A Look Ahead At The Next Year
By Mitch Berg
I was talking on Twitter with a Democrat activist the other day.
The activist and I were debating what the 2012 election would be about.
I said “unemployment”. I mean, do you really think people think they’re better off now than they were four years ago?
The activist’s response: “Depends on who people think is at fault. Thinking on that seems to be shifting”.
Well, the media will be doing its best to “shift” that “thinking” for the part of the electorate that doesn’t pay much attention to these things.
But I think the activist was overestimating their own party. Because I will bank on the prediction that the Democrats’ campaign will key on the folloiwng:
- “Oh, that Hermain Cain! He’s sure a randy one, isn’t he? We can’t have a philanderer in the White House!”
- Related: “A president needs to be better at covering their tracks for their transgressions than that!”
- “We can’t have someone in the White House who gets mental blocks on tedious, repetitive questions at
game showsdebates, can we? We can not have a President who makes gaffes and who doesn’t shine on TV, oh, no!” - “Doesn’t Mitt Romney look insincere?”
- “Hey, don’t blame us – bailouts were all lBush’s idea!”
Anything but unemployment.
November 11th, 2011 at 9:20 am
“Depends on who people think is at fault. Thinking on that seems to be shifting”.
According to who?
November 11th, 2011 at 9:26 am
Terry, that would be people desperately trying to reconcile their ideology with reality. You need to do a whole lot of “shifting” if you’re on the Left these days.
November 11th, 2011 at 9:47 am
Kermit, I’m just a lowly middle-brow intellectual, but I can’t figure out how Obama’s “Jobs Bill” is supposed to work. It’s not classical economics and it’s not Keynesian economics. There is no theory that says that you get a net increase in jobs by increasing taxes, that is, by shifting money from the private to the public sector.
It would be nice if some enterprising journalist would ask Obama to explain what economic theory of job creation he was following.
November 11th, 2011 at 10:06 am
Asking a journalist to explain economic theory is like asking a lab rat to explain how the maze was constructed.
November 11th, 2011 at 12:58 pm
Terry somebody has to flush all that money down the toilet.
November 11th, 2011 at 1:18 pm
I remember having Rich Karlgaard, publisher of Forbes, address a business group a few years ago. He described business journalists as being as being failed sportswriters who, if they really understood how markets work, would be pulling down huge bucks managing investment portfolios rather than toiling on a reporter’s salary.
November 11th, 2011 at 7:49 pm
In Keynesian economics, business spending is called “investment” because businesses spend all of their money as means to make a profit. Government spending is called “government spending”.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/books/ron-suskinds-confidence-men-focuses-on-obama-review.html?pagewanted=all
So, in the middle of the greatest economic crisis to strike our nation since the Great Depression, 53% of American voters cast their ballots for an affirmative action lawyer who had served less than a single term as junior senator from a state famed for its corruption and pay-to-play politics.
And who needed a “crash course” in economics.
Jesus wept.