Posted by Tania Kindersley.
I'm sorry, I know I said I was not going to do this to you, but I am so bored by politicians and commentators going on and on and on and on about how stupid old President Obama did not do anything about jobs. Oh no, he just had to bash away at his commie agenda, like protecting people from predatory lending and passing legislation in favour of equal pay and letting children have healthcare. Stupid stupid stupid. Not to mention fascist and Stalinist all at the same time. (You have to give him credit for covering the waterfront of political extremism.)
See, it's only clever Republicans who care about jobs. As this chart so vividly shows:
The red columns are jobs under the last months of President Bush. The blue columns are jobs under President Obama.
There you are. You can see exactly why the conventional wisdom wisely states that the too cool for school liberal elitist President did BUGGER ALL ABOUT JOBS. And so he deserves to lose. And is it slightly worrying that it seems that no one knows how to read a chart any more?
Just asking.
Oh, and since I am here, may I dare question the conventional wisdom one more time? CW says: it's a Republican wave; it's a rejection of the ghastly Obama/Pelosi axis; it's because no-one likes the Democrats' stupid socialist policies; it's because the Tea Party has caught the imagination of the country.
If this is true, then what does this poll mean? -
The New York Times and CBS News asked voters seven questions. Democrats beat Republicans on five of them. Will do more to help the middle class was 33% Rep, 55% Dem; while Is more likely to create new jobs was 38% Rep, 44% Dem. Those are two pretty hot button issues, would you not think? And the Democrats are beating the Republicans by a significant margin. The only two questions on which they lose are Likely to reduce deficit, and Best at dealing with terrorists, two traditionally right-wing fiefdoms. The Democrats even won on immigration, despite people like Sharron Angle putting out advertisements saying that Harry Reid wanted everyone in Mexico to come and stay at the Ritz Carlton with him, at taxpayers' expense. (The really nutty thing is that I am only slightly exaggerating.)
Obama's approval ratings are stumbling along at 45%, which is not stellar, but do you want to know what the approval ration of the Republicans in Congress is? Go on, guess. They are about to take the town by storm, it's going to be their greatest election victory in living memory, they are absolutely smoking hot. It's love, surely? The electorate must love them with big, glorious, squishy Love.
Their approval rating is NINETEEN PERCENT.
The other great plank of the Conventional Wisdom, that comes from all the pundits (except the lovely Rachel Maddow, who is right about everything) and every single even slightly right of centre politician, is that the reason Obama is going to lose is because of Big Government. Big Government is evil. It is coming to take your guns and kill your grandmother. The Tea Party people say, over and over, that what is going on in Washington is 'tyranny'. They say this with a straight face and a bleeding sense of victimhood. I think it is bad manners, myself, because there are people who really do live under tyrants, and it belittles their horribly constrained lives to throw words about like that. Words matter. The Tea Party should walk a mile in Aung San Suu Kyi's shoes and then talk to me about tyranny.
Anyway, the point is that stupid, stupid President Obama went all Big Government on everybody's freedom-loving ass and so no wonder he is about to be comprehensively rejected by we the people.
Except here is what the people told the New York Times and CBS News when asked if the role of government had been expanded too much:
40% said Yes
35% said No
And 18% said NOT ENOUGH.
So here is my question: Are the People having a little joke?
The xenophobes and racists and John Birchers were always there. They are there for every election. They were there in 2008--they are, after all, Sarah Palin's natural base. They never go away. What brought Obama into office--it was really an astonishing victory, when you think about it--was that we managed to outnumber them at the polls. For Democrats, it's always about getting out the vote.
ReplyDeleteThis year, that kind of enthusiasm just isn't there. It's a midterm, after all. And the crazies have even more of a siege mentality than ever--there's a black man in the White House--how dare he be there! (And don't tell me racism isn't a factor here.) Not to mention illegal Latinos who look Chinese, and teh gays...
And then there was the Citizens United decision. Obama's campaign demonstrated that enormous numbers of small donors could contribute enough to outspend corporations who had all sorts of constitutional/legal restrictions imposed on them. That was not allowed to stand, and now those restrictions have essentially been lifted. Those angry nutcases didn't organize themselves. They had help. In the end, this is a corporate takeover.
We'll survive this, somehow. I think. I hope.
It's all too frightening really but you captured much of what I feel about it.
ReplyDeleteI am totally behind on my blog reading, so can only apologise for the lateness in commenting on this post. However, I just wanted to acknowledge not only your (ever)wonderful writing, but the fact that this graph has given me the evidence to justify everything I was feeling about the commentary going on about Obama. Thank you!
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