“Is That A Rhetorical Question?”: The Obvious Answer To The “Better Off” Question
Much of the Sunday shows were dominated by a simple question: asking Democrats whether Americans are better off than they were four years ago. Dems inexplicably seemed to be caught off guard by the question, and struggled with the answer. Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) even felt compelled to clarify his “no” answer from yesterday.
This morning, Democrats tried to get back on message.
With a definitive “absolutely,” Obama campaign spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said the country was moving in the right direction by pointing to job growth and the auto industry.
“By any measure the country has moved forward over the last four years,” she said on NBC’s Today. “It might not be as fast as people hoped. The president agrees with that. He knows we need to do more. That’s what this week is about, laying out a road map of how we can continue this progress, how we can continue moving the country forward.” […]
This attack was echoed by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the Democratic National Convention chairman…. “[T]he answer is yes, we are better off. But we’ve got to keep on working harder.”
While Dems struggled with this yesterday, I think they may be missing the importance of this opportunity. If Republicans and many in the media are going to be focused on the “are you better off” question, it’s a chance for Democrats to remind the public of something much of the country has forgotten — just how cataclysmically terrible things were before.
Indeed, I’m at a loss to explain how this is even a debate. Whether you love the president or hate him is irrelevant — four years ago the economy was shrinking, now it’s growing; four years ago the nation was hemorrhaging jobs, now it’s adding jobs. The auto industry, the stock market, American manufacturing, the deficit — they’re all better now than when Obama took office.
Put it this way: Mitt Romney thinks the American economy has improved under Obama.
Consider this gem.
In his remarks [Friday], Romney also acknowledged the economy was getting better — something he has said before….
“And [President Obama]’s going to say the economy is getting better,” Romney said. “Thank heavens it’s getting better. It’s getting better not because of him, it’s in spite of him and what he’s done.”
Notice, in this quote from earlier in the year, Romney said twice in three sentences that he believes the economy is “getting better.”
Or how about this stunning exchange between Romney and conservative radio host Laura Ingraham:
INGRAHAM: You’ve also noted that there are signs of improvement on the horizon in the economy. How do you answer the president’s argument that the economy is getting better in a general election campaign if you yourself are saying it’s getting better?
ROMNEY: Well, of course, it’s getting better. The economy always gets better after a recession. There is always a recovery.
INGRAHAM: Isn’t that a hard argument to make, if you’re saying, like, OK, he inherited this recession, and he took a bunch of steps and tried to turn the economy around. And now, we’re seeing more jobs, but vote against him anyway? Isn’t that a hard argument to make? Is that a stark enough contrast?
ROMNEY: Have you got a better one, Laura? This happens to be the truth.
If the president’s critics want to argue that conditions haven’t improved enough, fine. If they want to argue that conditions have improved, but Obama shouldn’t get credit, fine. If they want to say conditions would be even better if we’d tried a different course, we can at least have the debate.
But to say a growing economy that’s adding jobs is worse than a shrinking economy that’s losing jobs is demonstrably ridiculous. Is the country better off than it was in the midst of a global crash four years ago? Is that a rhetorical question?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, September 3, 2012
“His Party Is The Problem”: Romney’s Loyal Opposition Insurgent Cast Members
Who knew that Mitt Romney was such a fan of Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign?
“How many days have you woken up feeling that something really special was happening in America?” Romney told thousands of Republican delegates, alternates and hangers-on Thursday night. “Many of you felt that way on Election Day four years ago. Hope and Change had a powerful appeal.”
Speaking of the “fresh excitement about the possibilities of a new president” Americans felt upon Obama’s election, the man who will now seek to prevent the Democratic president’s re-election told the fortieth Republican National Convention about how much he had hoped Obama would succeed “because I wanted America to succeed.”
But it wasn’t just that citizens wanted America to succeed. As Romney noted: “Every family in America wanted this to be a time when they could get ahead a little more, put aside a little more for college, do more for their elderly mom who’s living alone now or give a little more to their church or charity.… This was the hope and change America voted for.”
In this, Romney was right.
When Americans went to the polls in 2008, the clear majority voted for Barack Obama because they wanted a president who would address the economic missteps and misdeeds that had caused a stock market meltdown on the eve of the election—handing the new president what even one of his harshest critics, Republican vice president nominee Paul Ryan, admitted in his Wednesday night acceptance speech was “a crisis.”
The response to that crisis, Americans hoped, would do more than just bring a measure of stability to the markets. They hoped that it would bring a measure of prosperity to them and to their communities.
