Political Animal
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Good morning! I’m happy to be given the keys to the stately vessel that is the Political Animal. I hope no one gets hurt. Speaking of hurting, we should probably keep on talking about the depressing jobs report and what it means for Obama’s reelection hopes.
Noam Scheiber gets some feedback from the administration on his claim that the current jobs mess is at least partially Obama’s responsibility because he decided against prioritizing more and bigger stimulus when such a bill still had a chance to make it to his desk:
An administration official writes to ask why I make no mention of the American Jobs Act, the $450 billion-ish stimulus package the president proposed last September.I think the legislation, which would include another big cut in the payroll tax, extra spending on infrastructure, state aid for paying teachers, cops, and firefighters, and additional unemployment relief, among other good ideas, is absolutely essential. But I’d make two points in response. Substantively, the time to propose such a package was the spring of 2010, when Democrats still controlled the House, had close to a filibuster proof majority in the Senate, and the economy was giving off the first hints of a relapse. (I elaborate on this in my book.) By late 2011, the AJA was still a good idea, but it had virtually no chance of passage, which the White House understood as well as anyone.
Politically, on the other hand, it’s still worth flogging the AJA aggressively. As my former colleague Jonathan Chait has pointed out, the worst of all worlds for the administration is for Republicans to block additional stimulus without taking any blame for it. If you’re Obama, you have to get at least one victory there—either the stimulus itself, or an issue with which to bash the GOP. The administration finally grasped this last September, after two-and-half years of mostly giving the GOP a pass. But the focus on stimulus has largely given way in recent months to a combination of attacks on Romney’s private equity career along with efforts to tout the Obama record (which is not too shabby, I’d be the first to concede, middling recovery aside). If the only thing the administration does in response to these latest jobs numbers is revive it’s focus on the American Jobs Act, it would be a politically important turning point, though obviously you’d like to get the actual stimulus, too.
Obviously, the White House has no choice but to put forward some kind of positive jobs/stimulus agenda, if only to say that Romney and his Republican allies have been responsible for blocking legislation that could have partially alleviated the dismal employment picture.
But there’s a substantive and political risk to prioritizing just doing something. If the argument that Obama wants to make is that Romney has no real plan to bring down the unemployment rate or stimulate the economy in the short-term, that’s all well and good. However, it wouldn’t be totally ridiculous for an undecided voter who is only focused on short-term economic performance to see four more years of gridlock with Obama and thus nothing getting done and instead prefer Romney and the chance of doing something with an agreeable Republican Congress.
This is just another way of saying that a bleak macroeconomic picture will make the campaign incredibly difficult for the president.
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Fritz Strand on June 02, 2012 8:42 AM:
Perhaps if Harry Reid and President Obama had starting raising the issue of Republican Filibusters back in 2009 he would stand a better chance this fall. Now the game is over but he thinks he has another at bat.
j on June 02, 2012 8:50 AM:
Fritz - Think positively.
Also I would like to declare Martin Bashir a national treasure, along with Rachel, his comments on the jobs numbers were spot on.
stormskies on June 02, 2012 8:54 AM:
This is exactly what the Repiglican/corporate game plan has been since the beginning of Obama's presidency. And that has been to try to destroy him through blocking just about everything he has wanted to do about the economy including the Jobs Act.
And then blame him for that which they are purposefully responsible for with the active complicity of the vast amount of the corporate media which is happening now. This is the game plan. And they rely upon the corporate media to make the American people believe that it is all Obama's fault.
And while they do this none of these corporate media sluts ever discuss what buffoon Romney's policies would create because those are the same policies, and worse, of Bush and the Repiglican controlled Congress and Senate for the majority of Bush's term. And it is those policies that finally lead to, at the end of Bush, 800,000 American's losing their jobs per month.
These sluts just set there and splutter over and over that the American people just want 'change'. Change to what they don't ever go into of course because that would lead to actual reality versus the fictional belief that it would all just get better with buffoon Romney.
Scott McClellan spoke the truth about the corporate media when he finally resigned his post of Bush's press secretary. And that truth is that the corporate media is in 'active complicity' with the Repiglican/ corporate agendas.
And we wonder how our country has become so destroyed. A major reason is our corporate media who of course serve as the 'gatekeeper's' the what 'news' is 'presented' to all of us. The 'media elite' are part of the one percenters. And they want to keep it that way. David "I am not a used corporate condom" Gregory, et-al, knows why General Electric pays him the millions that they do.
