Here is my prediction -- the crazies do not get the GOP nomination. It goes instead to either Romney or Pawlenty, and they tack toward the center in the general election. If the economy still remains weak, the GOP candidate defeats Obama; if the economy improves, Obama gets a second term. If the GOP wins the White House, I'm not convinced that the GOP will capture the House and Senate.

If Obama loses, it will be because austerity sank the economy, and the GOP will start to think sensibly on how to restore it. At least, that's my hope...

Of course, what I'd prefer is that the economy picks up and Obama gets re-elected. However, with austerity depressing demand and all those State and local government workers getting laid off, that is creating a drag on the economy and pushing unemployment rates up.

Top TPer Michelle Bachmann wants to raise taxes on the Working Poor.

Somebody tell me why I should not think of these TPers as evil scumbags.

Originally Posted by Odin

Top TPer Michelle Bachmann wants to raise taxes on the Working Poor.

Somebody tell me why I should not think of these TPers as evil scumbags.

Michelle Bachmann is, above all else, cruel and crazy.

Craziness creates absurd policies. Cruelty is the font of evil.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Michelle Bachmann is, above all else, cruel and crazy.

Craziness creates absurd policies. Cruelty is the font of evil.

I don't have much of an opinion for or against Michelle Bachmann except that in general I lean away from people who become lightning rods, but before you and Odin start with the demonization routine, at least take the time to read her bio. She has accomplished more than most in her life. Obviously, you have strong differences of opinion with her, but calling her cruel just doesn't fit the facts.

James50

Originally Posted by James50

Its not my party. If your definition of sane is that they should agree with the current policies, then no conceivable Republican is sane.

But look at the list of announced candidates. Care to tell me which ones you think are sane? I am sure you realize how condescending you sound. I assume you do not mean insane as in psychotic. What someone from your background and beliefs usually means is that they think the person plays loose with the facts, ignores important facts, or focuses too much on divisive social issues. But don't take my definition - give me yours.

James50

Sorry, James, I only just saw this most interesting post.

I checked your site. I did not realize the Republican Party had so many obscure declared candidates, and on the other hand, the site's list of possible Republican candidates includes a lot of people who will never get into the race.

I suppose I should actually have said "politically sane," not just "sane," because I'm not suggesting that Pawlenty, Rick Perry, Michelle Bachman, Palin, and the rest are psychotic in the sense that they can't relate to other people. I think people who believe that we can have another big tax cut and balance the budget, or that we can convert Medicare to vouchers without seeing elderly people do without health care, or that Barack Obama is a socialist, or that Obamacare means death panels, or that Texas should consider seceding from the Union, are out of touch with political and economic reality, and thus insane. Mitt Romney showed he could respect reality as Governor of Massachusetts, but I don't know if he can be nominated. That was the point of my post.

Rick Perry has made it clear that he does not believe in separation of church and state and he is associated with the Texas movement to rewrite history books along more conservative lines, which does mean to me that he is out of touch with historical reality. Michelle Bachman and Sarah Palin have repeatedly shown a very doubtful grasp of historical reality.

I will admit, thinking about it, that what I was saying is this: whatever the merits of my case against the Tea Party and other conservative Republican movements (see above), what I was asking was whether the Republican Party can nominate some one with enough moderate appeal to beat Obama, and I am not at all sure that it can. But yes, to me, that is a some one whose presence in the White House would still at least allow me to feel that I lived in the US of A, and Bachman, Palin, Gingrich, or Pawlenty would not.

Originally Posted by James50

I don't have much of an opinion for or against Michelle Bachmann except that in general I lean away from people who become lightning rods, but before you and Odin start with the demonization routine, at least take the time to read her bio. She has accomplished more than most in her life. Obviously, you have strong differences of opinion with her, but calling her cruel just doesn't fit the facts.

James50

I know her bio, that doesn't make her any less of a vicious and cruel RW fundamentalist.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

If there is indeed a vast army of progressives who stayed home last November out of disappointment and allowed the Republicans to take over the House, then they don't deserve ever to have their views reflected in public policy. In 1968 I heard lots of my friends--the kind of people you idolize, Brian--explain they weren't voting because there was no difference between Nixon and Humphrey. They were wrong, and they helped usher in the Reupblican era. For the record, I am quite sure there is no such army, but if there is they should have had the brains to see the difference between the old Democratic majority and the new Republican one.

Well, if there is no such army, then Obama lost the 2008 election. It's really that simple. The words "enthusiasm gap" were all over the place in 2010, as you know very well. That's what happened in that year's election. The right-wing base of the GOP was all fired up, and the progressive voters were unenthused. But that they exist is shown by the fact that a progressive candidate for President could win, and win handily. Now if he had only governed the way he campaigned . . .

