Axelrod on FTN re latest employment report: What's not working is construction jobs and teachers' jobs, precisely

[ProgressiveEconomist]

Axelrod on FTN re latest employment report: What's not working is construction jobs and teachers' jobs, precisely what Republicans in Congress have been blocking. Yet Republicans in Congress are the first to attack the President for what they themselves are doing.

Stephanie Cutter and Paul Krugman on This Week with Stephanopoulos: "1.4 million jobs have been on the table in Congress for 9 months."

Do you like this new theme of the Obama campaign, that President Obama is getting blame from Republicans in Congress for exactly what Republicans in Congress have been doing?

HOW should this new campaign theme be pursued"

IMO, some well-heeled third party Democratic Super-PAC needs to saturate the airwaves with details on Republican obstruction of the economy, cite economic estimates that unemployment would be a full point lower had Republicans not obstructed the President's economic policies, and ask viewers to FLOOD John Behner and Mitch McCOnnell's offices with the message: STOP SABOTAGING THE ECONOMY FOR POLITICAL STRATEGY!

WHAT'S YOUR OPINION?

[treestar]

1. Yes and don't reward them with victory

And look how stupid they must think the voters are - that the voters don't have any clue what Congress is doing.

[madokie]

3. And point that fact out daily

about how stupid they think we are

[SGMRTDARMY]

5. Absolutely don't reward the repigs with victory

I still remember when we had a solid majority in the House and Senate at the start of Pres. Obama's term. WTF happened?

[BeyondGeography]

2. Best thing is it's all true

Whether the teevee watchers get it is something else. But, as a strategy, one has to approve.

[coalition_unwilling]

4. Obama needs to immediately channel some Harry S. Truman ca. 1948 and

attack the 'Do-Nothing Congress'. Worked for HST and will work for BHO.

"I don't give the Republicans hell. I just tell the truth and they think it's hell!" (or words to that effect from HST During his whistle-stop campaign, many spectators would yell "Give 'em hell, Harry."

[annabanana]

6. It also wouldn't hurt to end the Federal hiring freeze that's

been in place for, what, three years now.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

15. I kind of disagree. It's the states that are hurting the most

among governments. I think it was robert Reich who said recently, "We lend to banks at 0 percent interest when there's deep economic trouble; why don't we extend the same privilege to States?

Ben Bernanke already is stretching the limits of Federal Reserve authority. I wonder if he or some even more audacious Fed Chair would put loans to State governments and or to new Infrasturucture Banks on the essentially unlimited Fed balance sheet?

[ProgressiveEconomist]

8. See post #7 below, which I meant as a reply to your post,

but I clicked on the wrong reply button.

[coalition_unwilling]

12. See post #11, wherein I respond to your reply as if

you had responded to mine

[ProgressiveEconomist]

7. Wouldn't the President look weak if he attacked Congressional Rs

directly NOW? Mitt Romney would double down on his mantra that the President allegedly blames others for his own failings.

IMO, massive third-party ads have to EDUCATE the electorate about Congressional Republican sabotage of the economy before the President would be able to attack the Rs in Congress directly. Much better to allow surrogates to do the job now, IMO.

[RBInMaine]

9. Yup! Get on OFFENSE with this and STAY there !

[ProgressiveEconomist]

10. Ironically, it's a BAD employment report that allows Democrats to go on

offense against Republican sabotage of the economy. These arguments by Axelrod, Cutter, and Krugman would have been much less persuasive when earlier this year other economic sectors were offsetting Republican sabotage of construction and the public sector.

[coalition_unwilling]

11. Awesome point about the law of unintended consequences. Those Repigs

thought they were so fucking smart with their 'Cut your way to growth' bullshit. Now payback, as they say, is a motherfucker. If the Dems fail to seize this opening, they don't deserve to hold power.

[TheKentuckian]

13. Deserving power is not on the menu this election it is about reducing entropy's lock.

No one deserves power. Power is granted because it is necessary that we have stewards and the TeaPubliKlans are deplorable and wicked stewards that ever seek to siphon more power from the people to themselves and their wealth cronies.

Democrats are no gold standard in stewardship either but being less deliberately destructive, at least as quickly and recklessly on average is no small difference in our present game of keep away.

[coalition_unwilling]

14. Good points. I enjoy a good political slug-fest though and

want to see Dems put the Repigs on the mat for their obstructionism.

To wit, in the universe I inhabit, you don't get to campaign in 2010 (as the Repigs did) on "Jobs, Jobs, Jobs," win power, put forward no jobs bills of your own whatsoever, block those that are put forward and then walk away from it completely unscathed. In the universe I inhabit, such douche-baggery comes with a price.