Why 'The Economy' Isn't Good News for Democrats

[eridani]

Dedicated with disgust to all the Turd Way defenders who delight in pointing out how unrepresentative DU is of average voters. Of course not--average voters don't vote consistently, they don't vote strategically, they don't vote in every election, and they don't give a bloody goddam about bikini curves or official unemployment rates. And they have no idea that Republican obstructionism is the cause of the failure of government to implement policies that would benefit them--they blame the president who is in power and his party.

Want to gloat about that some more?

http://www.fair.org/blog/2014/10/10/why-the-economy-isnt-good-news-for-democrats/

In other words, the public's unwillingness to cheer as loudly as some pundits want them to doesn't seem that hard to decode: People aren't doing well. Dionne writes that Democrats "face two problems in getting voters to sing a joyous song." The first one he mentions is that things are good for voters–"the very improvement in the economy means that it is a less central concern to voters than it was when Obama took office"–but the second one makes more obvious sense: The fact that "voters who are still concerned about the economy tend to be focused not on its successes but on what it is failing to do for them."

That's the thing: Voters who aren't doing well aren't likely to feel likely the economy's doing well. You can wonder why they hold these misperceptions, or you can decide that they know very well how they're doing. Economist Dean Baker points this out today (Beat the Press, 10/10/14), under the headline "Great Mystery at the Post, Why Are People Without Jobs Unhappy About the Economy?" He writes:

While Mufson seeks out expert analysis to try to resolve this paradox, he might try looking at the data for a moment. No one sees the economy. They don't what the rate of growth is unless they read about it in the newspaper. What they do know is whether they have a job, whether their job is secure and their pay is rising.

Some stories aren't that hard to figure out. As Baker notes, "The real question here is why any serious people would have any question about why the public is sour on the economy."

[ReRe]

1. People are just not that into...

... the "New World Order."

[Major Hogwash]

2. Well, this may be news to you, but . . .

Idaho's economy has rebounded significantly in the last 6 years.
Thank you very much.

Of course, the Republican Governor is taking credit for it, but he's running for re-election this year, so that wasn't unexpected.
However, as his Democratic challenger pointed out on Friday night during their first face-to-face debate that he (the Governor) was running around during the financial crisis in the fall of 2008 like a chicken with his head cut off saying "The fundamentals of the economy are strong", simply mimicking McCain back in 2008, while Idaho was losing 10,000 jobs a month!

So, the bottom line is, the economy is pretty strong here nowadays, and everyone here knows that Governor Butch Otter didn't have a hellova lot to do with it.

Not only that, but the ads that A.J. Balukoff has been running on tv lately really drive home the point that Otter is no economist.
In fact, it came out last month that even though Otter went to college and became a lawyer back in the 1960s, he never took a single economics class!!
Economics is still a huge mystery to Otter, he doesn't understand how it works!

The first thing Otter did after he was elected governor 8 years ago, was slash the education budget to the bone by $1 Billion dollars a year in order to balance the state's budget.
Basically, Otter balanced the state's budget on the future of our children.

A sad fact is that our public school system used to rank around the 34th best school system in the entire country.
Now, however, our public school system ranks at #49, just above Mississippi.
We spend about $15 dollars more on each student than Mississippi does every year, but that is only because of all of the cutbacks to our state's education budget.
The head of the state's Department of Education is not running for re-election this year because even he realized that he didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of keeping his job after destroying our public school system.

During the last 8 years Governor Otter destroyed our public school system to the point that 40 school districts are currently operating on a 4-day school week.


Note: No animals were harmed in the making of this post.

[Fumesucker]

3. Yeah, we know the economy has picked up some

It's just that paychecks haven't kept up.

Unfortunately most of us can't spend "the economy" we only have the contents of our paychecks so that's what's important to us and what we notice.

[eridani]

4. So? Close to 100% of the benefits of improvement have gone to the 1%

Has Idaho somewhat bucked that trend? I know ND has, but a lot of credit for that goes to its state bank. Looks like the education issue might turf the asshole out from what you say--hope it happens.