ALBION, Mich.—Michelle Rena Jones cheered when candidates Barack Obama and Joe Biden visited south-central Michigan in 2008. She supported Mr. Obama that November along with a slate of Democrats, including Mark Schauer in the 7th congressional district.
Now, the 40-year-old is rethinking her lifelong support for the party. She has been without steady work for two years, lost her home and car and began receiving cash assistance from the state for the first time. This year, she says, "I'm willing to take a chance on something different." Another possibility, she says, is that she won't vote at all.
Ms. Jones is part of an unmeasured, agitated mass: unemployed Americans who don't believe the Obama Administration and Congress have done enough to produce jobs. With elections coming up, their unease is especially troublesome for the Democrats, who control both chambers.
A poor economy never bodes well for incumbents. Cook Report, the nonpartisan political newsletter that tracks congressional races, estimates that 73 House seats are vulnerable—including Mr. Schauer's. This group has two things in common. Almost all (66 of 73) are held by Democrats, and most include counties that have unemployment rates exceeding the national average, according to data assembled by The Wall Street Journal.
...
"The jobless are the new swing voters," says Rick Sloan, acting executive director of UCubed, a community service project of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. "You can talk about deficit reduction, health-care reform—you can talk about all those things but you're talking past the jobless voters."
Unemployment in the individual congressional districts "is the leading factor in determining the November elections," says Mark Gersh, one of the Democrats' top voting analysts. "The hope of the administration is it's trending down when the elections are held, but they're running out of time."
President Accountability got all smug when he saved Michael Bennet's corporate whore ass on Tuesday in the Colorado Senate primary.
Let's see how smug he looks in November when all those people who voted for HOPE and CHANGE in 2008 either don't vote for vote for a DIFFERENT kind of change.
And the same goes for 2012.
Obama and his handlers think they've got time to recover before 2012.
They're HOPING they lose the House so they can run against crazy House Republicans just like Bill Clinton did in 1996.
But there is a MAJOR difference between those days and now.
The economy was pretty good in 1996.
The trending for the economy right now is ANOTHER dip into negative GDP, continued high unemployment and lots and lots of scared people out there worried about paying their bills, keeping their homes, and having a job at the end of the day.
So stay smug, Accountability, cuz' the plan you have to save your own failed ass going into 2012 isn't going to work so well when the economy continues like this.
Republicans despise you.
Independents no longer trust you.
And even life-long Dems are looking for alternatives.
That's what happens when there ARE NO JOBS.
And blaming teachers and the public school system for the economic ills will only take you so far.
Sure, it plays well at Newsweek and the the Daily News, but something tells me the unemployed and underemployed people don't want to hear that shit.
They just want to go back to work and they want to see you doing something to help the economy create jobs.
Firing teachers and closing schools just ain't it.
The following comes from a Mr. Larry Edelson's "Uncommon Wisdom" financial newsletter received via email. Basic messgae is that unemployment and other economic indicators reveal we are ALREADY in a great depression, and this "double-dip" nonsense is just that . . . cow dip . . .
ReplyDelete"Monday, August 9, 2010
Why All the Double-Dip
Talk Is Pure B.S. ...
If the recent slew of bad economic news coming out of the U.S. hasn't convinced you that the economy stinks, then it's time to wake up and smell the coffee. Because ...
All the recent talk about a double-dip
recession is nothing more than pure B.S.
Why? Because the U.S. economy ...
A. Never emerged from a recession. Period.
Quite to the contrary, in reality ...
B. The economy is already in a depression.
The problem is that no one wants to admit it. Certainly not in Washington. Not on Wall Street either. And, unfortunately, not even on Main Street.
But the fact of the matter is that in real terms, the U.S. economy has already contracted more than it did during the Great Depression.
I'll prove it to you in a minute. But before I do, here are a few simple facts that also show you that the economy is either rivaling the depths of the 1930s, or is already in worse shape ...
First, the true unemployment rate in this country is at least 22%. Not the 9.5% mythical figure Washington is reporting.
You see, Washington plays with the unemployment number. The figure they report every month is what they call the "official" unemployment rate. But it includes only those ages 16 or older who are not currently employed, but are able and available to work, and "actively seeking work."
The problem: Washington conveniently leaves out people who are working part-time, people whose hours have been dramatically cut, and "discouraged" workers — those who are ready, willing and able to work — but have essentially given up looking for a job because they can't find one.
Add these workers into the mix and you have an unemployment rate of 22.7% — more than double the so-called official number and almost as bad as the Great Depression of the 1930s.
And that's just a nationwide average. In places like Detroit, Los Angeles, Allentown, Pa. and other urban areas, the real unemployment rate is as high as 40%, far worse than during the Great Depression.
If you include part-time and "discouraged" workers, the actual national unemployment rate is 22.7% — almost as bad as the Great Depression.
Second, from its 1925 peak, the median home price in the U.S. fell 12.57% into a bottom in 1932. Compare that to the 31% decline since the property peak in 2007.
Third, in 1929, total U.S. debt as a percent of GDP stood at roughly 290%. Today, it's approaching 380%, and growing.
Put another way, it now takes $3.80 to produce $1 of GDP, compared to $2.90 during the Great Depression. I don't know about you, but to me, that's not real economic growth. It's debt-riddled growth.
Moreover, when debt is growing so rapidly, there is simply no way the economy can produce the same amount of unencumbered goods and services than it did just a decade ago.
Fourth, U.S. high-yield corporate bond default rates last year hit their highest level since the Great Depression. And although they've come down a bit since then, there's no doubt in my mind that corporate bond default rates are going to surge dramatically higher in the months ahead.
Fifth, total corporate and personal bankruptcy filings each year in the U.S. are now more than double the number of filings that occurred during the entire decade of the Great Depression..."
I don't know about you, but I believe this info more than this "double-dip" cow dip stuff.
I agree - I think it's just a term that is relatively meaningless. The country has positive GDP growth for a few quarters, but rampant unemployment, even worse underemployment, workers afraid they are going to lose their jobs, workers already losing their pensions and 401(k)'s to the hedge fund criminals like Whitney Tilson - it really does smack of a depression.
ReplyDeleteI think we can call what first hit us the Bush Recession. This is Now the Obama Depression.
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