What we have here: Obama’s response to the Massachusetts results shapes up
Obama acknowledges the frustration Americans are feeling.
—But he thinks it is free-floating anger at government in general, and that his administration just happens to be the target of the moment.
He understands that people feel “remote and detached” from what’s going on in Washington.
—But he thinks he just hasn’t explained himself enough, and needs to tell Americans how in sync his policies are with their values.
He gets that people are very distressed by the economy.
—So he will “pivot” his message “to expressions of concern” about the economy and jobs, an urgent “shift in rhetoric.”
In other words: lots more talk will be emanating from the Obama administration, in an effort to explain to the cognitively challenged American people how right he is and how wrong they are.
Think it’ll work?
I believe what we’ve got here is failure to communicate.
No.
The Obama administration has decided the Peasants Are Revolting (HT Shrinkwrapped)because of anger at Wall Street and the banks. Thus, this morning he has announced new, punitive taxes and regulations for those greedy, evil banks and stock traders.
Imagine his surprise that stocks are selling off. Now the Peasants 401ks are being punished as well. Yep, he sure knows how to give people CHANGE. Hope – not so much.
Surely someone on his side was able to see that his approval declined faster the more he talked and has leveled out a bit over the recent quiet period.
Sounds good to me. Let him keep talking. The more he talks, the more people catch on to him.
Invest in earplugs.
Does anyone want to write new lyrics for Both Sides Now?
Something along the lines of
He’s talked at us from both sides now
From Left and Right
And still somehow…
J.J., is the 401K thing a done deal now, or is it still a rumor?
don’t get too excited. the last 2 successful presidencies, clinton and reagan, were at a far worse situation one year in. reagan’s popularity was down to 35% and both got pummelled in the midterm.
a double dip in the economy would change things but right now he’s in a good position, the stock market has been signaling recovery for a while now (leading economic indicator, unlike unemployment, which is a laggard—ie, only tells you what happened in the past). once employment figures catch up to the rest of the data Bam will probably cruise to a 2nd term…especially if the GOP goes more purist and runs a Palin.
Barb the Evil Genius,
As far as I know it’s still just a rumor. IMHO, if they actually tried to do something like that, the Peasants would reallybe marching on Washington. (I’d certainly be among the ranks.)
In the meantime Obama has decided the floggings of the capitalistic class will continue until morale improves.
I believe the 401K thing is more than a rumor, though I don’t believe it’s a done deal. The Departments of Labor and the Treasury have either already asked, or will be asking, for public comment “on ways to promote the conversion of 401(k) savings and Individual Retirement Accounts into annuities or other steady payment streams, according to Assistant Labor Secretary Phyllis C. Borzi and Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary Mark Iwry, who are spearheading the effort.”
(That came from here:
http://www.ohio.com/business/81912327.html)
Of course, if this is done by regulation rather than legislation, as suggested by the use of a public comment period, it’s going to be a lot harder for Revolting Peasants to stop it — which, I’m sure, is the point.
Manju,
I do not think you understand this little tidbit about the stock market: Stocks go up when companies lay off, that is, cut costs. The stock market has not been signalling recovery, at best it’s been signalling profit taking. Unemployment numbers reflect where the economy really is and right now, the economy sucks (Bush was crucified when the unemployment rate hovered around 5% for most of his two terms [words like ‘catastrophic’ were used]). Also take a look at tax revenues. They are down across the board, which signifies lower employment (and employment taxes) and lower corporate tax revenue, which signifies a slower business environment. Lower sales tax revenues means people are hunkering down and not spending on items they normally would buy, be it furniture or books or dinner out.
Obie still thinks raising tax rates will generate more tax revenue, when the exact opposite will happen. Just look at NY and it’s millionaires tax; the wealthy are leaving NYC in droves.
Both you and Obie need to take some basic non-marxist economic courses.
Oh yeah, and who can ever forget Obie’s economic genius with his ‘profit and earnings ratios’ gaffe?
“Stocks go up when companies lay off, that is, cut costs.”
Nonsense. when compaines beat earings projection by using tacitcs that indicate their future earnig wil be lower, like layoffs b/c of a poor economy, their stock price declines. If the layoffs are due to a restructuring, ie making the company more efficient, than the price will go up becuase it signals future profits.
The stock market is leading economic indicator. it predict the future, (not always accurately).
