October 4, 2010
It’s refreshing to witness the expansion in the number of people looking forward to the demise of our two-party political system. Tom Friedman of The New York Times recently gushed with enthusiasm about the idea of “a serious third party”, capable of rising to the challenge of enacting important, urgently-needed legislation without offending the far left, the far right or “coal state Democrats”. Friedman is only half-right. We need a third, a fourth, a fifth and a sixth party, as well. Placing all of one’s hope in THE Third Party is a formula for more disappointment.
I frequently complain that we no longer have two distinct political parties running America. We are currently stuck under the regime of the Republi-cratic Corporatist Party. The widely-expressed disappointment resulting from President Obama’s failure to keep his campaign promises was discussed in my previous four postings.
Salena Zito of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review wrote a great article about her year of traveling 6,609 miles to interview 432 people identifying themselves as Democrats. Here’s what she learned:
In coffee shops, on streetcorners and farms, at factories, the narrative was always the same: How could such great promise have let the country down so much, so quickly?
Ms. Zito reached the conclusion that the man elected President by these voters was really no improvement from the 2004 candidate, John Kerry:
Obama is no less out of touch than the Kerry whom America watched windsurf before the 2004 election — the same man who said last week that one reason Democrats will lose this year is that “we have an electorate that doesn’t always pay that much attention to what’s going on, so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth or what’s happening.”
Here’s where Kerry and Obama are both wrong: The electorate that was influenced by a simple slogan – “Yes, we can” — in 2008 actually is very well-informed.
This time, that electorate isn’t voting for a dream, but for its pocketbook.
Throughout the current election cycle, the Democratic establishment has avoided the sort of challenge experienced by the Republican establishment in the form of the Tea Party movement. That will change after November 2, at which point disgruntled Democrats will feel more comfortable jumping ship. It took consecutive humiliations at the polls in 2006 and 2008 before the Tea Partiers were motivated to break ranks with the Republican powers that be and undertake campaigns to challenge Republican incumbents. Their efforts paid off so well, many Tea Partiers have become enthused about having a distinct party from the Republican organization. After the 2010 elections are concluded, we can expect to see splinter groups breaking away from the Democratic Party.
Back on April 22, Mark Willen, Senior Political Editor of The Kiplinger Letter, wrote an interesting piece, lamenting the disadvantage experienced by moderate candidates because the political primary process facilitates victory for the choices of extremist voters as a result of the enthusiasm gap. (Extremists are more motivated to vote in primaries than moderate voters, who don’t consider themselves crusaders for a particular agenda.) Willen sees the two parties being pushed to ideological extremes, despite the fact that most Americans consider themselves to be in the center of the political spectrum. Another important point from that piece concerns the fact that info-tainment programs presenting extremist views get better ratings than programs featuring commentary that really is “fair and balanced”. As a result, cable television audiences are regularly exposed to a bombardment of caustic rhetoric.
The 2012 elections could bring us a significant increase in the number of “independent” candidates, as well as nominees from new political parties. A change of that nature could close future mid-term enthusiasm gaps, occurring in the November elections (such as the one expected for this year). The prospects for a larger, more diverse group of political parties are looking better with each passing day.
We Took The Wrong Turn
October 7, 2010
The ugly truth has raised its head once again. We did it wrong and Australia did it right. It was just over a year ago – on September 21, 2009 – when I wrote a piece entitled, “The Broken Promise”. I concluded that posting with this statement:
I focused that piece on a fantastic report by Australian economist Steve Keen, who explained how the “money multiplier” myth, fed to Obama by the very people who caused the financial crisis, was the wrong paradigm to be starting from in attempting to save the economy.
The trouble began immediately after President Obama assumed office. I wasn’t the only one pulling out my hair in February of 2009, when our new President decided to follow the advice of Larry Summers and “Turbo” Tim Geithner. That decision resulted in a breach of Obama’s now-infamous campaign promise of “no more trickle-down economics”. Obama decided to do more for the zombie banks of Wall Street and less for Main Street – by sparing the banks from temporary receivership (also referred to as “temporary nationalization”) while spending less on financial stimulus. Obama ignored the 50 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News, who warned that an $800 billion stimulus package would be inadequate. At the Calculated Risk website, Bill McBride lamented Obama’s strident posturing in an interview conducted by Terry Moran of ABC News, when the President actually laughed off the idea of implementing the so-called “Swedish solution” of putting those insolvent banks through temporary receivership.
With the passing of time, it has become painfully obvious that President Obama took the country down the wrong path. The Australian professor (Steve Keen) was right and Team Obama was wrong. Economist Joseph Stiglitz made this observation on August 5, 2010:
Fast-forward to October 6, 2010. Michael Heath of Bloomberg BusinessWeek provided the latest chapter in the story of how America did it wrong while Australia did it right:
Meanwhile — back in the States — on October 6, ADP released its National Employment Report for September, 2010. It should come as no surprise that our fate is 180 degrees away from that of Australia: Private sector employment in the U.S. decreased by 39,000 from August to September on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the ADP report. Beyond that, October 6 brought us a gloomy forecast from Jan Hatzius, chief U.S. economist for the ever-popular Goldman Sachs Group. Wes Goodman of Bloomberg News quoted Hatzius as predicting that the United States’ economy will be “fairly bad” or “very bad” over the next six to nine months:
Aren’t we lucky! How wise of President Obama to rely on Larry Summers to the exclusion of most other economists!
Charles Ferguson, director of the new documentary film, Inside Job, recently offered this analysis of the milieu that facilitated the opportunity for Larry Summers to inflict his painful legacy upon us:
Australia is looking better than ever — especially when you consider that their spring season is just beginning right now . . .
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