If "The Economy" Is So Bad, Why Isn't Obama Doing Better?
The near-miss of Gustav and the laughable (but effective) spin of the Republicans to foreswear politics and put on their "American hats" means that we can now resume watching our regularly scheduled show of politics. Obama's acceptance speech last week was long on pocketbook issues, and short on foreign policy, and McCain will need to do the same. Indeed, his pick of Palin -- who has zero foreign policy experience -- highlights that this election is revolving around economic issues.
Difficult economic times are supposed to benefit the party not in office, and in theory, that should be a significant advantage for Obama. But by emphasizing the plight of many Americans, Obama has not gotten quite the bounce that one would think. Why?
Part of the challenge is that no matter how bad the economy is for some people, it isn't so bad for everyone. The national statistics bear this out, with revised second quarter GDP up 3.3% -- which is not a recession signal. Then there is oil. If sustained, today's drop in oil prices and the sharp retreat back to $100 a barrel after Gustav didn't do the expected damage will act as a mini-tax cut or stimulus to strapped consumers. Manufacturing activity as measured by the monthly Institute of Supply Management survey (ISM) and durable goods sales are all at decent levels -- not great, but hardly catastrophic. Yes, GDP was up in part because inventories were not down as much as initially thought -- an arcane aspect of the statistics that says nothing about how individuals are faring. But Democrats have to be careful in the face of data that simply doesn't support the level of negative sentiment that so many in the country feel.
Many people -- especially in the blogosphere -- will no doubt object to the statements above. I can hear the chorus "Give me a break! Corporations are getting the lion's share of the gains; the average worker is squeezed between plunging home prices, soaring energy costs, and no growth in wages. The economy stinks, and anyone who says it doesn't is a corporate shill, a stooge or an idiot."
Fair enough, but a significant portion of the country isn't buying that line, and it isn't just because of Tom Frank's "what's the trouble with Kansas" argument. It isn't just because some voters chose values over economic interests. It's because "the economy" isn't unified, and experiences vary widely. It's because the economic system is stable even if it is only benefiting a few at the expense of the many.
At any other point in the past, the massive losses in housing and in the financial system would have triggered much more severe economic downturn, but today, because capital is global and so is labor, the effects are more diffuse. There are no massive layoffs, no plunge in spending, largely because most work forces are already lean and wages are already tight. And we have exported trillions of dollars in the past few years, either to oil producing nations such as Russia and the Gulf States, or to China, which has been lending us money to buy their goods. They then use that capital, in part to bail out the very financial institutions that are suffering. The result is fewer bank collapses, and in turn less intense shocks in the domestic economy of the United States.
These issues are not well understood even by people who think they do. The global economic landscape has changed so much so fast that neither experts nor politicians have caught up. Intense feelings of gloom and massive pressures on the daily lives of tens of millions of people don't easily translate into electoral success, however. For every story of a struggling worker, there are counter stories, or ones that don't quite fit the simple story of "the economy stinks." That is why the polls remain stubbornly tight.
Maybe the floodgates will burst and Obama will get over the hump. He's ahead by most measures, yes, but not by the expected margin. There is a lesson in current polls: a substantial portion of the country feels uneasy and insecure -- there can be no doubt of that. But precisely why different people feel that way, that is a more elusive question. Articulating a coherent explanation of that uneasiness and offering a path forward will be the key, but the answer won't come from numbers and data and stats. Relying on those is a losing proposition.
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Sure the economy is just great America's biggest lenders have the the Repubs using taxpayer money to bail them out. Most middle class families could use food stamps but don't qualify for them and yet they get hijacked every week by the government who then bails out companies which provide golden parachutes for the CEO's who crashed them. Where is there hero in all this; John McCain is at the heart of the deregulation which gave them the power to do it. Keating Five, Enron. Let's not forget the Repubs favorite government welfare program in the form of the military industrial complex. It's consuming tax dollars at a rate of ten billion a month.
A recent survey of media showed that the majority of stories on Obama were negative. So much for liberal bias in the media. The media doesn't have a liberal bias. Reality has a liberal bias, and the media sometime have to report the facts. Just look at how little coverage Sarah Palin's ties to the Alaska Independence Party is getting in most media outlets.
