[Peace-discuss] The Terrible Economy and the Anti-Election of 2012

[E. Wayne Johnson]

In 2008 during the debates, Romney argued that there was "nothing wrong 
with the Economy".

I suppose that he is still quite pleased with the economy.


On 8/7/2012 7:55 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> [Reich's diagnosis - accurate, even obvious, as far as it goes - 
> scants the point that this anti-election serves the purposes of those 
> by whom it was engineered: the 1%.]
>
>
> The worst economy since the Great Depression and you might think at 
> least one of the candidates would come up with a few big ideas for how 
> to get us out of it.
>
> But you’d be wrong. Neither candidate wants to take any chances by 
> offering any large, serious proposals. Both are banking instead on 
> negative campaigns that convince voters the other guy would be worse.
>
> President Obama has apparently decided against advancing any bold 
> ideas for what he’d do in the second term, even if he has a Congress 
> that would cooperate with him.
>
> He’s sticking to a worn script that says George W. Bush caused the 
> lousy economy, congressional Republicans have opposed everything he’s 
> wanted to do to boost it, it’s slowly on the mend anyway, the Bush tax 
> cuts shouldn’t be extended for the rich, and we shouldn’t take a 
> chance electing Romney.
>
> Yet the public wants bigger ideas from the President, and wants to 
> know what he’ll do in his second term to get us out of this mess. A 
> New York Times-CBS News poll released last week showed that a majority 
> of voters believe the president “can do a lot about” the economy. 
> That’s a double-digit jump from the fall of 2011.
>
> The President could propose a new WPA, modeled after the 
> Depression-era jobs program that hired hundreds of thousands of 
> jobless Americans to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure, or a new 
> Civilian Conservation Corps.
>
> He could suggest permanently exempting the first $25,000 of income 
> from payroll taxes, and making up the lost revenues by eliminating the 
> ceiling on income subject to it. He could propose resurrecting the 
> Glass-Steagall Act and breaking up the big banks, so Wall Street 
> doesn’t cause another financial collapse.
>
> But you won’t hear any of this, or anything else of this magnitude, 
> because the White House doesn’t want to take any risks. Polls give 
> Obama a slight edge in the critical eight or so battleground states, 
> so, the thinking goes in the Obama camp, why say anything that might 
> give Romney and the GOP a target?
>
> Besides, polls also show Romney isn’t well-liked by the electorate.
>
> So Obama has decided to campaign as the anti-Romney.
>
> Mitt Romney is playing it even more cautiously. His economic plan is 
> really a non-plan: more tax cuts for the rich, undefined spending 
> cuts, and no details about how he’d bring down the budget deficit. No 
> presidential candidate since Herbert Hoover in 1928 has been more 
> vague about what he’d do on the critical issues facing the nation.
>
> Romney’s advisors assume Obama can’t possibly be reelected with the 
> economy this bad. Just 44 percent of registered voters in a Washington 
> Post-ABC News poll earlier this month approve of the job the president 
> is doing on the economy, while 54 percent disapprove. Even more 
> encouraging for Romney is that 41 percent of those polled “strongly” 
> disapproved of Obama’s economic performance, while just 21 percent 
> “strongly” approved — an enthusiasm gap of major proportion.
>
> So Romney’s advisors have concluded that all Romney has to do between 
> now and Election Day is avoid a mistake that might give Obama and the 
> Democrats something to shoot at.
>
> Romney has decided to campaign as the anti-Obama.
>
> The two anti-the-other-guy strategies fit with a ton of negative 
> advertising that’s just begun but will reach mammoth proportions after 
> Labor Day. Much of it will be financed by super-PACs and by political 
> fronts already taking in hundreds of millions of dollars in secret 
> donations. Romney’s camp hopes to out-negative Obama by almost two to one.
>
> So whatever happens on Election Day, the next president will have to 
> contend with two handicaps. The public won’t have endorsed any new 
> ideas or bold plans, which means he won’t have a clear mandate to do 
> anything on the economy.
>
> The only thing the public will have decided is it fears and distrusts 
> the other guy more. Which means the winner will also be burdened by 
> almost half the electorate thinking he’s a scoundrel or worse.
>
> The worst economy since the Great Depression, but we’re in an 
> anti-election that will make it harder for the next occupant of the 
> oval office to do a thing about it.
>
> /By Robert Reich/
> /
> This article was published at NationofChange at: 
> http://www.nationofchange.org/terrible-economy-and-anti-election-2012-1343631484. 
> All rights are reserved./
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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