“The stock market has not been signalling recovery, at best it’s been signalling profit taking”
This sentace makes no sense. “profit taking” is the act of selling a stock. When there are more sellers than buyers the market goes down, obviously. But the market has been going up since Obama took office so I fail to see where you are finding that its signaling “profit taking”
“Unemployment numbers reflect where the economy really is and right now, the economy sucks”
incorect. unemployment rate is a lagged economic indicator (as oppsossed to coincident, as you calsim) as unemployment tends to increase for 2 or 3 quarters after the economy starts to improve.
How could we not, being, as we are, so busy clinging to God, guns, religion, and lighting our houses with whale-oil lamps.
Manju:
I own an island that is underwater. I will sell it to you now, and when Obama makes the oceans recede it will be worth a fortune!
don’t get too excited. the last 2 successful presidencies, clinton and reagan, were at a far worse situation one year in. reagan’s popularity was down to 35% and both got pummelled in the midterm.
Manju: You need to start providing cites for your claims. You are entirely too careless.
Reagan hit 35% on his second anniversary, not his first. And Clinton was at 53% on his first anniversary — 3% higher than Obama’s current 50% according to Gallup.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/popularity.php?pres=&sort=time&direct=ASC&Submit=DISPLAY
Dear Neo,
I must complain. You have to attract a better class of troll, one who is not a blockhead.
Is it possible that most Obama lovers have never studied Economics 101? This would account for a lot of their stubborn refusal to learn any new facts.
Promethea: not only possible, but probable, IMHO.
Earlier today Pelosi was shown on video saying that, in its present form, the Senate Health Care Reform bill could not get enough Democratic votes to be passed in the House, and there were reports that she also said that now was the “time to go slow,” but the New York Daily News is now reporting that, in a closed door meeting today, Pelosi presented the Democratic leadership with a plan to go forward and use the reconciliation process to cram what Democrats can salvage of the Health Care bills down our throats.
The heavily deluded EJ Dionne regurgitates the well worn theme that Obama just hasnt been successful at putting the message out. He of the well used crack pipe also expresses wonder that the Republicans act as if the current economic crises were’nt their fault. He just cant figure it out.
I’m no economist and I don’t know the markets in any depth, but my understanding is that part of what may be happening now is that the stock market is the only reasonably reliable place for people to put their money, so its apparent recovery is just that–apparent. I’ve seen some historical coverage suggesting that, between the ’29 crash and the actual Depression, the markets rose to what seem now to have been surprising levels because of that fact–nothing else was a good investment. So people with money put their money in the markets, pushing them up. They didn’t stay up for very long–maybe a year or two–but they did rise for a while. I sometimes wonder whether that might be at least part of what we’re seeing now.
Reagan famously joked that the markets had predicted 9 of the previous 5 recessions. We chuckled, and then I’ll always remember the day early in his first term when the markets turned around. The Dow fell to a low of about 750, and then Boom! It took off. When I remember that, today’s 10,000 doesn’t look too shabby.
I wonder whether the markets have a similar record of over-predicting economic recoveries, as it seems to with recessions. Does anyone here know the answer to that?
Dems and the Left are forever claiming that, when they lose a contest, it’s a combination of failing to get their message out and the evil right-wing attack machine. They’re either utter liars or quite mad–I never am able to decide, finally, which it is. It’s a little like trying to figure Obama out! 🙂
It’s true that employment is a lagging, not a leading, indicator of economic recovery. But the markets have been signaling some kind of recovery for months now, maybe since August, and employment continues to fall. Surely one might expect to see some leveling off by now if recovery is indeed just around the corner? Indeed, every batch of new unemployment/job loss statistics leads with the old “experts are amazed” routine–it’s a little like reading The Weekly World News, where all the experts are constantly amazed. 🙂
“I wonder whether the markets have a similar record of over-predicting economic recoveries,”
Yes and no – the problem here is twofold. One the issue is complex enough that no one really understands and the other is that people use a short period of time as predictive. At best they make educated guesses. Since we are looking at a binary choice (improve/decline) they are going to be right 50% of the time just if guessing.
50% isn’t that bad, especially when you have 15 people saying it’s going to go up and 15 saying it is going to go down. It makes it easy to say “Look they were right”. Further so many of those same people make a different prediction every week and, therefore, they can also point back and say “I was right”.