Now, about Nixon and Humphrey. Just as some people look back on Franklin Roosevelt through rose-colored glasses and see a wise, principled, progressive leader, when the real FDR was anything but, or on Herbert Hoover and see a right-wing mossback, when the real Hoover was anything but, so some look back on Richard Nixon and see a hard-line conservative. But the real President Nixon was anything but. Congressman Nixon was conservative, a red-baiting bastard. Vice-president Nixon was a moderate, toeing the Eisenhower line. President Nixon expanded the Great Society programs of his predecessor, signed the nation's first major environmental legislation, negotiated arms-control treaties with the Soviet Union, recognized China, got us out of Vietnam, used (ill-advised, but hardly right-wing) wage and price controls to combat the first appearance of "stagflation" when OPEC embargoed us, and generally governed from the left. It's really not clear to me that President Humphrey would have governed any differently. (President Robert Kennedy might have. I think he'd have beaten Nixon, too, especially with George Wallace in the race.) Nixon's failings during his presidency were personal and criminal, not failures of governance. And as for ushering in "the Republican era," there is no such thing. That's your personal nightmare and doesn't exist except in your own imagination. Nixon didn't even usher in the modern right-wing era within the GOP; it was Reagan, not Nixon, who was the first president from the "conservative" movement.

That said, I argued vehemently against staying home last year. That there was no significant difference between Nixon and Humphrey was quite arguable; that there is no difference between the Democrats and Republicans in Congress, as the parties are presently constituted, is absurd. But that wasn't being argued, in fact. What was being argued was that we needed to send a message to the Democrats that they can't take progressive voters for granted. I argued against that, too. I said, and still believe, that this would send a very different -- and false -- message, namely that people had changed their minds and turned against liberalism. Even you believe that, although you yourself presented the data last year that refutes it, and there is absolutely no evidence in support of it.

However, although I do think that was the wrong approach, the dominance of corporate toadies within the Democratic Party remains a problem that needs to be addressed somehow. It really was true, before the Republicans went off the deep end, that there wasn't a lot of difference between conservative Democrats and most Republicans, except on social issues. It's not true now because the GOP seems to have gone insane. They'll pay the price for that next year. But the problem will remain. And perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps the GOP victory last year will turn out to be a blessing in disguise. It has certainly led the Republicans to overreach and push for very unpopular actions, and has put issues of economic populism front and center in the political dialogue. I'm not at all sure a Democratic victory, or a more moderate defeat, last year would have had nearly the same impact. So maybe the boneheads who didn't vote last year were expressing a collective, intuitive wisdom that I didn't see at the time.

Originally Posted by wtrg8

The last true Conservative was Barry Goldwater, not Reagan. HW played him like a $2 fiddle and he almost got impeached because of it and his advisers actions. Better yet, JFK was a better Conservative model than the last 3 GOP President's (Reagan, Bush, Bush II).

I thought of Goldwater as the prototype for Nixon, Reagan and the unraveling conservatives rather than being part the pre New Deal champions of the Robber Barons. Along with William F. Buckley, he reinvented conservatism at a time they truly needed reinvention. I think they need reinvention again, but that's me. The progressives need reinvention too.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Well, if there is no such army [of progressives--DK], then Obama lost the 2008 election. It's really that simple. The words "enthusiasm gap" were all over the place in 2010, as you know very well. That's what happened in that year's election. The right-wing base of the GOP was all fired up, and the progressive voters were unenthused. But that they exist is shown by the fact that a progressive candidate for President could win, and win handily. Now if he had only governed the way he campaigned . . .

The question of why so many people voted for Obama is of course critical to understand the last two elections and the next one. Certainly they did not all belong to a progressive Army--they included our own James, and a good many younger folk inside the military who have spoken to me about it. A lot of them voted out of disgust with Bush or disgust with the state of the country. A lot of them voted for him on social issues. A lot of young people identified with him and were inspired by him. And a lot, like yours truly, expected him to be a great progressive President.

His task, as Brian indicates, in a way, was to convert this amorphous mass into an army of progressives. He couldn't do it. So Democratic votes fell off drastically in 2010. At the rate things are going, no one is going to vote for Barack Obama in 2012 because of disgust with Bush, because of disgust with the state of the country, or because he has inspired them, and he may win, but he sure as hell ain't going to get the percentage he got last time, much less the 60% that FDR got in 1936.

Thsi is from another thread--Republicans have been blaming Obama and the Democrats for the economic crisis since the minute he got into office. And they are continually getting more and more traction on it as the crisis continues.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

The question of why so many people voted for Obama is of course critical to understand the last two elections and the next one. Certainly they did not all belong to a progressive Army--they included our own James, and a good many younger folk inside the military who have spoken to me about it. A lot of them voted out of disgust with Bush or disgust with the state of the country. A lot of them voted for him on social issues. A lot of young people identified with him and were inspired by him. And a lot, like yours truly, expected him to be a great progressive President.

