Yes, Democrats, it’s about the economy.
So let me throw up my bias right up front.
I don’t see anything in the Democratic Party’s performance over the last four years that is particularly egregious or inflammatory.
Some low-grade scandal? Sure, Charlie Rangel and Rod Blagojevich buffooned their way into the headlines.
But their antics were nothing on par with the champagne-and-grand-theft exuberance of the Abramoff-era GOP.
And if Obama-haters are still obsessing about his birth certificate and his religious status, you know they haven’t found anything better?
Has Barack Obama failed to right the ship of our economy in the year-and-a-half he’s occupied the White House. Sure, guilty as charged.
But he did inherit a ship that was, as the firemen say, fully engaged.
Are Democrats big-spenders, with no real plan to balance the Federal budget. Again, guilty as charged.
But the GOP has a sorry track record on this front as well, and none of their candidates are talking about plans that will seriously improve the debt picture much.
Do Democrats tax like drunken sailors? Maybe.
But Republicans have only figured out how to cut taxes by borrowing, not by significantly shrinking the cost of government.
My point here isn’t that Democrats deserve another two years in control of the entire Federal government. That’s debatable, and it’s up to the voters to decide.
No, what I’m struggling to understand is the absolutely feverish venom the public seems to feel toward a Democratic Party that was the belle of the ball only two short years ago.
It doesn’t help that the Democrats — whatever you think of their policies — have done pretty much what they told voters they were going to do.
This wasn’t a bait-and-switch sort of deal, where Mr. Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senare majority leader Harry Reid promised one thing and delivered another.
The agenda they’ve followed is, if anything, less ambitious and progressive than the one in their 2008 campaign playbook.
I also think it’s hard to argue that Mr. Obama’s White House has been any more incompetent or inept than any other first-term administration in the last thirty years.
Is he the greatest President since Abe Lincoln? No, of course not. But he’s also avoided scandal, comported himself with reasonable decorum, and handled a number of domestic and foreign crises with reasonable aplomb.
One final wrinkle here is that the Republican Party isn’t exactly wowing us with its charisma or its fresh ideas.
If anything, the GOP is swept up in its own civil war, with the tea party and the establishment leadership battling it out, and a national chairman who is so deeply unpopular.
In my two decades of following politics, none of that long list adds up to the formula for a landslide. So what is it? Why are voters so angry and so hell-bent on change?
The simple, dull, predictable answer is that it’s the economy. Democrats have inherited — and yes, now own — the most frightening slump in post-War history.
One in five workers is in financial peril. Multiply that times families and dependents and you have a deeply frightened society.
Yes, it’s arguable that the Democratic stimulus plan and the various bailouts prevented a full-on Depression, but that’s not good enough by half.
Americans expected Mr. Obama to do two much larger things:
First, articulate a clear path toward full recovery, using creative and ambitious means to get us there, preferably strategies that won’t balloon the Federal deficit. That hasn’t happened.
The White House spent a lot of its political capital on healthcare, cap-and-trade, the war in Afghanistan, and other issues that right now rank far down on America’s collective priority list.
Secondly, voters wanted Mr. Obama to offer a clear message of hope. Not hope for his campaign victory — that was settled in November in 2008 — but hope for our own renewed prosperity.
We wanted a cheerleader and an inspiration, and instead we got technocratic predictions and wonky dial-tweaking.
It may be too late for the Democrats to ask voters for one more shot at this.
But Mr. Obama can still use this election season to get his game-face back on, and to remember that fixing the economy is still his only real priority.
Tags: election10
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Brian says,
“This wasn’t a bait-and-switch sort of deal…”
Well, yes it was.
Obama: “everything will be transparent and bills will be online”
Obama: “I won’t raise taxes a dime on people making less than $250,000”.
Obama: “You must pass my stimulus package in a hurry so I can keep unemployment under 8%”
Obama: “Passing health care in a hurry is essential to saving the economy”
Pelosi: “Passing health care will create an immediate 400,000 jobs”
Reid: “This war is lost” (I wonder if he will be in attendance tonight?)
Only one question. Where do I signup for the healthcare that is the cornerstone of President O’s first 2 years?
I’m sure everyone remembers Jimmy Carter’s stern lectures about energy conservation followed by Ronald Reagan’s smiling new day in America.
Carter was correct about much of what he said but nobody wanted to hear it when interest rates were at 20%. Obama could learn a thing or two from Reagan in being more hopey, changey with a big smile.
sigh. and the conservative misinformation campaign continues apace.
dear jdm, how has obama broken his promise not to raise taxes on families making under $250,000 a year?
when did obama ever say anything remotely like “passing health care in a hurry is essential to saving the economy”?
or like “passing health care will create an immediate 400,000 jobs”?
and of course i know he never said that passing the stimulus would necessarily keep unemployment under 8%. all that happened was that his administration released projections on what unemployment would like like with and without the stimulus. and his administration (along with a lot of private forecasters, not that that’s any excuse) really underestimated how bad the recession was going to be, that’s all. the unemployment situation would be much worse yet without the stimulus.
