I just noticed
another post, from yet another liberal-hating diarist in this community (in denial about basic political truths) up on the diary list, which attempts to blame curbed Democratic voter enthusiasm on "
teh libruls." As Paul Krugman reminds us, today, that line of thinking is both vacuous, and devoid of rudimentary political knowledge and fact(s).
Poverty is skyrocketing. Unemployment numbers are through the roof. Income inequality between our social classes is at record-breaking levels. Our nation's residential real estate and mortgage market(s) are still tanking, abysmally. Multiple U.S. too-big-to-fail ("TBTF") banks are virtually just as insolvent as they were in 2008, at least if you bypass their "mark-to-make-believe" balance sheets. The commercial real estate sector is in the middle of its first crash. Our country's monthly trade deficits are near all-time highs. America's gross domestic product still won't allow us to attain a level of job creation that will enable our society to keep pace with the population's growth (let alone make up for the eight million jobs lost in the past three years)...and some folks...still...want to blame the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party for curbed voter enthusiasm this year?
Politics is perception. And,
"people vote their pocketbooks," as the old saying goes. And, according to
one of the latest assessments from Nate Silver, over at 538, that means we Democrats are going to be on the business end of this bullsh*t a week from today.
Frankly, IMHO, this election is just about the simplest/easiest mid-term to properly analyze in my lifetime. The reasons why Dems are having a tough go of it this year are crystal-freakin' clear, no matter how far afield the t.v. pundits (or, fellow Kossacks, for that matter) might go now, or on Election Night, to make it appear (otherwise) more complicated than it is.
You want to know why we Democrats are getting our asses handed to us this year? (You really don't even need to hear it from a Nobel Prize-winning economist.) Go ask a freshman poli-sci major at your local community college for the obvious answer. Yes, the proper analysis is extremely simple this time around; but, here's Krugman this morning, to remind us of this inconvenient truth, in all of its simple elegance. One more time, people: "It's the [freakin'] economy, stupid!" Krugman: "Falling Into the Chasm."
Falling Into the Chasm
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times (Op-Ed)
October 25, 2010
...If Democrats do as badly as expected in next week's elections, pundits will rush to interpret the results as a referendum on ideology. President Obama moved too far to the left, most will say, even though his actual program -- a health care plan very similar to past Republican proposals, a fiscal stimulus that consisted mainly of tax cuts, help for the unemployed and aid to hard-pressed states -- was more conservative than his election platform.
A few commentators will point out, with much more justice, that Mr. Obama never made a full-throated case for progressive policies, that he consistently stepped on his own message, that he was so worried about making bankers nervous that he ended up ceding populist anger to the right.
But the truth is that if the economic situation were better -- if unemployment had fallen substantially over the past year -- we wouldn't be having this discussion. We would, instead, be talking about modest Democratic losses, no more than is usual in midterm elections.
The real story of this election, then, is that of an economic policy that failed to deliver. Why? Because it was greatly inadequate to the task...
Sometimes, less (really) is more.