His task, as Brian indicates, in a way, was to convert this amorphous mass into an army of progressives. He couldn't do it. So Democratic votes fell off drastically in 2010. At the rate things are going, no one is going to vote for Barack Obama in 2012 because of disgust with Bush, because of disgust with the state of the country, or because he has inspired them, and he may win, but he sure as hell ain't going to get the percentage he got last time, much less the 60% that FDR got in 1936.

Thsi is from another thread--Republicans have been blaming Obama and the Democrats for the economic crisis since the minute he got into office. And they are continually getting more and more traction on it as the crisis continues.

I know Brian will disagree, but I just do not see how you can look at the last 20 years or the last 2 years and not come to the conclusion that the US is still basically a center-right country. If something catastrophic happens, that could change, but we always seem to come back to some version of center-right.

James50

This could be trouble -- big trouble. When the reality of assets is shaky, the assets that underpin the economy could vanish overnight. When it comes to the financial industry, TARP could have been good money chasing bad money -- very bad money. Democrats can't get the blame for this, but Dubya-era politicians can.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0..._n_875681.html

Levitin said the problem could "cloud title to nearly every property in the United States" and could lead to trillions of dollars in losses.

The six largest U.S. banks, including Bank of America, Goldman and Morgan, currently hold nearly $668 billion in so-called Tier 1 capital, cash banks are required to hold as a backstop against unforeseen losses, Federal Reserve data as of March 31 show. All six companies are defined as "well capitalized" by federal bank regulators.

Schneiderman's inquiry also raises questions about the speed the Obama administration and a coalition of state attorneys general and bank regulators are moving towards a settlement agreement to resolve claims of widespread foreclosure abuse.

The states' top cops and representatives of the Department of Justice, Federal Trade Commission, Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Treasury Department are pushing the nation's largest mortgage companies to pay about $20 billion in a deal to end the months-long probes into shoddy and possibly illegal practices employed by Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial.

While several investigations remain ongoing at the state and federal level, no agency has systematically examined loan-level documents to ensure the creation of mortgage securities complied with state laws or to examine the scope of sloppy paperwork in foreclosure proceedings, like the so-called "robo-signing" fiasco.

In its November report, the bailout watchdog said that the "robo-signing of affidavits served to cover up the fact that loan servicers cannot demonstrate the facts required to conduct a lawful foreclosure."

Well capitalized? Contract law trumps any illusion of capitalization. A lender that can't foreclose might not be able to collect on its portfolio, which means that it might as well claim ownership of the Moon as of much of its portfolio.

Bailey Building and Loan would have never made that mistake -- and couldn't have gotten away with it

Banking worked far better when it was a cottage industry. In the last 3T, a few banks became Too Big to Fail without bringing us all down irrespective of banker misconduct. Maybe in the coming 1T we will have banking cut down to size.

Here is the relevant thread that I have initiated, and it will be good for discussing the specifics.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Well, if there is no such army, then Obama lost the 2008 election. It's really that simple. The words "enthusiasm gap" were all over the place in 2010, as you know very well. That's what happened in that year's election. The right-wing base of the GOP was all fired up, and the progressive voters were unenthused. But that they exist is shown by the fact that a progressive candidate for President could win, and win handily. Now if he had only governed the way he campaigned . . .

Now, about Nixon and Humphrey. Just as some people look back on Franklin Roosevelt through rose-colored glasses and see a wise, principled, progressive leader, when the real FDR was anything but, or on Herbert Hoover and see a right-wing mossback, when the real Hoover was anything but, so some look back on Richard Nixon and see a hard-line conservative. But the real President Nixon was anything but. Congressman Nixon was conservative, a red-baiting bastard. Vice-president Nixon was a moderate, toeing the Eisenhower line. President Nixon expanded the Great Society programs of his predecessor, signed the nation's first major environmental legislation, negotiated arms-control treaties with the Soviet Union, recognized China, got us out of Vietnam, used (ill-advised, but hardly right-wing) wage and price controls to combat the first appearance of "stagflation" when OPEC embargoed us, and generally governed from the left. It's really not clear to me that President Humphrey would have governed any differently. (President Robert Kennedy might have. I think he'd have beaten Nixon, too, especially with George Wallace in the race.) Nixon's failings during his presidency were personal and criminal, not failures of governance. And as for ushering in "the Republican era," there is no such thing. That's your personal nightmare and doesn't exist except in your own imagination. Nixon didn't even usher in the modern right-wing era within the GOP; it was Reagan, not Nixon, who was the first president from the "conservative" movement.

That said, I argued vehemently against staying home last year. That there was no significant difference between Nixon and Humphrey was quite arguable; that there is no difference between the Democrats and Republicans in Congress, as the parties are presently constituted, is absurd. But that wasn't being argued, in fact. What was being argued was that we needed to send a message to the Democrats that they can't take progressive voters for granted. I argued against that, too. I said, and still believe, that this would send a very different -- and false -- message, namely that people had changed their minds and turned against liberalism. Even you believe that, although you yourself presented the data last year that refutes it, and there is absolutely no evidence in support of it.