Unfortunately, Obama and his party did not have partners in addressing the crisis.
While Romney says he wanted Obama to succeed, Rush Limbaugh said before the new president was inaugurated in January, 2009, “I hope Obama fails.” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said on behalf of the president’s legislative partners: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”
Paul Ryan saw to it: rallying opposition to a stimulus that was designed to jumpstart the economy, opposing healthcare reforms that mirrored those Romney implemented as the governor of Massachusetts, and refusing even the most minimal compromises as the nation’s credit rating was threatened during a absurd fight over whether to raise borrowing limits that Democratic and Republican presidents had raised in the past.
Even in the rare instances where Obama put the needs of the nation—and the moment—above politics, other members of “the loyal opposition” merely opposed. One of them even argued against providing the support that was needed to preserve the American auto industry, writing an article that declared: “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.”
Who was that guy?
Oh, right, Mitt Romney.
Much was made of the web of deception that Paul Ryan wove with his acceptance speech on Wednesday night. But Romney actually tried to one-up his running mate.
The man who stood before the convention of his party and declared that he wanted Barack Obama to succeed campaigned against Obama’s election in 2008—attacking the Democratic nominee and his supporters for proposing “timid, liberal empty gestures.”
Throughout Obama’s first term, Romney was a steady critic—not just of auto bailouts but of virtually all of the policies of the new administration. He never demanded, as Wendell Willkie did after the 1940 elections, that Republicans recognize the necessity of working with a Democratic president. Like Ryan, Romney abandoned the traditional “one nation” Republicanism of Dwight Eisenhower and a former Michigan governor named George Romney, which argued that Republicans could and should work with Democrats, especially in tough times.
On a night that was all about telling Mitt Romney’s story, with reflections on his humane service with his church, on his not so humane service with Bain Capital and of his moderate Republican service as governor of Massachusetts (well, except for the Romneycare part), Romney and his enthusiasts had plenty to say about Obama’s failings. Even in speeches that were ostensibly about Romney’s business acumen, there were sharp, at times unrelenting “they just don’t get it” attacks on the president.
Then, Romney went for the jugular with lines like: “President Obama promised to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family.”
Applause.
“To the majority of Americans who now believe that the future will not be better than the past,” he told the crowd, ‘I can guarantee you this: if Barack Obama is re-elected, you will be right.’”
Thunderous applause.
That just does not sound like a guy who wanted Barack Obama to succeed.
It sounds more like a guy who formed part of a partisan opposition that did everything in its power to make Obama “a one-term president.”
Three years into the first Obama term, veteran Washington watchers Thomas Mann (who works for a think tank packed with former Republican White House aides) and Norman Ornstein (who works for Dick Cheney’s old think tank) wrote an article titled “Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.”
“We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party,” observed Mann and Ornstein.
“The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition,” they continued. “When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.”
The Republican Party of Teddy Roosevelt and Wendell Willkie, of Dwight Eisenhower and George Romney, of Gerald Ford and, yes, of Ronald Reagan, never moved so far from the mainstream that it would not cooperate and compromise when it came time to do right by America.
But the party that Mitt Romney now leads moved so far that it was, indeed, “nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.”
They did not achieve Limbaugh’s dream of forcing an Obama failure. But they made the president’s tenure dramatically harder, and the prospect for renewal dramatically more difficult to achieve. And, now, Mitt Romney says: “Today the time has come for us to put the disappointments of the last four years behind us. To put aside the divisiveness and the recriminations. To forget about what might have been and to look ahead to what can be.”
Or, it could be a time to consider the successes that might have been if the party that has nominated Mitt Romney for president and Paul Ryan for vice president was not “an insurgent outlier in American politics [that was] ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science.”
“You might have asked yourself over these last years whether this is the America we want,” Romney said in his acceptance speech.
Yes, Americans might have asked just that.
By: John Nichols, The Nation, August 30, 2012
It May Not Be “The Economy Stupid”: Americans Just Might Favor Social Issues Over Their Pocketbooks
It’s one of the oldest adages in American politics—when all is said and done, Americans vote their pocketbooks rather than their principles.
But is it true?
Both Democrats and Republicans seem to think so.
