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You are here: Home / Politics / Politicans / David Brooks Giving A Seminar At The Aspen Institute / Bobo did a bad, bad thing

Bobo did a bad, bad thing

by DougJ|  December 3, 201111:47 am| 84 Comments

This post is in: David Brooks Giving A Seminar At The Aspen Institute

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One of you flagged this comment (which I mostly agree with) from David Brooks on the liberal NPR radio network:

Well, I think they’ve (the Obama administration) more or less quite rightly given up on the white working class. Ohio, Pennsylvania, those are going to be tough. They have to try to get the suburban voters. And I’m still a little down on this job market, this job report. Losing 315,000 people from the labor force, people don’t vote on the headline number. They vote on their lived experience. And if the 55-year-old guy next door is not even looking for work, that’s bad.

I don’t know if people vote lived experience or what they see on their teevees, but he’s actually right that the working class votes against incumbent presidents when the economy is bad. And it’s bad right now, especially for the middle-to-lower-middle-class. One of the reasons black and brown working class people will vote Democrat anyway is that the Republican party openly hates black and brown people. Also too one of the reasons the white working class votes Republican, no matter the economy, is that the Republican party openly hates black and brown people.

That’s just how it is. If the Republican debates had centered around plans to keep white working class people out of the country with sharks and moats and electric fences, then Democrats would be wise to use clips from these debates to appeal to white working class voters. But they haven’t, they’ve centered around bashing Latino immigrants. So it’s only logical, as mistermix says, that if you’re a Democrat, you see a big opportunity with Latinos.

What’s disingenuous, as always, with Bobo, is that if the economy was great, he’d say that John Q. Applebee was tired of the decadence and materialism, and wanted a return to the solid, earthy values of the Republican party. Or that John Q. Applebee wanted a strong leader to keep him safe from the Hitler du hour, economy be damned!

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Reader Interactions

84Comments

  1. 1.

    Aimai

    December 3, 2011 at 11:51 am

    Is it even limited to one hitler an hour? They were falling as fast as the leaves in vallembrosa las time I looked and I kind of thought we were in some kind of quarter hourly update like a continuing scrolling chyron.

  2. 2.

    DougJ

    December 3, 2011 at 11:54 am

    @Aimai:

    Right now, we’ve got Kim Jong-Il and who else? Maybe Putin. Or is our ally in the war on terror?

  3. 3.

    Omnes Omnibus

    December 3, 2011 at 11:56 am

    Great, now I am going to associate that song with Bobo’s faux earnest expression and pink tie. You bastard.

    @Aimai: Two Little Hitlers?

  4. 4.

    The Ithacan

    December 3, 2011 at 11:59 am

    I am descended from the white working class and religiously avoid discussing politics with family and friends. Still, it is obvious that they believe two things…

    1) Blackity Black Black
    2) I might be rich someday.

    The only thing that is starting to cut through the noise is that they can feel the unfairness. The 99-01 framing is brilliant. I hope that it grows and overcomes the Noise Machine.

  5. 5.

    smintheus

    December 3, 2011 at 12:00 pm

    No, what mistermix said was that Obama would be wise to write off the white working class voters and concentrate on other voters. That’s crazy talk. You don’t write off an entire demographic just because it’s a tough sell. And Obama did not do that in 2008 and surely has no plans to do so next year either.

  6. 6.

    slag

    December 3, 2011 at 12:00 pm

    I have a stupid question that’s tangentially related to this topic in that it’s an economic one. And it has to do with the discussion yesterday in one of kay’s threads about how we’ve socialized the cost of $2 waffle makers.

    Is there a way to create a corporate tax rate that’s inversely proportional to how much a corporation pays its employees? Or maybe tax a corporation more for each employee its paying at minimum wage rates?

    Just wondering.

    ETA I should add that I recognize that Bobo would not approve of this kind of social engineering, so clearly, it’s impossible. I was just wondering where the discussion of such things might have gone in the past.

  7. 7.

    Elizabelle

    December 3, 2011 at 12:01 pm

    What Brooks does not get, since there is no Applebee’s salad bar for him to commune at, is that working class white voters — many of them — do pay attention to what the Republicans are doing. Especially since it’s hitting their pocketbooks and their kids’ chance for college and a job once out.

    A lot of them do understand that the GOP’s mission is to screw them over to protect the wealthiest among us.

    The working class is collateral damage, as the wealthiest must be protected. At any cost. No new taxes on them. None.

    So Brooks has to put out this line, which might sound reasonable to his fellow pundits.

    And to relatively affluent totebagging NPR listeners, who think there’s something wrong with those who don’t flourish in this best of all worlds, the meritocratic one Brooks and his Chevy Chase neighbors inhabit.

    Wondering if the “Obama gave up on the white working class” is actually born of desperation.

    Because when you conduct polls that fairly depict what it is Obama and Democrats are trying to do, it polls well.

    So Brooks etc. are left with only labels and slogans to throw out there.

  8. 8.

    General Stuck

    December 3, 2011 at 12:02 pm

    I get whisps of Bobo playing a sneaky race card wedge effort that Obama don’t care about working class whitey all that much. I’m sure it’s just my imagination, since the NYT’s would never go in for that sort of thing.

  9. 9.

    Mike in NC

    December 3, 2011 at 12:02 pm

    As if Bobo knew jack shit about the ‘lived experience’ of working class white folk, or anybody else for that matter.

  10. 10.