AndThenThere'sThat on June 02, 2012 9:03 AM:
But I’d make two points in response. Substantively, the time to propose such a package was the spring of 2010, when Democrats still controlled the House, had close to a filibuster proof majority in the Senate
As I remember it, Democrats by that time were running for the hills in the face of tea party debt screams and many didn't even want to be seen with the President.
c u n d gulag on June 02, 2012 9:11 AM:
Hey, Matt - welcome back!
Yes, I think the Obama team needs to have his team form another impossible-to-pass stimulus package.
If for no other reason, than to rub the obstructionist Republican Parties, and it's Presidential candidate's, noses in the bad economic turds they've laid over the last 30+ years, and won't allow anyone to try to pick up!
And, AND, I'd also point out, that if Romney wins, and has a majority R Congress, they will do everything they can to continue to hurt the working, and rapidly depleting middle, classes, while giving even MORE tax breaks to their rich pals.
Sure, it's not a great argument from the President, since every single scum-bucket 'Cannibal Capitalist' who drove the deregulated markets off the cliff, only, on the way down, to catch a tax-payer branch by a hand(out), and were helped to claw their way back up with OUR CASH, is FREE, when they should ALL BE IN FECKIN' JAIL, with their precious feckin' 1% money taken from them and their families for the damage they did, and to pay for the bail-out of, basically, the world's economy.
Instead, Obama whined when they gave themselves tax-payer money as bonuses for a job well-done.
And alas, Obama didn't want to look back, but "look forward" - and the R's and their rich pals, free from jail, spit in both of his forward-looking eyes - and the First Ladies, too.
Also too - if he's elected, the minute Mitt R-money's hand leaves the Bible, he will have Congress pass some long. long-overdue stimulus package.
Only it won't be called a "stimulus," it'll be called "The Ronald Maximustest Reagan, Wake-up It's Morning In Feckin' America Again, And Time To Put The Workers Back To Feckin' Work Again, Incentive Plan" - where workers will become like serf's, with low-pay, no benefits, long hours, and not even the luxury of going home after a long day's labor and have some borscht, bread, and vodka, and some sexy-time with the Mrs., since, well, borscht is too Socialist/Communist, and as for the vodka, our Mormon President may well have Congress pass a '2nd Prohibition - The Stay Alert Plan For A Serious and Sober Look-out For Terrorists, Immigrants, and Furriner's, For The Future Of Our Great Fatherla... er, uhm, Homeland Act" - and, as for sexy-time with the Mrs., well, you'll be too tired, and if she gets pregnant, well, you'll have to welcome another mouth to feed.
So, that leaves bread! (And circuses, of course - to distract the poor unwashed ignorati).
And they'll 'give us this day, our daily bread,
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we DON'T EVER forgive them that feckin' trespass anywhere near us.
And lead us not into temptation -
Like wondering why the rich have so much,
while the rest of us have so little?
And deliver us from evil -
Like Socialistic/Communistic
wealth redistribution plans (called TAXES!).
For thine, the Job Creator's, is the kingdom,
The power, and the glory,
For ever and ever.
Amen.
For men.
White ones.
And straight.
ONLY!
Hedda Peraz on June 02, 2012 9:19 AM:
Republicans say "Obama's mismanagement has destroyed the economy
Democrats say "He didn't do enough in 2 years to reverse 20 years of economic mismanagement."
The 99% say, "Shall we go to a movie, or watch the game?"
The number of people who watch political (CCN/FOX/MSNBC) TV just ain't that large.
At 9PM Hannity gets 1.7 mill, Rachel 1 mill, and Piers Morgan 640 thousand. That's less than 1% of the population. What do you think the other 99% are doing? (Keep it clean!)
lou on June 02, 2012 9:22 AM:
Not sure how to read this. Some economists have been predicting for months that there would be another slowdown this spring similar to last year. And most economists still predict that it will take at least a decade to dig out of the financial collapse.
All Romney has to play on is his charge that growth has not resumed more rapidly than it has. He is making this charge when almost everyone conceded the fact that it could not and would not after such a financial bruising and with so much uncertainty generated in no small part to Republican intransigence.
Romney is the proverbial Christian holding 4 aces (or 4 deuces depending on how you view him). When the truth does not work for Murky Mitt, well, they have something else to work on, like our delusions of the potential for sustained growth in the world economy. We have all, in some way, bought in to the murky. In a murky world, murky wins.
Bobbo on June 02, 2012 10:23 AM:
I find it mind-boggling in these dire times that anyone thinks there is greater risk in trying to do something to improve the situation than in sitting on your hands hoping no one will notice you're sitting on your hands
Neildsmith on June 02, 2012 11:19 AM:
I'm just curious if any of the commenters here are actually unemployed. Perhaps these times are not as "dire" as one might think given the heated rhetoric.
