Why deficit hysteria sells
One of the themes I’ve been emphasizing is the role of context in the presidential race. President Obama’s reelection prospects depend on swing voters considering not just the current state of the economy, but also the factors that led us here and the economic vision that Mitt Romney would bring to the presidency. Romney’s hopes, on the other hand, depend on those same voters either ignoring or rationalizing away the context that Obama tries to introduce and simply voting him out because of their profound economic anxiety.
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The CliffsNotes version of what’s wrong with this: 1) There’s been no spending explosion under Obama; 2) the increase in debt under Obama can be traced to the economic crash (which dramatically reduced federal revenue), the wars, the Bush tax cuts (which, yes, Obama agreed to extend – at the insistence of Republicans), the 2003 Medicare prescription drug law, and only to a very minor extent the 2009 stimulus; and 3) the economy would actually be in better shape now if Obama had spent more.
That’s the context that the Obama campaign needs the public to understand, and you can see why it’s such a struggle. Voters have a demonstrated tendency to express concerns about deficits only when the economy is bad. This is why, for instance, the Democrats during the 1981/82 recession reaped a political windfall while railing against Ronald Reagan’s massive deficits, but gained zero traction on the issue when the economy improved in 1984 – even though deficits were even higher (and still soaring) then.
The lesson is that most voters don’t actually care about the deficit itself, or really understand what it is. But it’s a scary-sounding word that conjures thoughts of government bloat and reckless spending, which makes it an irresistible weapon for a recession-era opposition party.
http://www.salon.com/2012/05/22/why_deficit_hysteria_sells/singleton/
Hopefully we can some serious voter education on why the deficit exsist and who caused it.
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is that anyone who is paying any level of attention to what is going on, and is not a flaming republican flag waver, can see that they have been angling for the last four years to BOTH hold back the economy AND keep the deficit as high as possible FOR THIS REASON, to have a shot at this presidential election.
Just the most callous thing I have seen in my life, and should be grounds to have the party as a whole flushed, but ... Because people are collectively twits, it benefits the Rs ...