However, although I do think that was the wrong approach, the dominance of corporate toadies within the Democratic Party remains a problem that needs to be addressed somehow. It really was true, before the Republicans went off the deep end, that there wasn't a lot of difference between conservative Democrats and most Republicans, except on social issues. It's not true now because the GOP seems to have gone insane. They'll pay the price for that next year. But the problem will remain. And perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps the GOP victory last year will turn out to be a blessing in disguise. It has certainly led the Republicans to overreach and push for very unpopular actions, and has put issues of economic populism front and center in the political dialogue. I'm not at all sure a Democratic victory, or a more moderate defeat, last year would have had nearly the same impact. So maybe the boneheads who didn't vote last year were expressing a collective, intuitive wisdom that I didn't see at the time.

We also need to take into consideration how Obama was marketed and branded as a progressive. He had some really big names holding him up as the savior. Oprah with her cult of followers was one of them. Then there were the black leaders who campaigned for him, who have since called Obama on his broken promises.

I had progressive friends at the time during the 2008 campaign season sending me evidence that he wasn't what he was being touted as. And of course, as it turned out, he wasn't the progressive that I had hoped he would be. In fact, far from it.

Perhaps his being elected was more about the brillant marketing and stollard campaigning than the man himself.Because the advisors that he surrounded himself with and his economic and foriegn policy decisions told more of the real story. And people were, and still are, watching his center-right positions play out day by day.

Originally Posted by James50

I don't have much of an opinion for or against Michelle Bachmann except that in general I lean away from people who become lightning rods, but before you and Odin start with the demonization routine, at least take the time to read her bio. She has accomplished more than most in her life. Obviously, you have strong differences of opinion with her, but calling her cruel just doesn't fit the facts.

James50

Yes, and there were high achievers -- like Maxim Gorky in literature, Arno Breker in sculpture, and Guglielmo Marconi in technology -- who stood fully behind thug ideologies. That is before I discuss zaibatsu in Japan. If recent experience hasn't effectively warned America of the dangers of politics of the lunatic fringe, then what will? The success of lunatic-fringe politics?

Don't be fooled: Michelle Bachmann stands for a thug ideology, one capable of a destructive purge.

As shown in Germany, Italy, Japan, and Russia, lunatic-fringe politics bring national ruin. In our case, the consequences would be all the more painful because we have so much more to lose. This time, lunatic-fringe ideology could bring the hydrogen bomb instead of the comparative pipsqueak nukes that brought so much death and damage Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We are 4T. The lightning rod this time would come from an ICBM instead of from some pilot-directed bomber.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

This could be trouble -- big trouble. When the reality of assets is shaky, the assets that underpin the economy could vanish overnight. When it comes to the financial industry, TARP could have been good money chasing bad money -- very bad money. Democrats can't get the blame for this, but Dubya-era politicians can...

-Uh, more Donkeys voted for TARP than Elephants. Sheesh.

The next election will be determined by the economy. And the way it's looking, bailing out those "Too big to fail" banks and lack of jobs may prove to be the final nail in Obama's campaign. As proven in the past, trickle down economics doesn't work.

Then there is that major fly in the ointment, unemployment. But then corporations love that unemployment is high because they can get more work out of their existing employees by holding their job sword over their head.

It really is that simple. High unemployment creates a downward pressure on wages, allowing employers to work the remaining employees harder and thus to increase profits. This dynamic, combined with the above commodity speculation, has been the entire basis for the corporate recovery, while working people have literally seen nothing beneficial.

The Rich Are Destroying the Economy And both parties are letting them.

by Shamus Cooke

Ever since the Great Recession shook the foundations of the U.S. economy, President Obama has been promising recovery. Evidence of this recovery, we were told, was manifested in the massive post-bailout profits corporations made. Soon enough, the President assured us, these corporations would tire of hoarding mountains of cash and start a hiring bonanza, followed by raising wages and benefits. It was either wishful thinking or conscious deception. The recent stock market meltdown has squashed any hope of a corporate-led recovery.

The Democrats fought the recession by the same methods the Republicans used to create it: allowing the super rich to recklessly dominate the economy while giving them massive handouts. This strategy, commonly referred to as Reaganomics or Trickle Down Economics, is now religion to both Democrats and Republicans; never mind the staged in-fighting for the gullible or complicit media.

When it becomes obvious to even the President that the economic recovery never existed beyond the bank accounts of the rich, questions will have to be answered. Why, for example, did nobody in either political party foresee the disastrous consequences of the bailouts? Not only did the U.S. deficit drastically increase but the same U.S. corporations that caused the recession were given reinforcement for their destructive actions, ensuring that it would continue unabated.

