Rachel Maddow Urges Democrats To Be 'Aggressive' In Fighting Unemployment

On yesterday's Meet The Press, Rachel Maddow made an interesting point about the way the Democrats ought to govern that I think is worth another mention.

At issue was the high unemployment rate, and whether the current stimulus plan will solve the unemployment problem as it unfolds, or whether additional moves -- sure to be met with conventional political opposition -- are required. David Gregory, sizing up the current state of play, asked Maddow, "What went wrong?" To which she replied:

MADDOW: Obviously, job numbers are the holy grail for the next election, as the governors who were just on previously [Haley Barbour and Tim Kaine] were articulating. I think...whatever Democrats do, they are going to be accused of overspending. No matter what they do. If they don't spend another dime. Between now and 2010 they are going to be accused of it. And so, if they're getting shy about the second stimulus, it's not going to make conservatives back off and say, "Oh, the Democrats are the party of fiscal moderation." They're going to get slammed as overspenders anyway, and their choice is whether they are going to do it with intractable double-digit unemployment, and the appearance that they are not doing enough to stop it, or whether they are going to be aggressive, and they need to not be shy about a second stimulus.

I think that's a "real talk" take, frankly. During yesterday's liveblog, I bottom-lined this by saying, "If you are going to get damned no matter what you do, don't get damned having done nothing. Go big!" Obviously, the political risk, here, is that if further attempts to stimulate the economy fail, there's a political price to pay for it. But if Democrats have deeply-held convictions on how to act to bolster the economy and stem the downward trend in unemployment, they ought to act on them and put some real leadership behind the effort.

If you fail and are swept from office, so be it. But if their best plan at this point is to act in the hope that maybe if you're cautious and well-behaved the GOP will stop saying mean things about you, then you're going to get booted from office anyway. Because, as far as I can tell, the health of an economy isn't tied to playing an inter-party food fight to a stalemate. Fortune -- and independent voters -- favor the bold.

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Comments

[lemonyashes]

Finally somebody articulated what most progressives are thinking.

[Philclock]

And what is that exactly?

[jmpurser]

The fact is that the Democratic party REALLY DID SCREW UP TARP II and the stimulus package and are well on their way to destroying health care reform. Given that the GOP would have called them all sorts of things even if they had succeeded but with ammo like these massive failures 2010 and 2012 are going to be VERY difficult for the Democratic party.

[lemonyashes]

Yep all because they wanted to be liked by the bullies.

[jmpurser]

Personally I think 99% of it is because they want to be the corporatist party so they're trying to deliver like the GOP does. Good job on that so far.

[bwenston42]

If really weird people can get together, call themselves teabag-ees, and spread hate and lies across this country. Then family orientated, country loving people can get together to form a group that ensure jobs stay and are brought back to this country? We could call them Job-baggers or something.

[RightisRight111]

Wrong. The people that YOU call "teabaggers" don't consider themselves teabaggers. So, your whole comment makes NO sense.

[braytjr]

Apexfork wanted to know how lowering taxes was bad. Too much talk has been spent on the tax side of the equation and not enough on the income side.

A person making $60k a year has $5k/month before taxes. There is a good chance that the $3,600 take home will be spent back into the economy each month. The person making $600k a year has $32,000/month to spend, $6 mil is $320k/month. These people are not going to spend that money into the economy. When given the opportunity to take large sums of money out of a company for one's own benefit, many will do it whether it hurts the company or not. The more money rich people have, the more they have to gamble with. That is why the speculators have driven the price of oil, gas and other commodities through the roof during the time when consumption is down. This in turn causes economic bubbles. When the tax rate is over 50% on the top 10%, this stops the legalized theft and economic raiding of our businesses. That in turn stops bubbles, capitalizes businesses, increase worker salaries and stabilizes the economy.

Every time we get below 50% taxes on the top 10%, we have 12 year cycles of recessions and depressions. That is why tax cuts are bad for the wealthy. Now we need to concentrate on increasing the wages of working Americans, for they are the true job creators.

[blizb]

Well said and great figures.

Tax cuts for the rich haven't worked. They don't put it back into the economy and the tax cuts to corporations don't make them reinvest a percentage in growing their labor force.