The biggest issue though, and Manju is falling VERY hard for this, is that they are using short term fluctuations to predict long term changes. You can’t do that. If you look at longer term predictions the stock market is a fairly good indicator.
Longish term looking it’s “Meh” at best – long term graphs haven’t even leveled off yet. This is, what, the fourth or fifth time we have seen the stock marker show “signs of recovery”? You have to give it more than week of “signs” for it to mean much.
As CBS News describes Obama’s first year:
Mr. Obama has suffered the steepest decline in job approval of any first year president since they started keeping such data: in most surveys, he is barely at, or under fifty per cent. His health-care plan, the signature effort of his first year in office, has grown steadily less popular and its survival, as one Congressional Democrat put it, “Hangs by a thread.”
I believe that the stock market is mirroring hopes, not reality.
I think a better indicator of where our economy stands and will be heading is to be found in the Bureau of Labor Statistics Monthly compilation of statistics measuring employment, “The Employment Situation” (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf).
This is 35 or so pages of charts, graphs, statistics and analysis and its complex, and the tendency is just to look at the standard unemployment statistic, “national unemployment,” which stood steady in December ‘09 at 10.0%. But what that 10.0% meant was that 15.5 million people were unemployed, and more than a third of the 15.5 million–4 out of every 10 unemployed workers, 6.1 million of them–are “long-term unemployed,” who have been unemployed for 27 weeks or longer.
But there are different ways to look at and measure unemployment, and if you add in the 2.5 million “marginally attached workers,” including 929,000 workers who are counted as “discouraged” because they have quit looking for work, plus those 9.6 million workers who wanted full time employment but had to accept part time employment–i.e. they are “involuntary part-time workers,” who are likely barely or not making it–you get, I maintain, a truer picture, and the real unemployment rate in December’09 was actually 17.3%, up from November’s 17.2%.
So, when you add to the 15.5 million currently counted as “unemployed” by the BLS, the 9.6 million workers who are counted as “involuntary part-time workers,” add in the 2.5 million workers (929,000 of them so “discouraged” that they were no longer looking for work at all) counted as not “unemployed” but “marginally attached to the labor force,” because they had looked for a job in the last 12 months but had not looked for work in the last four weeks, the total number of workers who are really unemployed jumps from 15.5 million to 27.6 million, 9.6 million of them “underemployed,” and probably just hanging on, particularly if they have a family and a car, mortgage and credit card payments to make.
I have read such response. it was nicely crafted. it presented a show of concern which is somehow good enough to ease the hurts of MA people. but it was good, he has to start rebuilding his reputation.
Joe Klein’s interview with Obama this week is downright discouraging if one is looking for hope that Obama has gotten a single clue after being beaten like gong this past year.
No. Obama sees everything in the most self-serving terms. His team saved the country from a Depression. He has been steadfastly attempting bipartisanship but the Republicans are selfishly choosing a course of obstruction. The healthcare bill is crucial and workable, and anyone who disagrees is caricaturing the administration’s efforts. Progress is being made, albeit slowly, with Iran, but Russia and China are going to help. And issues in the Middle East are “really hard.”
I think Obama believes most of what he said — in which case it’s clear that he is living in a bubble which is enabled by his staff and all the coddling by the MSM, including Joe Klein.
Here’s a collection of blackly humorous video clips of Obama declaring over and over again his “absolute confidence” to complete health care by the end of the year.
Now we are three weeks past the new year and the Brown victory, and Obama and the Democrats are wandering about in a daze, trying to make the clear confident sounds that health care is still gonna happen, but there seems to be no plan or direction.
Meanwhile the 2010 elections loom and it looks like that whatever the Dems do will suck up another two weeks of oxygen for the Obama administration.
Time has never been on their side, and it’s much less so in 2010. Looking at the video, one realizes how deeply invested Obama is in health care and how difficult it will be for him to let it go or even scale it back.
If Obama loses health care, how much of a presidency does he have left?
Here is incisive analysis that I saw today, that speaks to many of the things we have been saying here at
http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2010/01/21/the-context-of-middle-class-frustration/
The Obama Administration will respond quickly, and decisively, and long as it’s not OUR country! LOL Check out this short animated cartoon we created…hope you get a laugh.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EST3y0vcTmk
Enjoy –
Insanity Island – Leaders in the Conservative Cartoon REVOLUTION! 😀