Indeed, accepting this bit of established political wisdom has long led progressives to argue that millions of middle-class, working Americans, who support Republican candidates and policies, do so in contravention of what is in their own interests. The argument, for the most part, rests in the belief that the “trickle down” approach favored by conservatives—a theory suggesting that when those at the top of the chain are doing well, jobs and money trickle down to the middle and lower class workers—has never really proven to be beneficial to anyone but the wealthy and comes at the expense of the many who, nevertheless, continue to vote for those who would continue the policy.
A true conservative, of course, would argue that such cynicism is vastly misplaced and that a vibrant economy can only happen when those at the top are flourishing—allowing the job creators the confidence and financial wherewithal to grow their businesses and, in the process, create the jobs necessary to allow good fortune to trickle down to the working classes.
Conventional wisdom would suggest that our presidential election, once again, is putting these conflicting belief systems to the test as, in the red corner— standing up for the notion that tax cuts for the wealthiest are the best way to drive the economy forward—is the GOP challenger, Governor Mitt Romney while, in the other corner, representing those who believe that more tax cuts for the wealthy will only result in the rich getting richer at the expense of everyone else, is the blue squad, led by our returning champion, President Barack Obama.
But is this really what this election is all about? Are Americansactually preparing to vote for the candidate who represents the side that appears most likely to put more money in their respective pockets or are there other, more important, factors at work as we get ready to make our choices in November?
It turns out, conventional wisdom might just have this all wrong.
A new website called Politify—claiming to be non-partisan and which garnered some national attention during the primary season— has employed tax information provided by the Internal Revenue Service along with data from the U.S. Census Bureau to create an interesting way to determine whether you and your neighbors may be favoring economic policies that might actually turn out not to be the best thing for you.
The results are pretty interesting.
According to Politify, if we are to take the economic, tax and budget proposals of our two presidential candidates at their face value—policies that each candidate contends hold the answers to making our economic lives better—the results indicate that it is the Obama proposals that dramatically benefit a wide swath of Americans who are expected to cast their vote for Governor Romney.
Indeed—again accordingly to Politify—if Americans truly voted their pocketbooks, President Obama would be re-elected in an historic landslide as the website calculates that the Obama economic agenda benefits 69.8 percent of Americans when compared to Romney’s proposals which only improve the financial lot of 30.2 percent. What’s more, using the official budget information provided by each campaign’s website, the site determines that the Obama proposals will lessen the national deficit by $273 billion by 2015 as the Romney budget would increase the deficit by $566 billion during the same period.
Now, before the more conservative readers here go into cardiac arrest, you might want to visit the website to review the methodology Politify has employed to reach their conclusions. Only then can you determine how much you do—or do not—value their conclusions.
If you do visit the site, you might also enjoy ‘plugging in’ your personal and community data to see how the respective tax and economic policies of the candidates impact directly on you and your neighbors.
There is an additional ‘twist’ worth pointing out—according to the data, it is not just the millions of rural white people expected to cast their votes for the GOP presidential candidate who are behaving contrary to what would appear to be in their self-interest. It turns out that some of the nation’s most liberal neighborhoods are also likely to vote for a candidate whose policies are more harmful to their economic well being that what is being offered by the alternative choice.
Take, for example, my own upper west side of Manhattan neighborhood—a liberal enclave if there ever was one.
Despite the fact that there is a stronger likelihood that hell will freeze over than there is that my zip code will get behind Governor Romney’s candidacy, Politify projects that 62 percent of my neighbors would benefit more from Romney’s economic proposals than those put forth by the President.
Go figure.
What we may be learning here is that people may not be voting their pocketbooks to the extent the experts and pundits would have us believe. Indeed, it may be this very fact that has led the conversation away from the anticipated referendum on the Obama economy and in the direction of social issues such as Medicare and abortion.
While many would be quick to blame the “liberal media” for steering the national conversation towards social issues because it is imagined—possibly incorrectly—that the President holds the winning hand on these subjects, the truth is that neither of the campaigns has been particularly responsive to the media. Accordingly, it may not be reasonable to imagine that it is the media driving the direction the campaign is taking.
Indeed, the GOP campaign’s willingness to engage on these topics may be more by design than by circumstances as, maybe, the Romney campaign knows something that the pundits do not. In an election sure to be about strength of voter turn-out, it may not, as conventional wisdom instructs, be all about the economy after all.
With voters unsure as to either candidate’s ability to do much of anything to reverse the current economic difficulties in four years time—and instinctively understanding that the depth of our problem is such that there is no quick and easy answer or way out—it may be the social issues that allow the voters to find a more definitive position and send them racing to the polls on election day to vote for the candidate who stands for those positions.