    MattF

    December 3, 2011 at 12:04 pm

    I think a dissection of Brooks’ sociological fakery would start with Zip Code Demographics:

    http://www.claritas.com/MyBestSegments/Default.jsp

    and then following various threads from there… all ending up, no doubt entirely coincidentally, at partisan hackery and the marketing of wingnut prejudices. It can be subtle, but if you step back, it can be traced out.

  11. 11.

    DougJ

    December 3, 2011 at 12:07 pm

    @Elizabelle:

    I think that’s right, too, that he’s underestimating the extent to which the working class does see that Republicans are fucking them. That, along with the crazy anti-immigrant stuff, is why Obama has a chance even with the worst economy since the 30s.

  12. 12.

    sukabi

    December 3, 2011 at 12:07 pm

    @General Stuck: well then General, we’ve got the same imagination… because that’s what immediately struck me when that construct appeared earlier this week… ‘Obama & Dems abandon the white working class’…

  13. 13.

    JPL

    December 3, 2011 at 12:07 pm

    @Elizabelle:

    So Brooks etc. are left with only labels and slogans to throw out there.

    I think it is a way to discourage the whites middle class from voting for the President. Say it often enough and it becomes he doesn’t deserve my vote or he doesn’t want my vote. I’d like to know what Frank Luntz says.

  14. 14.

    Trurl

    December 3, 2011 at 12:08 pm

    he’s actually right that the working class votes against incumbent presidents when the economy is bad. And it’s bad right now, especially for the middle-to-lower-middle-class

    Not that this will stop you and the other front pagers from blaming Obama’s 2012 defeat on Jane Hamsher and assorted “pony wishers” for the next 50 years.

  15. 15.

    DougJ

    December 3, 2011 at 12:12 pm

    @Trurl:

    FWIW, my criticism of Hamsher is that she’s a largely irrelevant borderline-grifter, not someone who succeeds (or maybe even tries to succeed) in actively sabotaging anything.

  16. 16.

    White Trash Liberal

    December 3, 2011 at 12:12 pm

    Brooks is wrong, as usual. Obama has made his jobs bill about working class voters across the race spectrum vs. the GOP and their too-cozy relationship with the elite. Slowly, the screw of optics has been turned to make taxes an issue of class, economics and patriotism. Enough working class whites will catch on to whose side the candidates represent. Does Obama still devote himself more towards elite interests? Yes… But the GOP is now so blatantly sycophantic towards the 1% that even tried and true wedge issues may not provide the usual cognitive dissonance.

    Brooks wants to make the debate values-based and covertly paint conservatives with the star spangled banner. I think this will fail.

  17. 17.

    Omnes Omnibus

    December 3, 2011 at 12:12 pm

    @Trurl: No, if Obama loses, we will blame you, personally.

  18. 18.

    slag

    December 3, 2011 at 12:12 pm

    @DougJ:

    I think that’s right, too, that he’s underestimating the extent to which the working class does see that Republicans are fucking them.

    Here, Bobo’s just doing his part to make sure this is a referendum election rather than a choice election. That’s why he gets paid the VS bucks!

  19. 19.

    Villago Delenda Est

    December 3, 2011 at 12:14 pm

    @Mike in NC:

    Just this.

    I would call Brooks a vile shitstain, but counsel for the Vile Shitstain Protective Association would be on line two threatening legal action in a heartbeat.

  20. 20.

    White Trash Liberal

    December 3, 2011 at 12:15 pm

    @Trurl:

    Klaupacius wants you to STFU and craft a better poetry robot.

  21. 21.

    BGinCHI

    December 3, 2011 at 12:17 pm

    @White Trash Liberal: Agree with this and was about to say something very similar.

    Yes, with a bad economy white working class folks would normally vote against the administration. But in this case that won’t hold. People outside the crazy 27% (the bent quarter) know that it is GOP loyalty to corporate and wealthy masters that drives politics. They also get that the media are colluding.

    They aren’t going to throw Obama aside so that the GOP can flush the wrest of their pie down the toilet.

    ETA: Just saw Elizabelle’s comment and that’s spot on. Brooks has no fucking constituency.

  22. 22.

    eemom

    December 3, 2011 at 12:20 pm

    let me just say that I am really fucking sick of people on all points of the political, media and blogoriphic spectra — including here — mindlessly parroting the meme Economy Bad Obama Lose, and worse yet, stupid shit that begins “No President has EVER been re-elected when [insert meaningless statistic].”

    I just don’t think it can possibly be that simple this time, given how completely the republicans have fucked themselves over in mounting a viable challenger. That circumstance in itself, afaik, is unprecedented in presidential electoral history.

  23. 23.

    CarolDuhart2

    December 3, 2011 at 12:21 pm

    What I find that everyone is missing is that the groups that normally vote Democrat are growing. Nothing is automatic of course, but Obama needs fewer and fewer of the groups that don’t regularly vote Democratic to win, and soon, these groups will have to get used to the diminution of status.

  24. 24.

    Linda Featheringill

    December 3, 2011 at 12:21 pm

    Question: Why is anyone asking David Brooks what the Democratic campaign is thinking? How would he know?