Americans expected Mr. Obama to do two much larger things:
First, articulate a clear path toward full recovery, using creative and ambitious means to get us there, preferably strategies that won’t balloon the Federal deficit. That hasn’t happened.
it may well be true that that’s what americans expected, but if so then that really speaks poorly of our fellow countrymen. the first line of defense in a recession is to cut interest rates. but we went into this with pretty low rates to begin with, and there wasn’t nearly enough room for cuts that were big enough. so all we were left with was fiscal stimulus, which means — wait for it — deficit spending.
this really is one of my favorite points of conservative ridiculousness right now. the right will wail away at obama that he hasn’t done enough for the economy, but what would they have have him do? the tools at his disposal are anathema to them.
hermit:
a simple google search reveals Huffinton backs me up:
Obama: Hurry Up On Health Care, Bypass Usual Negotiations
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/06/obama-health-care_n_412820.html
[Huffington post 1/7/10]
Taxes up on those under $250,000. Already in effect.
a 10% tax on individuals receiving indoor tanning services was tacked on, and the initiative is expected to generate $2.7 billion over ten years. http://money.cnn.com/2010/03/24/news/economy/tanning_tax/
I offer a sigh to the liberals who only get their news from liberal sources.
First off, the “economy” is not a gov’t run program. I don’t believe gov’t can legislate the economy into performing better. Czars won’t make it work better. Certainly Senators and Congressmen can’t “fix it”. What gov’t can do is damage it, slow it or speed it, make it harder to perform or easier. The economy is not run by the gov’t, the gov’t simply collects fines (taxes) from those involved in the economy and spends that money as it sees fit. The economy is run by business large and small. Help business, make it simpler, easier or less expensive for business to flourish and the economy will improve over time.
Neither Democrat or Republican is willing to give up the idea, or the impression at least, that they can somehow control the economy and make it work better. Their ideas usually involve more taxes, rules, laws and micro management. Those are proven methods of killing an economy, just look at FDR for an example.
Gov’t’s role in the economy should be simply ensuring legal methods are in play and not much more. What you have now is thousands of backseat drivers attempting to steer a vehicle they are entirely unfamiliar with.
This is the legacy of certain oil billionaires (Koch bros and their ilk) and
their shady right wing foundations, which espouse the destruction of the federal government. They are quite open and frank about their intentions: to overthrow our American democracy and put themselves and their friends in charge. I don’t want the oil companies to run my life. O’bama was elected president, and these people and their conservative cronies have no right to obstruct everything he was elected to do.
I understand the health care focus becuase that is what he promised to do. The problem is that it may actually hurt the economy, if health care is loaded onto increased costs for employers when they hire more workers, at the margin those empoloyers will all hire less people than they would have. But then again maybe health care reform was all words, when does it start where do I go sign up it does not seem real to most Americans right now.
jdm,
i think you make a completely fair point about taxes. here’s politifact’s take on the matter. they note:
We should state at the outset that if you think Obama only meant he would not raise income taxes on people making less than $250,000, then you might think Obama is keeping his promise….
But Obama’s campaign rhetoric took him beyond just income taxes. “Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes,” Obama said. It’s that “not any of your taxes” that is the sticking point.
and indeed, obama hasn’t (nor has announced any plans to) raise income taxes or payroll taxes or capital gains taxes on families making under $250,000. but he made a stupidly overly broad promise, and indeed things like the tanning tax and increased smoking taxes and the tax penalty for failing to obtain adequate health insurance will inevitably cause some under-$250,000 families to pay more taxes. i don’t think that a major contravention of what he said he’d do, but fair is fair, point taken.
on the other other hand, your point about health care is completely inept. you wrote, “Passing health care in a hurry is essential to saving the economy.” let me say that again, with emphasis:
Passing health care in a hurry is essential to saving the economy.
but all your link says is that, as of january, the president was encouraging congressional negotiators to hurry up — and that point only appears in the headline and in a photo caption, not even in the main body of the article. there’s no mention of the economy anywhere.
if all you had originally said was that at some point obama encouraged congress to hurry up, then there’d certainly be no objection from me, but on the other hand who would care? the health care process dragged on too long as it was, thanks in no small part to unscrupulous republicans like chuck grassley and john ensign negotiating in bad faith.
hermit:
Come on. Why do you think Obama was rush rush on health care – because he wanted to hurry up and go on vacation.
Here’s the text and a link. Please google “health care fix economy”. There are only several thousand articles on the subject.
[WASHINGTON (AFP) March 2, 2009]
President Barack Obama warned that America’s fast-worsening economic plight meant his government simply could not afford to fail in the politically perilous task of reforming healthcare.
