This by-election is national in character, and there is no good news to help the Democrats. Their strategy seems to be a non-strategy, letting local candidates distance themselves from Washington. There seems to be no national effort to answer Republican charges.
There is more money in "Democratic" caufers, but the Republicans have a 2 to 1 advantage when all their auxiliaries are taken into account.
Because the mainstream media uses the "she said-he said" approach, the GOP has been able to dominate the national conversation since early 2009.
In addition to a bad economy and high unemployment, the Democrats hav at least four big problems.
- There is a great fear of new taxes and even worse conditions if government does too much to help the unemployed or stimulte the economy. We first saw this when aged Tea Baggers showed up at town hall meetings afraid that health care would diminish their Medicaid benefits. After the GOP spent months trying to block an extension of unemployment benefits, they enjoyed a big bump in the generic poll. It is not just Tea Bag candidates who are now saying the unemployed are lazy and not willing to take low-paying jobs; the Republican candidate for governor in Pennsylvania has said the same thing. Social DArwinism, fed by decades of propaganda has kicked in big time. The public now prefers GOP candidates by ten percent.
- Progressives are discouraged that health care reform was so moderate and excluded the public option. They have a list of unachieved goals. The Obama administration cannot win them back without making promises that simply cannot be kept. Those promises would do even more to activate that vast body of Americans who are inclined toweard Tea Baggism because they fear that any government activism to stimulte the economy will eventually cost them in some way or other---higher taxes, lower benefits, inflation, etc.
- Effective unemployment stands at about 15%. There are also that many people who are underemployed or in danger of losing jobs. Their situation is not good, and the argument that things could be worse is not enough to get them out to vote. The Democrats must find ways to target them by pointing oput what will be taken away if the GOP takes the House and gains many seats in the Senate.
- No one speaks of the threatening guerilla in the room, "fear of the other." In any crisis, humans tend to elevate their fear of the other. Hence we have a Congressional candidate who wants to put land mines along the border and a governor who speaks of beheaded people in the desert. Xenophoia, plain-old racism, Islamophobia, and fear of terrorism soimehow all blend together. Much has been done to increase these fears and President Barack Obama symbolises all these fears. He is accused of being a Muslim and sympathetic to terrorism. 52% of republicans think he supports the goals of terrorism.
Sometime in the weeks immediately before the election, Democrats must come together to defend the stimulus and note that it did save us from a depression. They should not talk about more stimulus; that is impossible and will frighten people. They need to remind people already hit hard by the recession that the GOP will have the opportunity to slasp unemployment and begin the privatization of Social SEcurity and the scaling back of Medicaid benefits.
Democrats have let the Republicans dominate the discussion of the economy for too long, and it is late in the day for getting out a narrative.
Republicans think they have this locked and make false claims on the talk shows. They say the recovery was a failure; although there afe few economists who would agree.
This morning on Candy Crowley's program a very smooth Republican ecxonomics expert said the Democrats have only recently gotten around to talking about small business. The fact is that since early 2009, the GOP has blocked many plans to help small business. At one point, they even deployed Republican partisans high up in the SBA civil service ranks to speak against Democratic plans.
Near the end of the program, he talked about how small businesses would be paying more personal income taxes if Obama ends the Bush tax cut for the rich. No one pointed out that small businesses do not pay personal income taxews. Owners decide how much to take out of the business, and that is taxed. Moreover, the Bush plan helps mainly millionaires, not people earling between $250 K and one million.
An hour later, the editor of the National Review was on Meet the Press. He announced that the stimulus was a total failure. There was not one fact to support this promouncement. Then he admitted that since 2009 there were many Democratic plans to help small business, but he dismissed them all as usuelss because each would only cost around $20 billion. Maybe he minimized the amounts involved as a way of defending the obstructionism. That is to say he might hve been implying that the obstruction was minimal because the dollar amount was trivial.
Anyhow, no one mentioned the obstructionism.
Maybe we should not mention obstructionism as we should expect at least 41 Democratic senators to filibuster any attack on Social SEcurity or Medicare. They should also block any extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy unless it is modest and accompanied by a reasonable estates tax that exempts family farms and small businesses.
Wall-to-wall filibusters are a great threat to our system, as is the Republican employment of the Big Lie technique. Democrats should not resort to filibusters on too many measures, but they are justified in using it in some vital areas.