Skip on June 02, 2012 12:49 PM:
Neildsmith,
I was unemployed in Alabama. Any jobs within 50 miles of my small town were the horrible ones, part time cell phone sales, cashiers at large chain stores with minimum wage and no benefits, or Work From Home ads. One employer said she received 60 applications for that 20-hr per week cashier job. Mine was one of them.
I now work in North Dakota where they can't get enough people to "rough neck" out on the oil fields for the oil/gas boom going on up here, a boom which predictably has led to housing shortages/inflated real estate market and price gouging on everything from food to rent. Funny, I never heard of this gas boom down south or anything about the need for people up here, until I got up here.
I learned just how impossible living on minimum wage in the United States really is (every comfort and social amenity was eliminated just to save for tires). I was too keenly aware of my status as a "have not" and that plus my personal new found knowledge of the job market realities has changed me. I no longer feel free, this craziness in the real estate and job markets has left me very insecure and inflexible. I now plan to stick to this job until I either die at my desk or they throw me out with all the other surveyed antiquated equipment.
FlipYrWhig on June 02, 2012 1:14 PM:
Isn't spring 2010 when people like Barbara Boxer and Russ Feingold were begging the administration not to make them take any votes in favor of raising taxes, including on rich people? Do we have to keep pretending that there is a unified group called The Democrats who agree on things, and all Obama has to do is snap his fingers and they comply, meaning if they don't comply he must have been too big a wuss to snap his fingers?
c u n d gulag on June 02, 2012 4:40 PM:
Neildsmith,
I'm not employed, and haven't been in over 2 years.
And I've been working since I was 14. And I've been everything from an Adjunct Professor, to a bartender, to a bouncer, to a warehouse person, to an actor, to a telemarketer (the WORSTEVER!!!!!!!!!!!!), to a Cable TV CSR trainer, to a Training Manager for the 3rd largest division of a Very large Telecommunications company, etc.
I'm 54, and in 2+ years, I can count the number of calls-back and interviews on 2 hands - and that's with multiple hundreds of applications EVERY YEAR!
Neildsmith on June 02, 2012 8:43 PM:
Thanks to skip and gulag for sharing their stories. It is, I think, important to hear the stories of real people when we discuss and debate the proper response to our current difficulties. The economists point to charts and graphs then expect that will motivate action. That never works.
gdb on June 02, 2012 10:02 PM:
As noted elsewhere, BHO bet on optimism rather than stronger action on the economy in 2009-- and he lost. And so do we all.
It's now probably too late for BHO to do anything useful-- he has to hope the trend is not what it appears to be. And not just in the economy-- but health care, financial regulation--- should i go on and really p.y.o. with the reality of the last three years that did not have to be?
As for flogging the AJA-- any of you ever notice it's WAY too small to do the Keynesian job?? If you gonna flog something you and everone else knows now you can't pass because of your screw-ups for three years, why not flog something that would actually solve the problem?? That is, given the Repub/BHO screw-up, as of 6/12 about $1.5 T is needed to end this Recession/Depression in 12-18 months.
As for November and beyond, as Chait and others have observed, Mushy Mittens is likely to get more stimulus $ passed in 2013 than Blithe Barack-- not enough to end the deepening Recession/Depression (because THAT will be the condition that elects Mittens), but less of an economic disaster than BHO will produce if re-elected in a liquidity trap.
gdb on June 02, 2012 10:11 PM:
As stated by roi elsewhere"I don't think it is possible to be too harsh in criticism of the political ineptitude of the Obama White House since day one. Given what Bush and the Republicans did to the country, it should have been possible to bury them for at least a generation. But that would have required bare-knuckles partisanship for which Obama appears to have neither the taste nor the talent. The tragic result of his feckless pursuit of bipartisanship in the face of implacable Republican hostility is that he has succeeded in crediting the Republican-libertarian-reactionary-wingnut narrative of austerity, debt reduction, entitlement reform, income inequality, continued license to the financial sector, and all the rest. I don't think the public has any idea what about the Republican agenda Obama disagrees with. I might infer it, but I certainly don't hear it."
Behavioral characteristics are as well set genetically as physical characteristics. BHO's is well set. BHO- or Geitner .. or.. in his heavily Clintonesque administration-- ain't suddenly gonna be Trumanesque. The Confidence Fairy or the Almighty is highly unlikely to intervene. I recall a WWII ditty-- "Praise the Lord, but pass the ammunition". I suspect after November, the ammunition will mostly be expended in a Dem circular firing squad. Unfortunately, that's the first needed political step.