  25. 25.

    r€nato

    December 3, 2011 at 12:22 pm

    off-topic:

    lefties still whining about how Obama betrayed us WRT the public option really need to STFU:

    [T]he provision of the [Affordable Care Act], called the medical loss ratio,… should have a long lasting and powerful impact on the future of health care in our country. [It] requires health insurance companies to spend 80% of the consumers’ premium dollars they collect—85% for large group insurers—on actual medical care rather than overhead, marketing expenses and profit. Failure on the part of insurers to meet this requirement will result in the insurers having to send their customers a rebate check representing the amount in which they underspend on actual medical care.

    This is the true ‘bomb’ contained in Obamacare and the one item that will have more impact on the future of how medical care is paid for in this country than anything we’ve seen in quite some time. Indeed, it is this aspect of the law that represents the true ‘death panel’ found in Obamacare—but not one that is going to lead to the death of American consumers. Rather, the medical loss ration will, ultimately, lead to the death of large parts of the private, for-profit health insurance industry.

    Why? Because there is absolutely no way for-profit health insurers are going to be able to learn how to get by and still make a profit while being forced to spend at least 80 percent of their receipts providing their customers with the coverage for which they paid. If they could, we likely would never have seen the extraordinary efforts made by these companies to avoid paying benefits to their customers at the very moment they need it the most.

    Today [Friday, December 2nd], that bomb goes off.

  26. 26.

    boss bitch

    December 3, 2011 at 12:23 pm

    @Trurl:

    Not that this will stop you and the other front pagers from blaming Obama’s 2012 defeat on Jane Hamsher and assorted “pony wishers” for the next 50 years.

    Won’t stop me. Its these types that get invited on TV and complain that Republican behavior is bad but its because Obama allowed them to act that way. So not only does the MSM and Republican voters let the GOP off the hook, but so do ratfuckers and delusional liberals like Hamsher.

  27. 27.

    eemom

    December 3, 2011 at 12:24 pm

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    I would call Brooks a vile shitstain, but counsel for the Vile Shitstain Protective Association would be on line two threatening legal action in a heartbeat.

    fer teh win.

  28. 28.

    boss bitch

    December 3, 2011 at 12:26 pm

    @eemom:

    let me just say that I am really fucking sick of people on all points of the political, media and blogoriphic spectra—including here—mindlessly parroting the meme Economy Bad Obama Lose, and worse yet, stupid shit that begins “No President has EVER been re-elected when [insert meaningless statistic].”

    I just don’t think it can possibly be that simple this time, given how completely the republicans have fucked themselves over in mounting a viable challenger. That circumstance in itself, afaik, is unprecedented in presidential electoral history.

    Exactly.

  29. 29.

    lol

    December 3, 2011 at 12:30 pm

    @eemom:

    As long as you carefully cherry pick your data set, any statistic is potentially true.

    There’s a reason the formulation is “No President since FDR…”

  30. 30.

    kindness

    December 3, 2011 at 12:33 pm

    I heard in on NPR driving home yesterday and gagged. He led off with the current Republican ‘Obama has given up on White Working Class’ meme and no one called him on it. Made me sick. I don’t know why I continue to torture myself listening to non-sensical right wing dogma eminating from KQED of all stations. But I do.

    I figure it’s the right wing meme because in their minds if they just continue to repeat it for the next year a certain portion of the White Working Class who doesn’t use their brain much will believe it, repeat it and vote Republican. It’s smart & stupid at the same time. But that’s what they do. And that is what they are doing right now and they won’t stop.

    The ‘liberal NPR’ no less.

  31. 31.

    BGinCHI

    December 3, 2011 at 12:36 pm

    @kindness: We got Osama bin Laden, now we need to get that terrorist Frank Luntz.

    How many people in this country suffer because Norquist, Luntz, and Ralph Reed live in big houses?

  32. 32.

    Stillwater

    December 3, 2011 at 12:36 pm

    Part of the problem here is the semantics of ‘white working class voters’. Back in the good ole days, when Democratic politician used that term it meant the Union folks doing manual labor and grunting it out for wages. But as unions have declined and the complexity of the economy increases, more and more middle class people – what used to be the working class, I suppose – are non-union workers whether they’re doing low, medium or high skilled work, many of whom don’t even work for wages (they’re self employed). Certainly Obama isn’t giving up on them.

    So when Bobo says Obama is abandoning working class voters, I think the term means something very specific and sorta obvious – and therefore uninteresting. I think it means people low or lower middle-income folks who used to vote Democratic (because Dems were pro-labor) but who tilt Republican anyway because they’re anti-union, ‘anti-redistribution’ and ‘opposed to illegal immigration’.

  33. 33.

    Napoleon

    December 3, 2011 at 12:37 pm

    @slag:

    Is there a way to create a corporate tax rate that’s inversely proportional to how much a corporation pays its employees? Or maybe tax a corporation more for each employee its paying at minimum wage rates?

    I am not quite sure this addresses what you are looking for but I think that they should only allow you to expense what you pay an employee up to X times the average wage (or perhaps apply it to the ave paid in that company) and anything over that is not counted as an expense that the company could use to lower its taxable income.

  34. 34.

    driftglass

    December 3, 2011 at 12:37 pm

    Bobo said the same thing during his awful, awful “Conversation”, but I stubbed my head on his latest free NYT for ExxonMobile ad to pay it much mind.

    http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2011/11/non-sequitur-of-month-award.html

  35. 35.

    kdaug

    December 3, 2011 at 12:38 pm

    Presumably the Q stands for Quincy, no?

    John Quincy Applebee’s got a certain ring to it

  36. 36.