They instead squeeze their existing staff or overwork departments and take higher profits for themselves in bonuses or stock to investors.

They operate on greed instead of slowing down their greed and fully staffing their companies instead of laying them off.

By fully staffing or investing just 1 or more percent into the workforce that will actually help everyone.

I think people are just waking up to how much the little guy can contribute.

If more companies hired more people more goods would be sold, more services used, more taxes paid, and all the rest of the economic benefits that everyone can enjoy.

Greed has gone just gone wild in this country and all they are concerned with is a bonus, a profit margin, and keeping the top brass in overpaid salaries.

[bwenston42]

Wages can be as high as you want them to be. But, with all of our jobs being sent to Inda and The Peoples Republic of China the subjct is mute.

[RightisRight111]

Wow....you are so wrong. But then again, you are a Liberal. I should have realized that you wouldn't know what you were talking about.

[johnsopinion]

Great observations, both of you!

[AlwaysRightLeftist]

Haha, Democrats being aggressive on ANYTHING? That's rich. Keep the HOPE alive Rachel.

[Nonamnesiac]

Obama is a voodoo economics proponent. He doesn't believe in reregulation, renegotiating the unbridled free trade deals of Clinton/W and that's why he hasn't proposed serious reregulation and is personally responsible for there being no reregulation in the original bailout bill. He believes in the BS economic truism developed by the voodooistas that unemployment is a "lagging indicator". He feels bad about it but believes in doing nothing significant to immediately fix the problem, believing that someday it will correct itself without having to tax or prosecute the thieves who caused the downturn in the first place and who still apply those policies. He's even in favor of premium-based health care, meaning the health insurers and drug pushers (Big Pharma) can raise premiums, deductibles, cost-sharing, drug costs and co-payments. That means the Pelosi premium-based Bill with a fig leaf of a public option will be unaffordable to most and the final Bill (hopefully there isn't one given how bad Pelosi's is) will be much worse than Pelosicare.

Rachel is right, but Obama is so obviously on-the-take that he'll talk against unemployment while accepting that high unemployment is necessary into the indefinite future and will do little to provide relief or get Congress to provide relief.

[Stefan Zeiss]

Now that you Socialists are in control of the government, thanks for nothing. All you guys and gals are good for is mucking up the economy whilst raising my already very high taxes. Go ahead and waste my tax payer money on wages for Democratic controlled states with over bloated and wasteful bureaucracies that employ useless union employees.

[oldpol2]

Hey brite one it was your supply side buddies who created this mess over the last 8 years. it will take more than 9 months to clean it up. You are apparently not as well placed as you pretend otherwise those conservative tax cuts would have more than saved your bacon. So instead of whining maybe you have a suggestion or two to turn things around.

[Stefan Zeiss]

How wrong you are!. The fact is that any economy has it's ups and downs, but our economic downturn was made worse by Democrats that has it's roots back in 1999. It was back then that the Clinton administration, over the objection of private financial institutions, forced banks to invent hokey ways to qualify poor people and people with bad credit for home mortgages. He then forced quasi government institutions like Ginnie Mae and Freddie Mac to insure these toxic loans. Bush, to his credit, tried to reign in this financial madness, but people like Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi halted his every move claiming that those loans were OK. I still fault Bush for not acting much more forcefully against those mad Socialist congressmen. Finally, the downturn we now have has been amplified by Socialistic Democratic party members and their stooge Republicans that played along. Supply side economics would not interfered in our banking system and our economic downturn would have been far milder if these Socialists had not been in power. The like of Frank and Pelosi are most responsible for our economic crises and Obama is only going to help two make it worse.

[sixchair]

Wow! How remarkably old school! Hey, SZ, there's a whole new playbook of mindless neanderpub dogma now on the market. Check it out. It involves death panels, neo-nazi conspiracies, race-baiting and all kinds of really constructive dialog.

[Citizen54]

It's too bad "the socialists" are not in control. Maybe then the government would spend money on jobs -- that's good for ALL America, Mr Zeiss -- instead of immoral and unnecessary wars.

Why do conservatives hate America?

[Stefan Zeiss]

Socialist societies typically have higher unemployment rates. So keep your socialism because we already have too much here in the USA.