By: Rick Ungar, Op-Ed Contributor, Forbes, August 26, 2012
“Far Too Mysterious”: So Mitt Romney, What Do You Really Believe?
Too much about the Republican candidate for the presidency is far too mysterious.
When Mitt Romney was governor of liberal Massachusetts, he supported abortion, gun control, tackling climate change and a requirement that everyone should buy health insurance, backed up with generous subsidies for those who could not afford it. Now, as he prepares to fly to Tampa to accept the Republican Party’s nomination for president on August 30th, he opposes all those things. A year ago he favored keeping income taxes at their current levels; now he wants to slash them for everybody, with the rate falling from 35 percent to 28 percent for the richest Americans.
All politicians flip-flop from time to time; but Mr. Romney could win an Olympic medal in it (see “Mitt Romney’s chances: The changing man”). And that is a pity, because this newspaper finds much to like in the history of this uncharismatic but dogged man, from his obvious business acumen to the way he worked across the political aisle as governor to get health reform passed and the state budget deficit down. We share many of his views about the excessive growth of regulation and of the state in general in America, and the effect that this has on investment, productivity and growth. After four years of soaring oratory and intermittent reforms, why not bring in a more businesslike figure who might start fixing the problems with America’s finances?
Details, details
But competence is worthless without direction and, frankly, character. Would that Candidate Romney had indeed presented himself as a solid chief executive who got things done. Instead he has appeared as a fawning PR man, apparently willing to do or say just about anything to get elected. In some areas, notably social policy and foreign affairs, the result is that he is now committed to needlessly extreme or dangerous courses that he may not actually believe in but will find hard to drop; in others, especially to do with the economy, the lack of details means that some attractive-sounding headline policies prove meaningless (and possibly dangerous) on closer inspection. Behind all this sits the worrying idea of a man who does not really know his own mind. America won’t vote for that man; nor would this newspaper. The convention offers Mr. Romney his best chance to say what he really believes.
There are some areas where Mr. Romney has shuffled to the right unnecessarily. In America’s culture wars he has followed the Republican trend of adopting ever more socially conservative positions. He says he will appoint anti-abortion justices to the Supreme Court and back the existing federal Defence of Marriage Act (DOMA). This goes down well with southern evangelicals, less so with independent voters: witness the furor over one (rapidly disowned) Republican’s ludicrous remarks about abortion and “legitimate rape” (see “The Todd Akin affair: Grenades and stilettos”). But the powers of the federal government are limited in this area; DOMA has not stopped a few states introducing gay marriage and many more recognizing gay civil partnerships.
The damage done to a Romney presidency by his courting of the isolationist right in the primaries could prove more substantial. He has threatened to label China as a currency manipulator on the first day of his presidency. Even if it is unclear what would follow from that, risking a trade war with one of America’s largest trading partners when the recovery is so sickly seems especially mindless. Some of his anti-immigration policies won’t help, either. And his attempts to lure American Jews with near-racist talk about Arabs and belligerence against Iran could ill serve the interests of his country (and, for that matter, Israel’s).
Once again, it may be argued that this will not matter: previous presidents pandered to interest groups and embraced realpolitik in office. Besides, this election will be fought on the economy. This is where Manager Romney should be at his strongest. But he has yet to convince; sometimes, again, being needlessly extremist, more often evasive and vague.
In theory, Mr. Romney has a detailed 59-point economic plan. In practice, it ignores virtually all the difficult or interesting questions (indeed, “The Romney Programme for Economic Recovery, Growth and Jobs” is like “Fifty Shades of Grey” without the sex). Mr. Romney began by saying that he wanted to bring down the deficit; now he stresses lower tax rates. Both are admirable aims, but they could well be contradictory: So which is his primary objective? His running-mate, Paul Ryan, thinks the Republicans can lower tax rates without losing tax revenues, by closing loopholes. Again, a simpler tax system is a good idea, but no politician has yet dared to tackle the main exemptions. Unless Mr. Romney specifies which boondoggles to axe, this looks meaningless and risky.
On the spending side, Mr. Romney is promising both to slim Leviathan and to boost defense spending dramatically. So what is he going to cut? How is he going to trim the huge earned benefits programs? Which bits of Mr. Ryan’s scheme does he agree with? It is a little odd that the number two has a plan and his boss doesn’t. And it is all very well promising to repeal Barack Obama’s health-care plan and the equally gargantuan Dodd-Frank act on financial regulation, but what exactly will Mr. Romney replace them with—unless, of course, he thinks Wall Street was well-regulated before Lehman went bust?