    CarolDuhart2

    December 3, 2011 at 12:38 pm

    @eemom: It is bizarre that there isn’t even a dull and safe option in this race. Even Romney isn’t all that safe-he’s thinskinned and tone deaf.

  37. 37.

    eemom

    December 3, 2011 at 12:39 pm

    Hey, it’s Saturday. Instead of fucking Bobo, how about an on-topic, slightly early memorial to the anniversary of Lennon’s death?

    A working class hero is something to be.

  38. 38.

    Napoleon

    December 3, 2011 at 12:42 pm

    @r€nato:

    Unger is full of it. There are plenty of businesses that do just fine on 20% margins to cover profit and overhead (that is not to say that the law will not make a real difference).

  39. 39.

    RalfW

    December 3, 2011 at 12:44 pm

    What’s disingenuous, as always, with Bobo is that he writes and speaks as if he knows anything, or gives a crap about anything.

    He’s so far up his own elite, east coast conservative luxury life ass (that he earned with his meretriciousness, of course), justified with his gift for tautological moral “truths.”

    .

    And yes, I mean meretriciousness, particularly the 1829 definition.

  40. 40.

    Ian

    December 3, 2011 at 12:46 pm

    Bobo is not only dog whistling, he is factually challenged.

    Whites – McCain won 55-43. Obama did 2% better among whites than Kerry.

    Obama carried lower income voters by a wide margin and actually carried voters making over $200,000
    (those he said he’s tax). McCain’s strength was upper middle income voters:
    • Under $30k – Obama won 64-34.

    Obama won 63% of the vote among voters with no high school

    Linky

  41. 41.

    Villago Delenda Est

    December 3, 2011 at 12:50 pm

    @Ian:

    Bobo is not only dog whistling, he is factually challenged.

    There has to be a first (millionth) time for everyone, I guess it’s just BoBo’s turn for that.

  42. 42.

    JPL

    December 3, 2011 at 12:52 pm

    @Ian: You’re questioning Bobo’s facts? He ain’t got no facts Anyone who raves about Applebee’s salad bar is challenged.

    What they want to say is Obama doesn’t like white folks but even Bobo knows he can’t.

  43. 43.

    RalfW

    December 3, 2011 at 12:56 pm

    @Linda Featheringill:

    Why is anyone asking David Brooks what the Democratic campaign is thinking? How would he know?

    Because the obsequious bastard gets invited to the best D.C. cocktail parties. So he just knows things. Watch his smug “I’ve been talking to people in the admin” drops when he’s on with that old gassbag Shields on the PeeTeeVee.

    BTW, I was a totebagging idiot who loved Shields and Brooks, as well as The V. Serious Round Oak Table in the Black Hole (aka Mr. Rose), before I found the Juice. The scales have fallen from my eyes.

  44. 44.

    Villago Delenda Est

    December 3, 2011 at 12:57 pm

    OT, but some idiot at the Daily Beast (link is to Yahoo News, not the Tina Brown site) is telling us who wins if “the Cain train derails”.

    Um, this is not a matter of “if”. It’s a matter of “it’s happened, deal with it.”

    This is pretty much like looking at the charred wreckage of the Hindenburg and speculating on what might happen if it caught fire and crashed.

  45. 45.

    numbskull

    December 3, 2011 at 12:59 pm

    One of the reasons black and brown working class people will vote Democrat anyway is that the Republican party openly hates black and brown people.

    You meant “Democratic”, not “Democrat”. Right?

  46. 46.

    West of the Cascades

    December 3, 2011 at 1:06 pm

    @Elizabelle:

    working class white voters—many of them—do pay attention to what the Republicans are doing

    This. The early reports from the recall campaign for Governor Walker in Wisconsin which indicate that rural, white voters are signing recall petitions at far higher rates than expected seems to bear this out.

    The best the Republicans can come up with is the argument that “Obama has done nothing or if he has done something it failed to make things better for you” – accompanied by blackety black black black of course. But there’s not a lot of effort to say that a particular Obama administration policy caused things to get worse.

    By contrast, even low-information voters can see Republicans (particularly in states like Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania) making decisions that are designed to make, and actually are making, economic conditions worse. It is going to be hard for a Republican presidential candidate (particularly Mitt Romney) to credibly sell working class voters in the upper Midwest that they should vote for him in preference to President Obama.

  47. 47.

    JWL

    December 3, 2011 at 1:08 pm

    Bobo is “actually right that the working class votes against incumbent presidents when the economy is bad”.

    Historically, yes. But the GOP has gone so far round the bend that I don’t believe that will hold true in the election of 2012. Joe & Jill Sixpack bought into the carny barkers economic spiel from 1980-2o08, and racial resentments die hard. But they know damn well whose policies drove the economy into the ditch. The problem the democratic party will have on its hands with blue collar America is a consequence of it hitching itself to the GOP wagon over the past 40 years. With regard to economic policies– where the rubber hits the road– that party has followed the lead of republican initiatives time after time since 1980. That fact, more so than any other, accounts for a cleared eyed cynicism that keeps the republican party viable in the minds of people who despise mealy mouthed politicians far more than they fear the batshit insane.

  48. 48.

    Exurban Mom

    December 3, 2011 at 1:09 pm

    Speaking from the Ohio perspective: I would be interested in hearing Kay’s take on this, but I would say that the movement to repeal Senate Bill 5 should be co-opted by the Obama team pretty easily. Those voters were awakened from the laziness and lack of commitment by the Republican overreach in our state. Kasich is horribly unpopular; any Republican candidate who associates him/herself with Kasich is not doing any favors for their campaign.

