Polls after polls have shown that addressing the deficit is really not a top concern in the minds of voters, but the deficit itself will taken on an added new focus due to Republican control of the House. They'll squawk about how Social Security (due to the payroll tax cut holiday) contributes to the deficit, and refuse to raise the debt ceiling in order to force even more cuts to social programs, especially Social Security and Medicare.
It's entirely possible that there will be a "bipartisan" consensus that the deficit needs to be addressed as the top priority on the list, and that we all need to make "tough choices" in the name of austerity by cutting back benefits for our seniors, the disabled, the middle class, and the lower class while refusing to even contemplate raising taxes on the wealthy and getting additional revenue that way.
A CNN poll released earlier this week found that while a wide swath of respondents thought spending was a problem, only one in five believed "that deficit reduction should be the main goal of government today." That number mirrors other polling data that sets deficit reduction as a second-tier priority, as far as the public is concerned.
Even though the deficit hysteria is largely a creation of the political elites in Washington, D.C., one interesting fact is that candidates themselves in the midterms didn't even consider the deficit reduction as a major priority in polling voters.
"The one issue I think every Democratic pollster found to be very strong was outsourcing -- anything related to jobs going overseas got a strong response," said Guy Molyneux of Hart Research.
"Obviously, nearly all campaign polling done this year had an economic focus in one way or another," said Nick Gourevitch, vice president of Global Strategy Group. "At the top of that list was jobs -- especially on the Democratic side -- where a lot of the polling was on outsourcing and preventing the loss of American jobs."
That the loss of jobs took political precedence over the levels of government spending seems fairly logical. Voters are more emotionally concerned about their personal employment than the size of the deficit -- though it should be noted that the bailout of the banks and automobile industry were polled heavily by candidates, according to several pollsters.
So if we really wanted to change our focus economically in 2011 as a party, we should be talking about jobs, how to stop the outsourcing of them overseas, and how to create millions of new jobs. So far, I have not heard a concerted focus on jobs, outsourcing, and job creation from elected officials in Washington D.C.
Republicans ran on promising jobs as a platform in the midterms. The reality is that their economic policies such as keeping the tax cuts for the wealthy will not create jobs, and neither will their slash-n-burn approach to our social safety net. They are all about the shock doctrine, forcing our middle class to stagnate even further so the rich can continue skimming off the top, while sticking us with the dregs at the bottom. They got the votes because they were able to turn out more of their base and they fooled many voters with opposing cuts to Medicare Advantage (voters thought Medicare Advantage=Medicare, when it's not so given studies on the subject of how Medicare Advantage plans are paid more in premiums than Medicare itself), and they promised jobs. They also were heavily backed by the Koch brothers and the crazy Tea Party people.
Any talk or focus by our party on the deficit only serves to hamper our economic message and approach towards job creation. I am hopeful that the Democratic Party will realize that the inane focus on a bipartisan approach to deficit reduction takes away from what should be a winning economic message on job creation, and retention of jobs. In 2011, that should be what is on our minds going into the 2012 Presidential election. That way we can have a compelling argument to make that is backed up with evidence in order to retain the White House, and regain seats back in the House.
Austerity measures and approaches serve no purpose but to enrich the elite class at our expense. We all should be aware and careful of who the austerity policies really benefit, and be aware of their economic consequences otherwise we'll all find ourselves in a really hard fall in which we are in a poorer state as a country.