In his book, Crisis Economics, Nouriel Roubini outlines the insane response to the recession by Republicans and Democrats. Because both parties simply threw money at the banks and hedge funds instead of punishing them, a condition of "moral hazard" was created, meaning, that banks would assume another bailout would come their way if they destroyed the economy again -- too big too fail, remember? Roubini explains how the Democrats allowed the "too big" banks to get even bigger; how Wall Street salaries based on short-term profits went unregulated; how the regulations that were put into place were inadequate and filled with loopholes; how nothing of any significance changed.

Roubini has also written extensively about how the post-bailout Federal Reserve policies were fueling a commodity bubble that may be in the midst of bursting, possibly triggering a double dip recession. Essentially the big banks and rich investors were borrowing cheap dollars from the Fed and investing abroad in commodities with the hopes of higher returns. Roubini states:

“The risk is that we are planting the seeds of the next financial crisis...this asset bubble is totally inconsistent with a weaker recovery of economic and financial fundamentals." (October 27, 2009).

This investor-created commodity bubble pushed up prices in oil, food, and other basic products, causing further pain for working families and the economy as a whole. This speculative bubble was easily predictable but ignored by both political parties, since they claimed the bubble was a sign of recovery.

Another mainstream economist, Paul Krugman, also admits that the rich's death-grip on the U.S. political and economic system is causing pain for everybody else:

"Far from being ready to spend more on job creation, both parties agree that it's time to slash spending - destroying jobs in the process - with the only difference being one of degree...policy makers are catering almost exclusively to the interests of rentiers [rich investors] - those who derive lots of income from assets, who lent large sums of money in the past, often unwisely, but are now being protected from loss at everyone else's expense." (June 10, 2011)

Krugman explains that this process continues because the rich dominate the political system through campaign contributions, "access to policy makers,” promises of high paying corporate jobs after their congressional term is over, and good o'l fashion corruption.

Krugman's repeated calls to Democrats and Republicans to create jobs have fallen on deaf ears. Both parties agree that the "private sector" [corporations] should create jobs; until they decide to hire, nothing will happen. This is not merely "bad policy,” as liberals like Krugman like to fret about, but the conscious agenda of the rich. Corporations and rich investors love high unemployment. The Kansas City Star explains why:

"Last year [2010], for the second year in a row, U.S. companies got more work out of their employees while spending less on overall labor costs." (February 3, 2011)

I just hope that all of this disgust for our two major political parties doesn't end in a Libertarin win in 2012. Talk about cutting your nose off in spite of your face.

More: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/06/12-1

Originally Posted by Deb C

...And the way it's looking, bailing out those "Too big to fail" banks and lack of jobs may prove to be the final nail in Obama's campaign. As proven in the past, trickle down economics doesn't work...

-Proping up failed banks is dirigiste. It is not "trickle down", and it is certainly not free market.

Short term ( i.e, 2012 elections) factors:

1. It was only a few weeks ago that everyone saw Obama nearly unbeatable - post Osama bin Laden and economic measures pointing generally upward. The key shift was the May 9.1% unemployment rate and only 54K jobs added -



In the coming months, the jobs added should return to trend and the unemployment rate will not only drop but will kick off a 'serious person' dialogue that it may be remaining stubbornly high because more people are increasingly encouraged to seek employment (i.e. the denominator is getting bigger) and that is a good thing.

Out of this will come a dialogue that the GOP were acting like Chicken Little for political advantage. As the economy waxes and wanes between now and Nov. 2012, their message exhibited this June will have less and less potency and increasingly be seen, when trotted out for the latest dip, for what it is - shrill and unhelpful momentary political opportunism.

2. The other big reason for the shift in Obama's standing is that the mass media needs a story to sell with what looks likely to be a very boring GOP field once Palin (pre-Iowa) and Bachman (post-NH) drop out. The clear frontrunner, by far, has several fatal political flaws. Most of the focus on Romney's flaws has been on his origination of Obamacare as governor in MA and his Northeast corporatist elitism which together will at the very least likely prove unenthusiastic motivation to the TP people if not eventually split the GOP. Much less discussed, due to its sensitivity, is Romney's Mormonism which like in 2008 will be his undoing ("The Mormons believe in what???!!!"). The problem for the GOP is that any serious challenger to Romney does not currently have anywhere near the money or the field operations as Mitt, and time to attempt to catch up is now rapidly eroding. A late entry by Perry or even a Hucklebee will greatly increase the chances of splitting the GOP with a possible third party formally forming.

3. Obama and his political machine, which as evident in 2008 is formidable, have not yet engaged to any significant extent - they don't need to, but their absence from the field makes the opposition seem much grander than in actuality. Once engaged, the question of "giving the keys back to the people who drove us into the ditch" will emerge again. As indicated in this graph, job growth has actually been more substantial in Obama's recovery from the very very deep hole of the GOP-led Great Recession than the recovery from the earlier recession of 2000-



4. The notion of no President since FDR winning with an unemployment rate above 7.2% has been questioned by Nate Sliver -

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes...d-re-election/

- the 7.2% being the rate in '84 when Ray-gun won a second term. The leaving out of FDR also is everything but 4T-thinking which should make people at least on this forum give pause. And, again, the rate will likely be returning to its downward trend - for the election, the trend is likely more important than the absolute number.