  49. 49.

    Villago Delenda Est

    December 3, 2011 at 1:12 pm

    @Exurban Mom:

    any Republican candidate who associates him/herself with Kasich is not doing any favors for their campaign.

    They all made an effort to support Kaisch in the repeal fight. Every last one of them.

    They’re doomed.

  50. 50.

    Cacti

    December 3, 2011 at 1:19 pm

    If Republicans repeat their abysmal numbers with Hispanic voters, they’re going to need 60+ % of the white vote to win the election.

    Even with 58% of the white vote, Bush needed 40% of the Hispanic vote to win in 2004.

    Expect them to hammer the “Obama hates white people” meme relentlessly for the next year. It’s their only hope.

  51. 51.

    PIGL

    December 3, 2011 at 1:27 pm

    @BGinCHI: exactly. Dealing with people like that is the only real justification for below the line intelligence services. But in reality those only go after half-witted socially isolated brown people who can be enticed into the barest shred of an apparent plot, while UN Secrataries General and exiled leftist leaders die in tragic plain crashes and myseriously uninvestigated explosions. And, it goes without saying, smelly hippies.

    Speaking of which, has P.J. O’Rourke been strangled yet in his own intestines?

  52. 52.

    BGinCHI

    December 3, 2011 at 1:42 pm

    @PIGL: Turns out there was nothing inside to strangle him with.

    His body, like his head, is empty.

  53. 53.

    The Sheriff's A Ni-

    December 3, 2011 at 1:44 pm

    @eemom: I’m fonder of this video, especially on this day.

  54. 54.

    Tom Q

    December 3, 2011 at 2:17 pm

    To follow up and add a bit to what eemom said about the economy: I think we also ought to stop echoing “we’re in the worst economy since the 30s”. What we should say is, we had the worst economic meltdown since the 30s, but, fortunately, we didn’t follow the neo-1929 with a neo-1930/31/32, so, in fact, our economy now, while weaker than we’d like (and weaker than it could be if Republicans in Congress weren’t ignorant swine), is, by many metrics, better than it was during the depths of the ’81-’83 recession.

    I mean, every economic number for the last 2-3 months has been pointing in a better direction, yet most people around here want to wail and gnash their teeth about the death-spiral economy we’re in. Yeah, tout the fact that the GOP is responsible for almost all of it, highlight the fact that they’re running a bunch of clowns whose solution is to double down on what got us into the mess…but save at least a little energy for pointing out that the economy’s been out of recession and producing jobs for over a year, because the economy heading in the right direction is the best campaign of all (ask Reagan, who emerged from a terrible recession of mostly his own making and got close to 60% of the vote).

  55. 55.

    EconWatcher

    December 3, 2011 at 2:32 pm

    @Tom Q:

    I think the reason many of us aren’t pursuing your second angle (“things are getting better”) just yet is that we’re presently huddled at the edge of a cliff because of Europe.

    If they get a real deal done over there, I think our economy has enough positive momentum to show some signficant improvement. Then we’ll talk. But right now, that’s anything but a sure bet.

  56. 56.

    Gregory

    December 3, 2011 at 2:41 pm

    Post title FTW.

  57. 57.

    agrippa

    December 3, 2011 at 3:13 pm

    saying so does not make it so.
    Just because Brooks says that Democrats have ‘given up’ on the white working class does not make it so.

  58. 58.

    agrippa

    December 3, 2011 at 3:15 pm

    @Cacti:

    “Obama hates whites” is the their only hope.

    Brooks going on as he does is a polite way of saying just that.

  59. 59.

    mk3872

    December 3, 2011 at 3:18 pm

    Commentator tards like Brooks and Matthews also said that Obama could never win PA in 2008 because he got trounced by Hillary and because there are too many racist whites in PA.

    Amazingly, Chris Matthews is from the same county here in PA where I live and he got it wrong, too.

    Obama won PA in 2008 by 10 PERCENTAGE POINTS.

    The obsession with white “working” class by the MSM completely ignores the 1M+ population in the Philadelphia region & Pittsburgh.

    Lastly, the “white working class” in PA is heavily UNION.

    For Brooks to think that UNIONS would vote R over D in a presidential race is IDIOTIC.

    Even KERRY won PA in 2004.

    The current polling by Quinnipiac here in our state shows Obama in low-40s because people are unhappy right now. That doesn’t mean they’ll flock to Gingrich or Romney in 12 months.

  60. 60.

    Paul W.

    December 3, 2011 at 3:25 pm

    People vote based on their expectations about the economy, whether or not things are getting better or worse. Not on the actual present conditions (see FDR and Reagan).

  61. 61.

    Tom Q

    December 3, 2011 at 3:35 pm

    @EconWatcher: Fair enough. But can we stop with “Obama’s running with the worst economy EVAH”? — something’s that’s demonstrably not true right now. Because if people keep saying that now, some people are going to hold onto it a year from now regardless of the changed circumstance.

  62. 62.

    smintheus

    December 3, 2011 at 3:35 pm

    @Tom Q: Last month there were only 120,000 new jobs. At that rate, it will take about 20 more years to get back to the (already depressed) level of employment at the start of the recession.

    This recession is twice as deep as the next worse recession since the ’30s, and now it is the longest as well…with no end in sight. Nearly impossible to believe the economy could produce jobs at such a furious pace that it could be over in less than another 3 years.

