President Obama:
- Real unemployment is about 20% right now. Those are the voters who are suffering most - so far - though they have a lot of friends and relatives, too. They don’t care about GDP estimates, and stock market bubbles only infuriate them. Most voters live in the real world. You can’t sell them happy talk fantasies. Slowing job losses are still job losses.
- May is your deadline for significant employment improvement. That’s all the time you have. People vote based on the state of the economy six months before the election. Check it out. You cannot noodle around until November.
- No timid Republican-light tax credits (for anyone, any amount) will be considered real improvement. You have to roll out both metaphorical and physical bulldozers, and you have to do it right now. Massive, direct, decisive provision of JOBS is required. Immediately. Voters have to see lots of jobs appearing in May, at the latest.
- Don’t describe unemployment as "a lagging indicator." Don’t say, "People have to understand..." Those are people’s lives that you are dismissing. That is permanent damage to them and to our country’s future. Our brothers and sisters are jobless, homeless, and hungry, in midwinter. They can’t wait. You have to produce results for them, fast. Only 40% of them are eligible for unemployment benefits. Have you ever tried to live on what even that 40% gets? How do you think the ones without benefits are surviving?
- Get out in the real world, and talk to real people. Listen to them. Think about what they tell you. Don’t tell them, "That’s just the way Congress is." YOU are the one who is supposed to problem-solve and deliver the Change that you promised. Congress has been begging you to help. You can’t just sit back and wait for someone else to get everything done. YOU have to deliver what those real people need, one way or another. Otherwise they will not deliver what you need.
- Give us trade policies that nurture American industrial development. Forget the WTO/NAFTA ideology that has destroyed our industrial base, and start to protect your country. Institute a buy American policy. Protect your people and their jobs. Exporting voters’ jobs (as you did with GM) leads to exporting politicians’ jobs.
Hurry! You have very little credit left with the people who supported you, after this last year. Voters are in serious pain now and are not feeling tolerant of leisurely politicians. You still don’t seem to have any idea how angry people are today.