5. A disproportionate number of the unemployed are black, Hispanic, and poor. It is very y unlikely that this group will switch to the GOP. At worst, they may be less enthusiastic voters, but that demographic is, unfortunately, typically characteristic regardless of the economy.

6. The GOP can't help but offer solutions that will look increasingly out of touch with a majority of American voters. Already Ryan's fiasco with Medicare has hit them hard. Another group of House GOP are trying to take on Social Security. The GOP in Congress and the candidates are talking the same old voodoo of tax cuts providing jobs and magic ponies at a time when taxes are lower than in the last 60 years and corporate profits are back at astronomical levels. Wall Street bonuses will again be extreme at the end of this year and likely remembered at the polls eleven months later. The election will become a vote of the top 5% incomes versus the rest of the country with the exception of the TP people and fundamentalist who will mostly stay home out of disgust for Romney.

7. A broader disgust for the GOP will be prevalent in several key states due to GOP governors, particularly Florida, Wisconsin, Ohio and increasingly likely New Jersey, having made the GOP brand toxic. Due to legal limitations, the momentum building to disgorge these governors as well as state legislators through recalls will not be satisfied and will come to a head against the GOP presidential candidate in 2012.

8. The GOP not being able to help itself may also take the country over the cliff and their primary role in doing so will be much more clearly evident than even the Bush years – either in the July/August debt ceiling mash-up or the 2012 budget. They are either hell-bent on repeating the Ryan tactical error (going against the 40-year GOP strategy of borrow-and-spend and actually making clear the pain of their tax cuts) more broadly or we have truly reached the end of the line for further magic ponies, or likely both. Either way, they (and the country) are at great risk in their further pursuit of fantasyland.

Conclusion for the Short Term - There are many other factors that will likely greatly favor the Dems in 2012. With the above alone, my early prediction is the electoral map looks much like the 2008 map with the possibility of AZ and MT going blue and VA or NC, but not both, going Red.



Also, the Dems will re-take the House but the GOP will eek out a bare majority in the Senate (which doesn't mean much).

Also, more a hope than a prediction, in his second term, Obama will be free to be much more progressive with the Dem-House backing him up. They will take it to the obstructionist Rep-Senate with major implications for the mid-term elections in 2014.

Longer-term factors: Demographics (more progressive voters than conservative), economic (greater and greater disparity in incomes), and automation (a growing percent of the population without earned incomes)

Edit - an additional factor will be increasing greater attempts from the Right at voter suppression. Initially viewed as a counter or at least a stalling factor to the changing demgraphics, but eventually, the backlash from it will accelerate their demise. Covered well here -
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/0...k-on-Americans

Longer-term conclusion: This 4T is both a long way from being over and the degree of change to come not yet comprehended by nearly anyone.

Very interesting post by Playwrite above. I am not quite so sanguine as he; for one, I certainly won't be surprised to see Florida go red, and I think most of the Great Lakes states will be in play. And while his graphs were interesting, they did not include the simple unemployment rate. Sorry that I don't have one handy--I'm sure some one does.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

Very interesting post by Playwrite above. I am not quite so sanguine as he; for one, I certainly won't be surprised to see Florida go red, and I think most of the Great Lakes states will be in play. And while his graphs were interesting, they did not include the simple unemployment rate. Sorry that I don't have one handy--I'm sure some one does.

Your wish, my command -



Here's the latest i could find so far for 2011. I'll see if I can come up with one that has May's 9.1% -

Many thanks. Sorry to be so picky but do you know what it was on 1/20/09?

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

Many thanks. Sorry to be so picky but do you know what it was on 1/20/09?

National unemployment statistics are released on the first Friday of every month for the month previous. Unemployment rate for January 2009 released on February 6, 2009 was 7.6%.

Or to anticipate your next question, here are numbers for the prior year:

2008
Jan 4.9
Feb 4.8
Mar 5.1
Apr 5.0
May 5.5
Jun 5.6
Jul 5.8
Aug 6.2
Sep 6.2
Oct 6.6
Nov 6.8
Dec 7.2
2009
Jan 7.6

James50

Nothing like kicking off the 2012 campaign with the advice from the wolves on Wall Street.

Obama Seeks to Win Back Wall St. Cash

By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE

Published: June 12, 2011
The guests were asked for their thoughts on how to speed the economic recovery, then the president opened the floor for over an hour on hot issues like hedge fund regulation and the deficit.

The event, organized by the Democratic National Committee, kicked off an aggressive push by Mr. Obama to win back the allegiance of one of his most vital sources of campaign cash — in part by trying to convince Wall Street that his policies, far from undercutting the investor class, have helped bring banks and financial markets..........