….
“Fixing what’s wrong with our health care system is no longer just a moral imperative, but a fiscal imperative.”
“The crushing cost of healthcare causes a bankruptcy in America every 30 seconds, and by the end of this year, it could cause 1.5 million Americans to lose their homes.”
[Obama is the one being quoted]
Here’s the link.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gty_Z5STXwGJ9ShNUJOnUyecR9Ag
This is the legacy of certain Wall St billionaires (George Soros and his ilk) and their shady left wing foundations, which espouse the destruction of the Constitution, capitalism (except for Soros!) and American way of life. They are quite open and frank about their intentions: to overthrow our American democracy and put themselves and their friends in charge. I don’t want the socialists to run my life. O’bama was elected president, and these people and their liberal cronies have no right to support everything he has pledged to do.
A little closer to home, St Lawrence Counties Beloved and Esteemed Administrator Karen St. Hillaire brought us the happy news today that our property taxes will probably need to be raised ONLY 6-7%!!!! Oh joy! Thank goodness we have fiscal geniuses in power to limit our costs. Since much of our local costs come from unfunded mandates and other tripe, I wonder just how long it will be until the counties get together and tell the State and Federal Gov’t to go pound salt? We cannot sustain increased costs.
What is your problem Bret? If you don’t want to pay property tax sell your land. If you don’t want to buy auto insurance, don’t own a car. If you don’t like sales tax, don’t buy it. If you don’t like your income tax, lie about your income. You have a choice.
here’s my problem with saying that obama said anything like “Passing health care in a hurry is essential to saving the economy.”
unfortunately the things we say aren’t always perfectly clear, and maybe i’m misinterpreting what you intended. but it definitely sounds to me like you mean the quote to say “passing health care in a hurry is essential to rescuing the economy from the current crisis.” if that’s not what you meant, then apologies to you, but please explain what you had in mind instead.
if it is what you meant, then it’s wrong. in your defense, the article gives the same impression as to what obama said. but that just makes the article misleading too! obama in no way meant to suggest that health care reform was essential to solving the crisis right now. i know this because i looked up the transcript of his remarks.
the key quote is the antecedent to the first of obama’s quotes that you mentioned, which was also unfortunately cut out of the article you linked to (my emphasis):
If we’re going to help families, save businesses, and improve the long-term economic health of our nation, we must realizing [sic] that fixing what’s wrong with our health care system is no longer just a moral imperative, but a fiscal imperative.
go read his remarks. you’ll see that he’s talking about health care as a long-term economic issue. and he’s correct about that! the medium/long-term fiscal health of the country is almost all about health care. which is why the conservative approach of doing nothing about health care is horrible, as health care costs are rising at a wholly unsustainable rate, but that’s a topic for another thread.
and so it went throughout the whole health care debate. while current health care costs are obviously not good, the guts of the matter has always been about the medium/long term. if you’ve got any quotes to the contrary i’d love to see them, but i found obama to be completely consistent on that point.
Gee Betty, maybe the complete and total disregard for facts, common sense, fiscal discipline and long term sustainability have finally gotten under my skin. Thanks for the suggestions though. I’ll just live on welfare, in public housing accepting free medical care for the rest of my life. We should ALL do that. That’d fix it. No more of your stupid income taxes to worry about either…
No, Bret I don’t want to go back to W’s administration(complete and total disregard for facts, common sense, fiscal discipline and long term sustainability )
Betty, you are making zero sense. What does this have to do with taxation?
Betty, you are making zero sense. What does this have to do with taxation at the county level?
Bret, if it was not for State and Federal gov’t there would not be a county here in the northcountry for people like you to make your pension off of taxpayers(across the State) and then once you got yours scream that we need cutbacks. The cutbacks needed to happen long ago in both the public and private sectors.In short Bret you are a hypocrite. A former public employee who got his and now wants to shut it all down.
Hey Brian Mann how’s all that hope and change working out for ya?
More lies more deficit more of the same. This is the biggest empty suit ever in the White House.
Hopey changy(insert wink) is pretty good when compared to W. I mean I’m not real pleased we have a former alcoholic DJ lecturing us on the Mall about how to live, but it is a free country and he isn’t really yelling “FIRE” . All things considered I’ll take hopey changey(insert wink) over a quitter Governor telling what I should do!
Well Betty, as usual you demonstrate your lack of intelligence. First off I paid for my retirement. No one handed it to me. I worked for it. Secondly genius, that has zero to do with county level taxation. Thirdly, I don’t want to “shut it all down”. If you could comprehend simple English you’d realize that. But you just go on spitting and sputtering and making wild accusations.
You paid for it all as a public employee and it has zero to do with taxes. You really do think we’re all stupid.
I think you’re pretty stupid, yes.