Playing dumb is not an option
Mr. Romney may calculate that it is best to keep quiet: The faltering economy will drive voters towards him. It is more likely, however, that his evasiveness will erode his main competitive advantage. A businessman without a credible plan to fix a problem stops being a credible businessman. So does a businessman who tells you one thing at breakfast and the opposite at supper. Indeed, all this underlines the main doubt: Nobody knows who this strange man really is. It is half a decade since he ran something. Why won’t he talk about his business career openly? Why has he been so reluctant to disclose his tax returns? How can a leader change tack so often? Where does he really want to take the world’s most powerful country?
It is not too late for Mr. Romney to show America’s voters that he is a man who can lead his party rather than be led by it. But he has a lot of questions to answer in Tampa.
By: The Economist, Business Insider Contributor, August 25, 2012
“Deregulation And Worker’s Bargaining Power”: New Insight Into The Decline Of The Middle Class
The recently released 2012 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Employment Outlook provides new insights into the decline of the middle class. The report documents the global shift from labor income to profits. Across the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, known as OECD, the share of income going to wages, salaries, and benefits—labor’s share—declined over the last 20 years. The median labor share in OECD countries fell from 66.1 percent to 61.7 percent of national income. However, the decline in labor compensation was not equally shared by all employees; the wage share of top income earners increased while low-paid workers were hardest hit. On average, the wage share of the top 1 percent of income earners increased by 20 percent over the past two decades.
In the United States, where labor’s share began its decline in the 1980s, it fell a further 2.5 percentage points over the past 20 years. Excluding top earners’ income, the decline in the adjusted labor share was 4.5 percentage points.
The decline in labor’s share of national income did not result from a shift away from labor intensive industries to industries that employ a low share of labor. The OECD’s analysis found overwhelmingly that it is within-industry declines in labor’s share of industry value added that explains the fall in labor’s share. On average, the OECD found, real wage growth within industries did not keep pace with productivity growth.
Examining the causes of the decline in labor’s share, the OECD found that labor-saving technical change across most industries was associated with greater investment in capital and higher productivity growth as machines replaced workers in some jobs. The OECD found a strong association between technical change and the decline in labor’s share. It is important not to be hasty and jump to the conclusion that technological unemployment is to blame for the decline in labor’s share. In fact, the OECD did not find fewer jobs overall for less-educated workers.
Rather, what they found is not a decline in low-skill jobs, but a decline in jobs that pay middle-class wages. The share of the high-skilled in occupations such as manager or IT engineer increased as did jobs at the bottom of the wage distribution, typically low-paid precarious jobs. Unfortunately, this increase in demand and employment of workers in low-paying occupations did not improve the earnings of these workers. Increasingly, better-educated workers who in the past would have found middle-class jobs ended up low-paid employment. The OECD found that educational requirements increased quickly in low-pay occupations and that “workers in these jobs tend to be overqualified” (p. 124). A recent report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research found this to be true in the United States, where 43 percent of low-wage workers have some college or a college degree, 27 percent have a high school degree, and only 20 percent did not graduate from high school.
What, then, explains the failure of real wages to grow in line with productivity growth, and for increased educational attainment to translate into middle-class earnings? The evidence points to the negative effects of deregulation of some industries and increased globalization on workers’ bargaining power.
Deregulation of industries such as energy, transportation, and communication in which union density had traditionally been high opened these industries to new enterprises staffed by non-union workers. Increasing globalization—the delocalization of some parts of the supply chain as well as import competition from low-wage countries for blue-collar workers (but, notably, not for doctors, lawyers, and other high-paid workers) has led to the loss of well-paid unionized jobs. Both of these developments have led to a reduction in workers’ bargaining power vis a vis employers and have weakened unions, leaving workers to fend for themselves and employers to fix wages individually. The result according to the OECD has been to “decrease the bargaining power of workers, particularly those who are low-skilled, and thus their ability to appropriate their share [of productivity gains].”
The unequal distribution of labor income—with nearly all the gains in wages going to the top 1 percent while earnings stagnated or declined for the 99 percent—has gone hand-in-hand with the decrease in the share of national income going to labor and the shift from labor income to profits. Absent a countervailing force that enables workers to share fairly in the economy’s productivity gains, the decline in labor’s share appears likely to continue.
By: Eileen Appelbaum, Washington Whispers, U. S. News and World Report, August 25, 2012
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