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0....html#comments

Edit for my most recent post:

Here's the link to the New York Times piece on Obama meeting with Wall Street execs. prior to campaign kickoff.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/13/us...onor.html?_r=1

Originally Posted by playwrite

Short term ( i.e, 2012 elections) factors:

1. It was only a few weeks ago that everyone saw Obama nearly unbeatable - post Osama bin Laden and economic measures pointing generally upward. The key shift was the May 9.1% unemployment rate and only 54K jobs added -



In the coming months, the jobs added should return to trend and the unemployment rate will not only drop but will kick off a 'serious person' dialogue that it may be remaining stubbornly high because more people are increasingly encouraged to seek employment (i.e. the denominator is getting bigger) and that is a good thing.

Out of this will come a dialogue that the GOP were acting like Chicken Little for political advantage. As the economy waxes and wanes between now and Nov. 2012, their message exhibited this June will have less and less potency and increasingly be seen, when trotted out for the latest dip, for what it is - shrill and unhelpful momentary political opportunism.

The Republicans think short-term (3T) when long-term solutions are appropriate. Speculative activities that failed as the 3T became a 4T can't be revived. It's not enough to tell people to "go shopping" when they are scared of losing their jobs.

Dividing the economy into fiefdoms for trusts and cartels, which might be great for concentrating wealth and power without creating wealth, will fail catastrophically. But such is what the GOP stands for.

2. The other big reason for the shift in Obama's standing is that the mass media needs a story to sell with what looks likely to be a very boring GOP field once Palin (pre-Iowa) and Bachman (post-NH) drop out. The clear frontrunner, by far, has several fatal political flaws. Most of the focus on Romney's flaws has been on his origination of Obamacare as governor in MA and his Northeast corporatist elitism which together will at the very least likely prove unenthusiastic motivation to the TP people if not eventually split the GOP. Much less discussed, due to its sensitivity, is Romney's Mormonism which like in 2008 will be his undoing ("The Mormons believe in what???!!!"). The problem for the GOP is that any serious challenger to Romney does not currently have anywhere near the money or the field operations as Mitt, and time to attempt to catch up is now rapidly eroding. A late entry by Perry or even a Hucklebee will greatly increase the chances of splitting the GOP with a possible third party formally forming.

President Obama is still a d@mnyankee cultural, if not economic elitist. That ensured that he could not win any of the states of the Upper South (Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia) that Bill Clinton won twice and that Barack Obama lost by huge margins. But that said, Romney is not going to excite the racists, the religious fundamentalists, the gun-fetishists, and the anti-contraception extremists. Any Republican nominee has to triangulate to win those votes if not already an extremist. Mitt Romney would have to flip-flop often, and he could easily end up in the position of John Kerry in 2004 as the Democratic National Convention issues some cheap flip-flop shoes while discussing how one can't know which Mitt Romney the Republicans are going for.

So here we go -- President Obama can win as the "steady hand" candidate. Sure, he has made compromises to get what he wants. But when there is no possible compromise, how does he win? By speaking directly to the public and going over the Republican party.

3. Obama and his political machine, which as evident in 2008 is formidable, have not yet engaged to any significant extent - they don't need to, but their absence from the field makes the opposition seem much grander than in actuality. Once engaged, the question of "giving the keys back to the people who drove us into the ditch" will emerge again. As indicated in this graph, job growth has actually been more substantial in Obama's recovery from the very very deep hole of the GOP-led Great Recession than the recovery from the earlier recession of 2000-

This was one formidable machine, and it can be more flexible. So far the President has shown little vanity. He will allow his campaign machine to aid in Senatorial and Congressional races. He may be interested more in winning an open Senate seat in Texas than in winning the state's electoral votes. But remember that the Ryan plan to privatize Medicare is potential trouble for Republicans in all parts of the US.

4. The notion of no President since FDR winning with an unemployment rate above 7.2% has been questioned by Nate Sliver -

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes...d-re-election/

- the 7.2% being the rate in '84 when Ray-gun won a second term. The leaving out of FDR also is everything but 4T-thinking which should make people at least on this forum give pause. And, again, the rate will likely be returning to its downward trend - for the election, the trend is likely more important than the absolute number.

"Headed the right way" matters when the unemployment rate is high. Nate Silver does not ordinarily discuss generational theory except with respect to generational trends. But this said, these times are more like the 1930s than like the 1980s in political dynamics. Young Civic generations are much more likely to support the politicians and Parties that show support for collectivistic solutions to big problems than to retreat to Reactive-style, atomized solutions. Generation X lowered its expectations and took the cast-off jobs and even made careers of them.

I look at the solutions of the 1930s -- retire the marginal elderly workers so that younger workers with families can get job, give young male breadwinners priority in hiring while sending marginal female workers back home (children, church, and kitchen... Silent kids at least got attention that Thirteenth latchkey kids didn't get but could have used). Such would appall many feminists, but the fervent feminists who often have well-paying professional jobs will keep theirs. The women who have those jobs will get increasingly old and out of child-bearing age, and they rarely had large broods of children anyway.