    And all of those considerations exclude the distinct possibility that the European meltdown will cause a double dip.

  63. 63.

    Tom Q

    December 3, 2011 at 3:38 pm

    @smintheus: If you’re saying we’re still in recession now (that’s what I infer from your comments), then I’d have to say very few standard economists would agree with you.

    If you’re saying we’re still in hard times, obviously agreed — but so was American in 1936, and FDR ran on Happy Days Are Here Again, not “things still suck so bad”.

  64. 64.

    smintheus

    December 3, 2011 at 3:53 pm

    @Tom Q: We’re not losing jobs but we’re still near the bottom of the trough in employment. If you prefer to call it a depression, then fine.

    In ’36 the unemployment was rapidly falling. It’s not now…despite the latest report, where the drop in unemployment is mostly a reflection of people giving up and dropping out of the jobs market.

    FDR fought every way he could on behalf of the poor. People appreciated that he was in their corner. Obama has fashioned himself more as a compromiser or conciliator than as a fighter.

  65. 65.

    Davis X. Machina

    December 3, 2011 at 3:54 pm

    @Ian:

    Obama won 63% of the vote among voters with no high school

    But of the white vote among voters with no high school? Or no college? (Some poli-sci types are now using ‘with no college’ or ‘did not complete college’ as a surrogate for income when defining ‘working class’.)

    Even the best cross-tabs don’t break out education-and-income, or education-and race, etc.

  66. 66.

    Davis X. Machina

    December 3, 2011 at 3:55 pm

    @smintheus:

    FDR fought every way he could on behalf of the poor.

    (Except enroll 1/3, or more, of them in Social Security…)

  67. 67.

    carpeduum

    December 3, 2011 at 4:29 pm

    Doug doug doug. If you can’t see boneheads remarks as nothing more than concern trolling you are even dumber than I thought.

  68. 68.

    Tom Q

    December 3, 2011 at 4:53 pm

    @Davis X. Machina: I’m guessing smintheus is the sort of Democrat Jon Chait was talking about: ones who romanticize those of the past in order to heighten their disappointment in those current. (Saying we’re in a depression right now is a Firebagger tip-off) He reveres FDR in retrospect, but, had he been around at the time, he’d have been on the Huey Long/Upton Sinclair bandwagon.

  69. 69.

    Mnemosyne

    December 3, 2011 at 4:59 pm

    I would worry a lot more about next year’s election if Republicans hadn’t shot themselves in the foot after the 2010 elections. If people like Walker and Kashich (?) hadn’t decided to push their nutty agenda, Republicans might bein a good position to sell themselves as an alternative to the Democrats. Now, not so much. “We’re not as bad as the other guys” may not be much of a selling point, but it’s better than the Republicans’ “we’ll fiddle while Rome burns” strategy.

  70. 70.

    smintheus

    December 3, 2011 at 5:24 pm

    @Tom Q: Some rather dim pronouncements from you, based on what? A firebagger? Seriously? Because I’m willing to call a long, deep recession a depression? This from the guy who wants to quibble about whether we’re still in a ‘recession’. A romantic because I’m willing to discuss FDR…after you brought him up?

    As it happens, I’m an historian by profession. I don’t romanticize the past, or the present.

    I think your beef is that I’m not buying your pretense that things are about to come up roses and that Obama doesn’t have some major weaknesses to overcome.

  71. 71.

    Tom Q

    December 3, 2011 at 5:51 pm

    @smintheus: Forgive me, but characterizing this current period by invoking a time in US history when unemployment was at 25% doesn’t strike me as dispassionate analysis; it strikes me as spin I’d expect to be coming from my political opponents.

    And you didn’t just “discuss” FDR, you lionized him: “FDR fought every way he could on behalf of the poor”. This was not the view of the professional left at the time, who repeatedly excoriated FDR for not going far enough (hence the Long & Sinclair boomlets). As was pointed out above, a good many of the poorest were specifically excluded from Social Security as originally designed.

    It’s not just a quibble whether we’re still in recession or not; it matters substantially (politically as well as economically) what direction the economy’s moving. I (and, I suspect, most economists) believe a year’s worth of job growth and GDP expansion (however insufficient) at minimum means the economy is no longer contracting. If you set the bar at “we must replace all the jobs lost before we declare it over”, then you’re pretty much guaranteeing short-term failure and helping the opposition make its argument.

    Of course vulnerabilities remain, especially as to what happens in Europe and whether it reaches us. I don’t know what will happen there, and neither do you. But I’ll point out many of those most actively pushing “we’re doomed” in that regard were, about three months ago, telling us we were guaranteed to experience a double-dip stateside, something which failed to materialize.

    It’s my observation that there’s a cadre of lefties so incensed Obama didn’t follow their directives they’re actively rooting for economic debacle to prove they were FUCKING RIGHT! (as Judith Miller would put it). So I tend to see that strain in most pessimism right now, and your “depression” throwaway fell squarely in that zone. If I’ve misjudged you, apologies.

  72. 72.

    Caz

    December 3, 2011 at 6:00 pm

    Do you know how idiotic you sound? The only reason you’re not laughed at is because no one reads your drivel except other idiots in this echo chamber.

    Republicans openly hate black people? Is that why Herman Cain was leading in the polls for weeks?

    It’s people like you that make me proud to be who I am. I cannot imagine being as ignorant as you.

