending and debt that really took off under Obama whose corrupt stimulus and infrastructure plans ballooned deficits without even having a war to hide behind.

During the subprime mortgage crisis, the national debt hit $10 trillion. In 2010, the Tea Party movement arose in response to an unacceptably high $13 trillion national debt and endless government spending. But by the time Obama was done, the national debt had nearly doubled to $20 trillion. And now here we are living large with an impossible $34 trillion debt.

In many ways this latest downgrade is Obama’s downgrade.