I can think of some solutions -- like paying people to learn the humanizing culture that they didn't get because they didn't go to college, or because they went to college and got a watered-down grad school experience instead of the liberal-arts schooling normal before the 1960s. I can think of worse ways to fill spare time than to enrich one's soul. Heck, maybe people might get paid to learn differential equations.

5. A disproportionate number of the unemployed are black, Hispanic, and poor. It is very unlikely that this group will switch to the GOP. At worst, they may be less enthusiastic voters, but that demographic is, unfortunately, typically characteristic regardless of the economy.

But poor white people were heavily GOP in 2008! Will struggling white people show resentment toward minorities who seem to be doing better than they? There are more struggling white people in 2011 than in 2008.

6. The GOP can't help but offer solutions that will look increasingly out of touch with a majority of American voters. Already Ryan's fiasco with Medicare has hit them hard. Another group of House GOP are trying to take on Social Security. The GOP in Congress and the candidates are talking the same old voodoo of tax cuts providing jobs and magic ponies at a time when taxes are lower than in the last 60 years and corporate profits are back at astronomical levels. Wall Street bonuses will again be extreme at the end of this year and likely remembered at the polls eleven months later. The election will become a vote of the top 5% incomes versus the rest of the country with the exception of the TP people and fundamentalist who will mostly stay home out of disgust for Romney

.

Same old voodoo? It is even worse than what Ronald Reagan peddled!

This is the simplest reality about economics; in the wake of vastly-enhanced productivity and economic efficiencies in distribution, Americans do not need to do as much work to meet their most basic needs. Such greatly reduces the need for raw labor -- and now even sophisticated labor. The market has been driving wages down and pressuring people to do more work just to survive. This is an unstable scenario. The solution of the 1930s, in the wake of manufacturing efficiencies that resulted from the introduction of electrical power to factories that allowed the speed-up of assembly lines, was the establishment of the 40-hour workweek from the earlier norms of 50 to 60. Will the appropriate norm be 32, 30, or 28 hours? We need longer pay and shorter hours so that we can adjust to the era of information technology. The old saying, "The shorter the hours, the higher the pay" likely still applies.

7. A broader disgust for the GOP will be prevalent in several key states due to GOP governors, particularly Florida, Wisconsin, Ohio and increasingly likely New Jersey, having made the GOP brand toxic. Due to legal limitations, the momentum building to disgorge these governors as well as state legislators through recalls will not be satisfied and will come to a head against the GOP presidential candidate in 2012.

Add Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. Governors whose idea of good government is to bleed the wealth of their states on behalf of out-of state interests or crony-capitalist "privatizers" didn't run on such a toxic agenda. Bait-and-switch is as bad politics as it is bad business.

8. The GOP not being able to help itself may also take the country over the cliff and their primary role in doing so will be much more clearly evident than even the Bush years – either in the July/August debt ceiling mash-up or the 2012 budget. They are either hell-bent on repeating the Ryan tactical error (going against the 40-year GOP strategy of borrow-and-spend and actually making clear the pain of their tax cuts) more broadly or we have truly reached the end of the line for further magic ponies, or likely both. Either way, they (and the country) are at great risk in their further pursuit of fantasyland.

Reality can bite -- hard. The Ryan bungle can take away from the Republicans some of the demographic groups that used to be reliably Democratic but have seemed reliably Republican in recent years (most significantly, poor white people). That could prove a disaster for the Republicans with Democrats (often conservatives) supplanting the semi-fascists that now represent some districts in the South.

Barack Obama is already above-average in achievements for four years -- and he is yet to reach the third year of his first term. Culpability for non-achievement in the House goes squarely to the Republican Party majority that has mostly passed legislation that dies in the Senate.

Edit - an additional factor will be increasing greater attempts from the Right at voter suppression. Initially viewed as a counter or at least a stalling factor to the changing demographics, but eventually, the backlash from it will accelerate their demise. Covered well here -

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/0...k-on-Americans

Longer-term conclusion: This 4T is both a long way from being over and the degree of change to come not yet comprehended by nearly anyone.

The ideal for the Hard Right would be an electorate controlled by employers or so culled that only a small group of rich people get to vote. Maybe the Ryan plan to privatize Medicare will have some surprising results in areas that Republicans think safe.

The last 4T was the prime time for European fascist movements that took advantage of economic distress only to create new and unforeseen distress and danger to those that they gave the shaft. Wild change and outright horror unthinkable in any time other than a 4T is possible in a 4T. Think of how badly the last 4T could have gone if the powerful KKK of the 1920s had been able to exploit the economic distress of the early 1930s and impose its hate-laden agenda. No, don't!

Originally Posted by Deb C

Edit for my most recent post:

Here's the link to the New York Times piece on Obama meeting with Wall Street execs. prior to campaign kickoff.

Maybe even they recognize what a disaster the GOP is. Nobody wants a replay of the Great Depression.