    Basically, you’ll believe whatever the progressive politicians and media tell you to believe, right? I’d tell you to start thinking for yourself, but you already think are you doing that. That’s the beauty of useful idiots – they actually think they’re coming up with their own views, when in reality they are just being used by the leftists in power. And I’m sure you really think you’re some kind of intellectual deep thinker who’s spreading the good word and fighting the good fight, lol. You are such a pathetic laughing stock, LOL. Like a retard with bad intentions, lol.

  73. 73.

    smintheus

    December 3, 2011 at 6:21 pm

    @Tom Q: This is foolishness. I didn’t invoke the Great Depression any more than I revere or lionize FDR. You’re the one who brought up both…by comparing Obama to FDR and suggesting that Obama will get a pass for a lousy economy just as FDR did. I pointed out that they’re very different politicians and that the recovery in ’36 had more steam than the current feeble one.

    Certainly don’t need to be lectured either about basic history. And fwiw, Social Security was created with the idea that it should not immediately collapse like a house of cards.

    You certainly were quibbling with me about the term ‘recession’. Really think I don’t know what the narrowest definition of that term is? Or do you suppose people can be persuaded not to do what even economists do…measure the severity of recessions by considering also the period of recovery? What you want is happy talk…and anyone who won’t chime in is automatically suspect as your opponent evidently.

  74. 74.

    Tom Q

    December 3, 2011 at 6:27 pm

    @smintheus: Okay…really did try to engage with you, but we’ve reached an impasse where each thinks the other’s not discussing in good faith. So, adios. Maybe we can compare notes a year on and see who was seeing things more clearly, and who was blinded by biases.

  75. 75.

    Caz

    December 3, 2011 at 9:32 pm

    The liberals do far more damage to minorities than any other group. Here’s one example. affirmative action basically says that we’re going to give minorities handouts because they can’t make it on their own. If that’s not condescending, I don’t know what is. Creating programs that keep minorities perpetually dependent on govt subsidies also helps keep minorities from rising up on their own. Basically, the liberals are telling minorities, we don’t expect you to be able to succeed, so we’ll subsidize a very low level of living for you in perpetuity to discourage you from trying to succeed on your own. And constantly providing minorities with excuses why they can’t succeed isn’t helpful either. You didn’t do well on the SAT’s? Well, we’re not going to help you help yourself; rather, we’ll give you excuses so you can blame others for your problems – the SAT’s are culturally biased, so of course you’re not going to succeed on them; in fact, don’t even bother trying. We have welfare, unemployment, and food stamps for you, and we’ll ensure that you are given positions at schools and jobs you didn’t earn, because we know you can’t make it on your own.

    The best thing anyone can do for minorities is to give them the tools and confidence for them to succeed on their own, and make the playing field entirely fair. That way, you rise or fall on your own efforts and merits. This will change the culture of excuses and dependency that are keeping minorities from succeeding on the whole. And these are the ideas of conservatives, not liberals.

    Liberals think they are better than everyone and they will decide what is best for everyone and who is and is not able to succeed. For those they deem unable to succeed, they will provide an easy living, albeit a lower class one.

    Conservatives want a level playing field where everyone is encouraged to give their best and strive for success. Govt dependency is not a life-long goal, but rather a temporary stop-gap measure to help people get back on their feet, not a permanent way of life.

    Clearly, the left is the party doing the most damage to minorities. But when you lie and support handouts, it’s hard for those getting the handouts to break out of the box and realize they are being duped by the left, so they keep voting for the left, perpetuating their problems.

    Of course, the response to this is that I and my fellow conservatives are racist. The left is great at lying and scare tactics, but not so great at truly helping minorities.

  76. 76.

    Villago Delenda Est

    December 3, 2011 at 9:34 pm

    @Caz:

    Do you know how idiotic you sound?

    Physician, heal thyself.

  77. 77.

    Caz

    December 3, 2011 at 9:50 pm

    Villago, that is one hilarious comment. Great job.

  78. 78.

    mclaren

    December 3, 2011 at 11:13 pm

    I don’t know if people vote lived experience or what they see on their teevees, but he’s actually right that the working class votes against incumbent presidents when the economy is bad. And it’s bad right now, especially for the middle-to-lower-middle-class.

    Eurozone?

    Anyone?

    The whole continent of Europe is sliding slowly over the edge of the economic cliff, and when that mess finally blows up, we’re going to see wild global economic panic Part Deux, overnight TIPS rates skyrocketing and the whole world banking system freezing up like a V-8 engine with sugar in the gas tank.

    Say hello to a double-dip recession in the U.S. Some economists are making noises about “decoupling from the Eurozone,” but out here in the real world, that ain’t possible. It’s an integrated global economy, and when Europe implodes, it’ll drag the U.S. back down into the abyss.

    That means a massive economic downturn starting sometime next year, and probably 10% to 12% unemployment by election day 2012. How ya think voters gonna feel about Barack Obama then?

    None of this is Obama’s fault, of course. He didn’t have any idea that we’re going through a convulsive paroxysmic breakup of the entire post-WW II economic setup that was formalized with Bretton Woods circa 1948. We’re undergoing the kind of massive global shakeup that only comes once every 100 years or so. The last time a change this big happened was when the monarchies collapsed and the assembly line + the internal combustion engine came on the scene around 1918.

    That doesn’t change the fact that the middle class in America is being destroyed by free trade + automation + computers + the internet. Insane convulsions like SOPA and frantic paroxysms like the Occupy movement are just the symptoms of that underlying fever.

