In my younger and more naive years, I thought I had a pretty good grasp of politics and the politics of economics. Reality, it seems, is something of a bitch. As the financial crisis of 2008 became the the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, I saw unemployment shooting to at least 10% by the beginning of 2009. And sure enough , that's what happened. I thought that since Democrats ruled the government now, we would see something comparable to the New Deal; a nation wide program of people employed directly by the government to drag the economy out of the massive shit pile it dug for itself. Now, I didn't expect this because Democrats are the party of social justice. Sure, they talk the talk, but when it comes to the walk, they pretty much have to be dragged kicking and screaming towards the positions that would actually help the disenfranchised. (Think Obama "evolving" back to the gay marriage position he originally had in 1996). No, I thought it would happen because any ruling party that coincides with a 10%+ unemployment rate will be blamed for that situation. I expected the Democratic party to act not out of what was right but just out of pure fucking political survival. But that didn't happen. Instead, we got the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act; a half assed measure of job creation, transfer payments, and tax cuts that never had any chance of working. And so, when 2010 came and the unemployment rate was hovering quite comfortably at 9%; the obvious happened and Republicans re-took the House. ( They would have had the Senate too, if they hadn't nominated people like Christine O'Donnell and Sharron Angel.)
And don't think the ARRA was the result in spite of Obama. It was he that proposed a larger share of the bill be tax cuts ( on the advice of useless pricks like Lawrence Summers). It's not that Obama lost a fight for a bigger stimulus and lost it; it's that he never considered the option at all. And don't trust Obama to be better with a second term. Remember, during last year's debt ceiling debacle it was Obama's counter proposal to cut the deficit with $4 trillion in spending cuts with cuts both to Social Security and Medicare. Keep in mind that the Republican position at that point was $2 trillion in cuts without any mention of Social Security or Medicare. Obama raised the stakes and put the two Holy Grails of the Democratic Party on the table of his own volition.
The point of all this rambling is; I thought that the party that espoused ideas of social justice and doing what was right for the working man might somehow by accident actually live up to those words. But I guess I was just young and stupid then.
And don't think the ARRA was the result in spite of Obama. It was he that proposed a larger share of the bill be tax cuts ( on the advice of useless pricks like Lawrence Summers). It's not that Obama lost a fight for a bigger stimulus and lost it; it's that he never considered the option at all. And don't trust Obama to be better with a second term. Remember, during last year's debt ceiling debacle it was Obama's counter proposal to cut the deficit with $4 trillion in spending cuts with cuts both to Social Security and Medicare. Keep in mind that the Republican position at that point was $2 trillion in cuts without any mention of Social Security or Medicare. Obama raised the stakes and put the two Holy Grails of the Democratic Party on the table of his own volition.
The point of all this rambling is; I thought that the party that espoused ideas of social justice and doing what was right for the working man might somehow by accident actually live up to those words. But I guess I was just young and stupid then.