People fail to realize that most of Obama supporters are young and under 35. This demographic rarely have land line phones, but instead have cell phones. So who are they calling? Older people. It's not a fair poll, and I believe the polls don't represent the real statistics. I've yet to have a friend say they have been contacted for a poll.
I wouldn 't put stock into polls.
can't agree more.
this is the Kennedy-Nixon campaign of the Youtube-Fa
there might just be a big surprise in the results.
Obama hit the 50% mark and in Rusmussun poll 51%, this is after Palin.
He is doing better!
According to the Labor Scorecard released by Rutgers University, the economy is pretty bad: "more than 10 percent of Americans are unemployed, discouraged from seeking work or underemployed. That is a nearly 25-percent increase from one year earlier...
The Rutgers labor scorecard offered other sobering findings:
_ About 530,000 were subject to mass layoffs in the last year, growth of nearly 5 percent, but a lower rate than five and 10 years ago.
_ The median weekly earnings for American workers have not grown in real terms over the last eight years.
_ At $6.55, the federal minimum wage is worth 40 cents less per hour, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than it was a decade ago.
_ While employer-assisted childcare and employee wellness programs have grown quickly over the last decade, they still cover less than one quarter of American workers.
_ Roughly 4 percent of the workforce wants to work full-time, but is working part time because they can't find full-time work."
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so there really ARE two Americas. My town must live in the other one.
The cost of gas has affected everyone tremendously. Personally and commercially. It has been like a huge tax that isn't stable and keeps rising and falling. People don't no how to live in this bipolar economy. They just know to stay put. and cut back. Corporations just increase the cost of goods to keep up w/ their costs , or they have cut back , which affects other poeple. If you happen to be in the window of "not feelin it" you probably live in a city w/ good public transportation.
the economy is only bad for the lower middle-class and the poor. they always suffer first and worst. republicans should be ashamed.
here's the issue and it seems like everyone in the media, corporate or not, doesn't seem to get it...
most Americans pay VERY little attention to politics and "the economy"..
their decisions are mainly based on what the candidate looks like and what kind of person they seem to be... what their friends and family are saying, what general feeling they get from the talking heads and radio personalit
people, in general, do not make rational decisions, just like when they go shopping..
our economic system is based on the idea that people are rational decision makers, that is why our economic system is so out-of-bal
Doesn't the Republican statement that they are taking off their Republican Hats and putting on their American Hats create a problem for McSame's claim that he ALWAYS puts country first? If that is the case then he would have been wearing his American hat all along.
You need a lesson in history. First of all, Obama is on fire. Reagan won 50.7% of the popular vote, but managed to get 489 electoral votes (basically, he won a very bare majority of many states).
There is a clear post-convention bounce in effect of about 6 points, bigger than Kerry's bounce in 04, bigger than Bush's bounce in 00 or 04 (but not quite a 1992 Clinton bounce, but that is the standard by which all bounces are measured - who can compete with that?). Obama is now about the 50% range in at least 2 national polls. This is a nail biter for sure, but evidence is that Obama is coming out of labor day in poll position.
As of today the polls are showing an uptick and he as actually busted the 50%
mark on one of the majors....
Then there is the electoral college and Obama-Biden are situated well.
They could feasibly even win without FL or OH.
"The economy stinks, and anyone who says it doesn't is a corporate shill, a stooge or an idiot."
I think you're right, you'll here several variations of this line. The simple fact of it is that the economy appears to be relatively stable, the recession (two quarters of negative growth) that the news media was playing up never occurred, the housing market appears to have fallen back to appropriate and reasonable price levels (hurah! I can afford to buy a house now), and unemployment is historically very low and is significantly lower than it is in Europe.
Unemployment is NOT very low! Unemployment as counted by the bush administration is low, but that's just because they are ONLY counting those who are ACTIVELY receiving unemployment insurance monies right now!
That's the way it always has been counted. In fact, the unemployment rate average during the Bush adminisration is lower than the average unemployment rate during the 1990s under Clinton.
You are mistaken. The economy is not doing fine. The economy is actually in trouble. The MARKET is doing fine! And the REASON why Obama's not doing better in the polls is because the CORPORATIONS own the MEDIA. The MEDIA is not telling the people how bad things actually are!
it seems like people don't understand that... most people haven't a clue as to what's really going on... they don't pay that much attention and there's a lot of BS out there eating up their attention.
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