  79. 79.

    mclaren

    December 3, 2011 at 11:19 pm

    @smintheus:

    We’re not losing jobs…

    Yes we are, actually. Several points we need to bear in mind about these BLS statistics. First, when the BLS revises the numbers they don’t just revise one month’s numbers, they revise the last two months. Second — and this is important — around the holidays we always see some artificial boost in employment from short-lived jobs like temps working at malls, people who find work for a couple of weeks as Santa, and so on. Third (perhaps the most important) this job number is to a large extent bogus because huge numbers of people have stopped looking for work. They know there are no jobs out there, so they’ve decided to give up and move back in with their parents (or their children) and start crocheting scarfs and selling ’em on Craigslist to make enough money to eat ramen five days a week.

    Remember that this net jobs number is highly dependent on the estimated unemployment rate. That’s entirely bogus right now because so many people have given up and started living in their cars and eating government cheese to survive, so they no longer show up in the unemployment stats. But they’re there.

  80. 80.

    mclaren

    December 3, 2011 at 11:22 pm

    @Mnemosyne:

    This is indeed one of the most important reasons why Obama may have a reasonable chance of getting re-elected. The Republicans have forgotten the crucial lesson taught by Nixon and Reagan and Dubya: lie about what you’re going to do when you get in office.

    The current crop of Republican nominees have been astonishingly straightforward about what they’re going to do if they get into the White House. Cut unemployment benefits, fire government workers, crush unions, brutalize workers, slash the minimum wage. No “compassionate conservatism” scam here! These guys are remarkably upfront about how they’re going to bend over the bottom 99% and ream ’em without vaseline.

  81. 81.

    Corner Stone

    December 3, 2011 at 11:28 pm

    @smintheus:

    We’re not losing jobs

    The fuck we aren’t. Or do you consider trading $45K-$60K per year jobs for $21K an equal trade?

  82. 82.

    mclaren

    December 3, 2011 at 11:48 pm

    To add some hard data about Smintheus’ bizarre claim that “we’re not losing jobs,” this from Econbrowser.com:

    As Mark Thoma points out, 120,000 jobs is about what is needed to keep unemployment from rising. In addition, the drop in the unemployment rate was driven largely by the drop in the participation rate, not the rise in employed. That’s going to be greater relevance if the extension of unemployment benefits is further blocked (in other words, there are offsetting employment effects from UI, as discussed in this rejoinder to Mulligan). More discussion at Izzo/WSJ RTE.

    Mark Thoma’s discussion here. Even with these inaccurate (due to revisions and holiday jobs and the artificial drop in unemployment because of short-lived holiday temp jobs) 120,000 jobs stats, the U.S. economy is just treading water. That’s barely enough to offset workers leaving the workforce right now. 120,000 jobs certainly isn’t sufficient to actually add workers to the U.S. economy. See Mark Thoma’s exploration, he goes into a lot more detail on that point.

    Menzies Chinn debunks the claim that people going onto unemployment insurance necessarily raises the unemployment count here. I won’t go into the math, you can read it in detail there.

    As Phil Izzo notes on his WSJ blog:

    On the negative side , one has to stress that the 120,000 payroll gain in November includes a 50,000 increase in retail employment. This is most likely due to the early Thanksgiving holiday (i.e. the early start of the holiday season), which led retailers to start/complete their holiday hires early. As this means that relatively fewer hires are needed in December, we are likely to see a renewed decline in retail employment in the current month. Another weak aspect of today’s report is the decline in average hourly earnings.

    So we’ve got two things going on here. First, nearly half of the 120,000 jobs are short-lived temp holiday junk jobs like wrapping presents 4 hours a day at Wal Mart or ringing the bell for the Salvation Army in a shopping mall at minimum wage. Second, people are continuing to lose high-paying jobs and they’ve having to take lower-wage jobs. That’s the only reasonable way to explain a net decline in average hourly earnings even though jobs are being added to the economy.

    I don’t see how any reasonable person can look at a number like 120,000 and get anything positive out of it. Come January, those 50,000 holiday jobs will evaporate, and then we’ll see some very ugly downward revisions in both hourly earnings and workforce participation.

    But the real smoking gun in any discussion of the total number of jobs putatively added to the U.S. economy is the overall workforce participation rate.

    Take a look at this graph of the overall workforce participation rate over the last 27 years and explain to me how you get something positive out of that.

    The bottom is falling out for the 80% of the population that aren’t corporate lawyers or lobbyists or doctors or CEOs. That’s just the reality on the ground, and that workforce participation graph shows it. Citing one month of revised bogus BLS stats doesn’t change that brutal fact.

  83. 83.

    Thymezone

    December 4, 2011 at 1:13 am

    It’s a shame Broder died on you, Doug. It looks like you are stuck for the rest of your life riffing off Brooks. You really need a new hobby.

    Brooks is about as consequential as Regis Philbin. Jesus, man, get with it.

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  1. From Pine View Farm » Blog's archive » Always Just under the Surface says:
    December 3, 2011 at 2:55 pm

    […] DougJ at Balloon Juice cuts to the quick on the current and altogether fabricated kerfuffle about whether or not the Democratic Party is “abandoning the white working class,” pointing out the difference between “effect” and “cause” (emphasis added): I don’t know if people vote lived experience or what they see on their teevees, but he’s (David … […]

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