Election Blues with a Silver Lining

Tip O’Neill, the oversized Democratic Speaker of the House during the Reagan years, used to say, “All politics is local.” And that is as good an explanation as any as to why my blog has been mostly silent leading up to the mid-term elections. While I voted Tuesday, I can readily understand and empathize with voter apathy, disillusionment, even revulsion, to the state of politics and government in America. Even when it resulted in electing candidates who clearly identify with and promote the causes of the rich, the general population made their voices heard, that they were dissatisfied with Democrats being ensconced in governors’ chairs and the majority of the U.S. Senate. 

The politics of fear—Ebola and ISIS—trumped any benefits they saw from Obamacare, revitalized car and housing industries, lower unemployment, higher job creation. Democrats and Independents chose to sit this election out, as they often do in non-presidential years. They were aided by Republican efforts to keep voters out through restrictive election laws that required IDs and limited voting times. 

But GOP tactics might not have mattered if Democrats ran smarter campaigns. One of the first laws of politics is that a candidate must define him- or herself, otherwise the opposition would do it for you. Sadly, too many Democrats chose to distance themselves from the achievements of the Obama administration, and let’s not have any snarky comments about “what achievements.” In a nutshell, Democrats lacked a distinctive message of positive accomplishments.

Despite early sound bites that they want to lead America toward future exceptionalism, Republicans will be hard pressed to act on that lofty ideal. House Speaker John Boehner and presumptive Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell will have to wield sharp party discipline swords to contain slash and burn members of their own caucuses. It is not beyond reason to postulate that on critical bills, such as raising the national debt ceiling, rogue Republicans will add unacceptable-to-the-president amendments aimed at killing ObamaCare, thus forcing repeated vetoes. Heck, in their Op-Ed piece in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal Boehner and McConnell pledged to renew efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. 

What will Republicans do on such controversial issues as global warming, reproductive rights, income inequality, immigration reform, financial markets oversight, environmental protections, court appointments? How will McConnell react to filibuster threats? 

All this will lead to two repetitively revolting years of Washington insider news but very little advancement of the country’s good and welfare. There is, however, at least one silver lining from Tuesday’s election: Have you noticed your telephone is not ringing as often with those disruptive and annoying robo calls? Except, that is, from telemarketers who continue to call during dinner time despite your number being on the federal NO Call list. 

Unemployment Blues

Unemployment figures came out today, a sober reminder our country has deep economic problems made all the more intractable by the inability of both major parties to get along to reach bi-partisan remedies. Democrats generally believe more government spending is needed to stimulate the economy; Republicans believe business will invest more and create more jobs once the federal government reins in spending.

Thursday’s “economic memo” in the NY Times by Binyamin Appelbaum starkly described Barack Obama’s challenge as he faces re-election. The lead paragraph summed up his problem: “No American president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has won a second term in office when the unemployment rate on Election Day topped 7.2 percent.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/02/business/economy/02jobs.html?_r=1&ref=politics)

Unemployment today is 9.1% nationally. It is not expected to drop sharply in the next 18 months.

Which means the election will turn on whether Americans vote with their brains or their emotions. They’ll have to remember under whose presidential watch we tumbled into the worst recession since the Depression. They’ll have to decide if it’s better to place the nation’s future back into the hands of the party that put us into deep water in the first place with two wars, a Medicare prescription reimbursement program that was not sustainable and a tax cut for the wealthy, or if it’s more satisfying to blame the current occupant of the White House for failing to reverse eight years of destructive policies in four years. Our widening national debt is an emotionally charged issue, yet, as Stephen Colbert noted last night, Republicans pushed through a higher debt ceiling during the Bush presidency in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007 and twice in 2008.

Let’s be honest. Obama’s policies have not been sufficient to turn the economic tide. He should have demanded more government money to stimulate the economy. Without the stimulus plan and TARP that Bush and Obama implemented, we’d be in worse shape. GM and Chrysler might be history, and with them many suppliers to the auto industry. Unemployment would be significantly higher. We’d have negative economic output, according to many economists.

Yet many Republicans, including their presidential hopefuls, say the stimulus program was a disaster. Obama needs to forcefully defend the program.

It will be up to the electorate to make sense of these countervailing claims.

If Applebaum is correct, Obama has little chance of staying in the White House beyond noon, January 20, 2012. But using the national unemployment rate of 9.1% could be misleading. As past Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill used to say, “All politics is local.” So let’s examine unemployment layered onto the electoral map of 2008.

Obama won 27 states and the District of Columbia in 2008. Of those blue states, only seven—Maryland, Minnesota, Hawaii, Iowa, Virginia, Vermont and New Hampshire—currently enjoy an unemployment rate below the 7.2% threshold. Another six—New York, Massachusetts, Maine, New Mexico Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—are close.

Of those 13 states, Minnesota, Virginia, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania can be said to be “in play” because Obama’s margin of victory over John McCain was less than, or barely above, 10% and there have been rightward shifts in voter sentiment since the 2008 election.

Moreover, Obama’s fortunes are more precarious in the following states he barely won last time: Florida (by 2.5%), North Carolina (0.4%), Colorado (8.6%), Ohio (4%) and Indiana (0.9%).

All in all, it suggests the potential for a vastly different Electoral College map than when Obama won 365 votes to McCain’s 173 (270 are required).

It’s still a long way off until November 2012. The Republican field of candidates is far from stellar. The GOP might overplay its hand, as it appears to have done with a plan to overhaul Medicare. Its plan was widely considered the reason Republicans lost an upstate New York special congressional election last week. The lesson Democrats need to take from that election is they must draw strong distinctions between what they stand for and the impact Republican programs would place on the American family.

Obama’s task is much harder than four years ago. Harder, but not impossible.

(Editor’s note: I’m not the only one to react to Applebaum’s premise. Here’s Nate Silver of the NY Times with his thoughts: http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/02/on-the-maddeningly-inexact-relationship-between-unemployment-and-re-election/?scp=2&sq=nate%20silver&st=cse.)