[pc51]

Politicians and their suck up "highly educated and/or connected" buttiekissers do not have a clue how to "create jobs" - they only know how to siphon off money from every possible source and spend it lavishly and without a second thought to assure their their own comfort and security.

[hardcenter]

How about if the Dems are aggressive about something instead of wasting their unassailable majority by rolling over to the Repugnicans on everything?

[BBackSoon]

What?

[psychodog]

He's saying that even though they're the majority, they keep caving in to Republican demands like they're in the minority.

The Republicans don't plan on going along with anything we propose in Congress... so why give in to their demands, when none of them will ever vote for the legislation they demand be neutered anyway?

[MaxTruth]

Lower capital gains tax.
Speed up depreciation.
Lower income tax rates.

Of course current Democrats won't do it (even though Kennedy did).

[TheBaffler]

Sure, doing more of the same failed things that got us into this mess will fix everything.

[apexfork]

How, exactly, would lower taxes, add to the problem?

You don't get to say "failed policies" and have that be the end of the discussion.

Oh who am I kidding? It's HuffPo, and that actually passes for a rational argument around here most times.

[BBackSoon]

Lower income tax rates on the bottom 70 or 80% of the population and then raise it for the rich. They have proved over and over again that they will not spend to make more US jobs, they are going after the easy money from pushin' paper.

[jmpurser]

Yeah! Just cause it failed to do anything for the last 30 years just means it is due to start working any day now!

[Estreet1964]

Unfortunately we can count the Democrats who are bold leaders on the fingers of one hand.

All the rest are sheep on the take.

[psychodog]

I dunno... i saw quite a few grow a spine the other night on C-SPAN, during the health care bill debate.

I was actually quite proud of them for once.

Otherwise, I agree with you... 'strong' Democrats are few and far between... I think it's because we have too much empathy with our fellow man, and prefer to discuss issues amicably, rather than forcefully.

[lizr]

we need a major jobs program, a new WPA. until Obama gets that, he will be toast in '12.

[nitram0244]

that's right! where's the ccc, etc?? go big. the private sector isn't creating the jobs. give the workers jobs in the modern version of wpa and ccc, then they'll have an income and learn a skill/trade for the green economy

[lizr]

O is a major disappointment as president.

[FaaLaveLave]

I believe that some type of real, sweeping jobs program is a must for the people. The government has bailed out Wall Street and nothing is trickling down....no help for the regular folks.
This nation is in such desperate need of all types of improved transportation upgrading.....and I don't mean enlarging an airport that is only in operation due to government subsidies (like the one locally). We need high speed train service, bridges that won't collapse, new surfaces on most of the interstate highway system, and all types of green energy projects. I thought that Obama promised those things. Was I just dreaming?
But, Maddow, has it right. If you are going to be damned anyway give it your best.
"In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican".- H. L. Mencken

[Arthur Spooner]

To the Republicans-this is what happens when you take what should have been a rational debate and inject radical ideas and fears into it. Rachel is dead on. What do they have to fear? Ask someone who's been un employed for over a year and about to lose their car or home how they feel about a 2nd stimulus package. I say GO Big or Go Home.

[socialmistfit]

Hm... what can LibDems do to create jobs when they have taken up the mantle against free-market capitalism? Will they be talkin' out both sides of their mouth again?

[Mortifyd]

What kind of crack are you smoking? There must be a market for that.

[BBackSoon]

Free market? You mean shipping jobs to ‘emerging markets’?

Hell yes they should be against it.

[psychodog]

Either prove your claims or stuff it... you're a broken record.

Sometimes the "free market" FAILS. It's a fact of life. GET USED TO IT.

Insurance companies are the 'gatekeeper' to medical care for 70% of our country.

The Insurance industry is the only industry where profits are HIGHER the LESS their product is used by their customers. Thus they have a DIRECT INCENTIVE to pay out as FEW claims as possible, and take in as much money as possible.

Name ONE other industry where that's the case? I bet you can't, because THIS is not 'free market' capitalism... this is a FAILURE of 'free market' capitalism.

At least we're trying to solve the problem, instead of sitting on our @sses and refusing to admit there is one.

[rocketman69]

EVERY industry tries to maximize profits. Name ONE that continuously pays out more than it takes in (government doesn't count).